Dream Tiny

Dream Tiny

Technology Innovation Awards - Sarasota/Manatee runner-up by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

A neuroscientist seeks large-scale change by using tiny technology.

Mark Broderick, British-born and educated with a Ph.D. in neuroscience and toxicology, was initially stumped when potential investors in his technology company invited him to Miami to give an "elevator pitch."

Broderick, president of Sarasota-based Discovery Technology International, had only recently learned that an elevator was what he formerly thought of as a lift in his homeland. More importantly, he struggled with how he would explain his high-tech expertise - nanotechnology - in laymen's terms to a group of bottom-line focused investors.

Broderick settled on a strand of human hair: Nanotechnology works in such ultra-tiny particles that a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.

Expanding the theory to technology, Broderick uses a standard circuit board for a computer as an example, pointing out the current average size of a standard board, that of about a 5-by-7 picture frame, has been reduced about 10% to 20% a year as the technology improves. Hence, the need for products focusing on nanotechnology and what Broderick calls nano-positioning. "As the technology gets smaller and smaller," Broderick says, "the need to miniaturize has really driven this area of science."

Broderick is trying to find his place in this mini-world with a series of robotic systems geared toward the medical and life sciences community, and he hopes eventually for military and defense systems. The company, under its DTI-NanoTech division, unveiled its newest, proprietary and patent-pending robotic system at the Society of Neuroscience's annual conference in Atlanta last month.

Going digital

It's called the RoboMate STX, which stands for stereotaxic microinjection. A stereotaxic frame is a standard tool used in laboratory and field-testing to grip a testing subject, says Broderick. For example, a mouse can be placed on the tool and then a scientist can manually inject a substance into its brain while it's held still.

The industry has worked that way for nearly a century and Broderick followed along early in his career. Then he began questioning "why the devices are still manual in the digital age." So after moving from England to Sarasota in 1999, he hired a few physicists and engineers and began to research how to make the system more precise.

The result was the RoboMate line of products. It starts out the same way as the old system, placing a "target" on the frame. But instead of using hands and micrometers to position the injection, a user can enter coordinates into a computer and do it automatically, through the RoboMate. What's more, says Broderick, DTI's patent-pending virtual point technology system allows the injection system to change angles and directions without losing its position for the target. That can help the researcher penetrate deeper into the brain and be more accurate in the process.

Broderick considers his company and the nanotechnology to be an "enabler" of other technologies, helping scientists, doctors and lab workers become more efficient in their efforts. "We are not making a laser," says Broderick by way of an example, "but we are making a positioning device to be used with the laser."

While continuing to refine the technology, the next challenge for Broderick is to sell both the actual product and the company itself to potential investors. He has six orders so far, without doing any advertising or marketing, sans the trade show.

Outside funding, has been more difficult, Broderick says, as nanotechnology is treated more like science fiction than reality in most parts of Florida. Broderick says this type of business would get funding "the following day" if it relocated to Silicon Valley, but he and his employees have family in the Sarasota-area.

In addition to pitching venture capitalists and others, Broderick is working the grant circuit. The company recently received a $250,000 federal grant in conjunction with Sarasota-based New College to study military uses for the product. The second phase of the grant, if awarded to the company, can be worth more than $1 million, Broderick says.

The only funding so far for the venture has been from Broderick's savings. He declined to say how much of his own money he's put into the company, although he acknowledged product development, research and overhead are costly. He says the company has already produced at least $15 million worth of technology.