The SAMI proved its mettle.
The instrument dropped 3,000 meters into the Pacific Ocean, measured pH and surfaced all in one piece.
The journey marked the final phase of an international competition that puts Sunburst Sensors of Missoula in line for a couple of $750,000 prizes, according to the XPRIZE.
XPRIZE is an organization working to solve "the world's grand challenges" by inspiring "brilliant innovators" and stimulating research and development.
"We're sort of, in a way, the underdogs, even though we've been doing this for a while," Sunburst CEO Jim Beck said Monday. "We're certainly the smallest company in terms of financial backing and number of people."
Later in July, Beck and company founder Michael DeGrandpre will travel to New York City to learn if they beat out the other four finalists, which represented England, Norway, Japan and the U.S.
People are also reading…
The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE is offering one prize in accuracy and one in affordability, with each first-place winner getting $750,000, and each second-place winner taking home $250,000.
Already, though, the SAMI, the "submersible autonomous moored instrument," is illustrating success in another arena, economic development in Missoula through science.
Sunburst developed and manufactures one SAMI that measures pH and another that calculates carbon dioxide, as well as other devices.
"Over the last five years, we've probably brought in around $5 million to $6 million from outside the state," Beck said.
In that time period, he said, roughly 80 percent to 90 percent of those millions have been in sales.
***
The XPRIZE itself isn't about economic development, though. Rather, it's about the health of the ocean, and accurately measuring pH will "profoundly improve our understanding of ocean acidification."Â
"Our ocean is currently in the midst of a silent crisis," reads an overview of the competition. "Rising levels of man-made atmospheric carbon dioxide are causing the ocean to become more acidic ... and (the) implications are staggering."
They're affecting shellfish, fisheries, coral reefs and other ecosystems. Scientists have documented acidification "in a few temperate ocean waters," but they don't have much information in high latitudes, coastal areas and deep water, according to the XPRIZE.
The competition, an undertaking that lasted 22 months and took teams to three different settings, aims to help innovators create a sensor that can measure pH in those environments in an accurate, affordable and efficient way.
"These breakthrough sensors are urgently needed for scientists, managers and industry to turn the tide on ocean acidification," according to XPRIZE.
***
In the final phase of the competition, representatives from five teams boarded the R/V Kilo Moana, a research vessel owned by the U.S. Navy, to spend a week some 100 miles off the coast of Oahu. The Kilo Moana is operated by the University of Hawaii Marine Center.
The current way of collecting pH data is costly and laborious, and the goal was to develop an instrument that could do the job reliably, which would result in significant cost savings, Beck said.
In the last round of tests, at least one other team did quite well, Beck said. However, he also knows that at least one team had trouble in the final run last month because water pressure smashed the insides of the batteries.
"One got crushed at about 2,400 meters," Beck said. "Its batteries got collapsed."
The SAMI did its job, though. It traveled down to depth, surfaced in one piece, and gave a solid pH reading, he said.
The XPRIZE crew was collecting large bottles of water at multiple depths and measuring pH, too, and Beck didn't know how well the SAMI did in comparison to the crew's analyses.
"(But) the numbers that we got back didn't look crazy or anything. They looked pretty good, but we just don't know," Beck said.
Paul Bunje, senior director of the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE, didn't offer any hints on whether Sunburst took the cake, but he said the Missoula team did well.
"We are impressed by their drive and innovation, that they created both a cheaper version and a deep-sea version in response to the challenge of the XPRIZE," Bunje said in a statement provided by XPRIZE public relations. "In other words, they stepped up to attempt to do something incredibly challenging (audacious, even!).
"Very few innovators on Earth can say that."
Bunje said a win is worth so much money because ocean acidification "is a grand challenge of geologic scale, and we can't solve what we don't measure."Â
"We needed to ramp up innovation exponentially to tackle the basic lack of tools that give us the data that enable us to tackle (ocean acidification)," he said.
***
Initially, some 70 teams planned to compete, and so far, the one from Missoula came out among the top five, maybe better.
James Grunke of the Missoula Economic Partnership said success is breeding success in this community because stories like Sunburst draw the attention of others who might want to invest or bring a company in a similar industry here.
Earlier this month, The Kauffman Index ranked Montana as the No. 1 state for startups the third year in a row, Grunke said. Sunburst Sensors isn't a startup, but it's a model of success he would like to see replicated, a company that came out of research at the University of Montana.
"Anytime that we see academic research become viable commercially, that's something that's important to us," Grunke said.
Sunburst employs nine people, Beck said. Some of them choose to work less than full time, and with an annual payroll of nearly $500,000, the average pay at Sunburst is some $55,000; by comparison, the median household income in Missoula was $47,000 in September, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Beck himself is a mechanical engineer, and he said most of the employees have doctorates or master's degrees in chemistry, physics or other science fields.
"It's hard science people who are also pretty savvy with respect to instrumentation," Beck said.
***
If Sunburst takes home both top prizes, it will win $1.5 million in all.
Beck said Sunburst did well in the first phase in Monterey Bay, tying with itself for first place, but he isn't certain how the judges weigh the various components of the competition overall.
A win would bring not only money and bragging rights, it would raise the company's profile. Beck said advertising doesn't go far in his line of work, and he'd like Sunburst to be known as the team that won an XPRIZE to potential customers who need good, accurate pH readings.
"It's good visibility," Beck said. "Just the fact that we've made it as far as we have is good visibility. We'd obviously like to go all the way."
