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Montage of Wing Point in Bainbridge Island and the Edmonds Ferry.

Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District

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Local small businesses win federal technology grants

13 December 2005

U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee announced that Aculight Corporation in Bothell and Stirling Dynamics Inc. of Kirkland will receive $70,000 and $100,000 respectively in small business contracts with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

"These grants allow local innovators to help our nation's space agency fulfill the American spirit of exploration and advance our quest for knowledge," said Inslee, a staunch supporter of so-called Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.

Aculight will work in collaboration with Stanford University to demonstrate new high-sensitivity, laser-based spectroscopic sources for detecting past or present biological activity on Mars. Following the success of recent Mars rover missions in providing new data on the Martian environment, NASA currently is planning a mission to be launched in 2009 which will accommodate a suite of instruments to further characterize the Martian surface and atmosphere, with particular focus on identifying signs of life.

Stirling Dynamics and Professor Eli Livne of the University of Washington in Seattle will develop a set of computer applications to analyze the interaction of aircraft structures, aerodynamics and flight control systems. These applications are designed to increase the productivity of aerospace engineers and will lead to more optimized aircraft designs. They will be developed to be user-friendly, integrated with existing applications and effectively distributed to U.S. industry, government and academia.

Inslee, whose district is home to half of Washington state's biotech and biomedical companies, has introduced legislation in the House that would restore the eligibility of such firms to compete for SBIR grants.