GE opens oil and gas R&D center in Oklahoma

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Two test wells drilled deep underground and a well simulation towering five stories above, highlight the advanced research capabilities of GE’s Oil and Gas Technology Center.

GE have opened their oil and gas technology center in Oklahoma City, which is expected to become the central hub for the company’s scientists and engineers to collaborate with the oil and gas industry on digital and hardware solutions and advancements. The center consists of five stories and 125,000 sq ft of lab and office space, suitable for 230 employees.

The facility is designed to advance technology throughout the oil and natural gas industry, and is the company’s 10th worldwide research center, however, the first to specialize in one area.

GE’s CEO, Lorenzo Simonelli, says the research focus at the center will span across all areas of oil and gas such as; production solutions and well construction systems, oilfield facilities and systems, and reservoir performers. Simonelli believes a strong commitment to R&D will help the oil and gas customers find new efficiencies to work through tough market conditions and lead to transformational opportunities for the industry to thrive long term.

“This is a unique center from a global perspective and the plan is to be at the forefront and take the industry forward through applied technology,” Simonelli said. “Unconventional oil and gas drilling is taking place in other parts of the world. There is an opportunity to bring them in here to study and learn with others in the industry. This is going to provide the ability for commercialization of new technology and a new approach at a faster pace.”

The new technology center will accelerate innovation, the center will enable the full power of digital solutions and technology from across GE’s industrial businesses to advance the oil and gas industry.

While the oil and natural gas industry has used improved technology over the past decade to unlock vast amounts of oil and natural gas, the industry remains inefficient, said Mike Ming, general manager of the research facility. The new technology outcomes from this center will solve this issue by utilizing reserves in cost-effective and environmentally friendly ways and subsequently attracting companies from across the nation and around the world.

An innovative creation which has already been developed at the technology center is ‘Raven’ the prototype drone, engineered to detect emissions precisely and cost-effectively. ‘Raven’ has already been successfully piloted and was able to detect emissions from oilfield equipment at well sites in Arkansas. ‘Raven’ is one of many exciting developments to be produced from Oklahoma’s new research center.

To find out whether your company could qualify for the Federal Research Credit, Contact a Swanson Reed specialist.

How Does Your State Rank on the Innovation Scale?

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Innovation Is Key

Innovation is crucial to sustainable economic growth, but for innovation to occur businesses must have both the incentive and the capacity to invest.

As innovation is key to the United States’ economy as a whole, many U.S. states are showing off while others are falling short when it comes to patents, R&D, venture capital and academics.

So which states are excelling in innovation and which ones are lacking, you ask?

Patents

The top states in patents per population include:

  1. Wisconsin
  2. Washington
  3. Texas
  4. Utah
  5. California
  6. Massachusetts

The bottom five patented states include:

  1. Alaska
  2. Mississippi
  3. Tennessee
  4. West Virginia
  5. Wyoming

Venture Capital

The top states for venture capital are:

  1. Massachusetts
  2. California
  3. Utah
  4. Washington
  5. Colorado

The lowest are:

  1. Arkansas
  2. Alaska
  3. Hawaii
  4. Wyoming
  5. Iowa
  6. South Dakota

R&D Spending

The leaders in R&D spending are:

  1. Delaware
  2. Michigan
  3. California
  4. Connecticut
  5. Massachusetts

The states that spent the least on R&D include:

  1. Arkansas
  2. Wyoming
  3. Louisiana
  4. Alaska
  5. Mississippi

Academics

As for academics, the top states include:

  1. New Mexico
  2. Maryland
  3. Rhode Island
  4. Massachusetts
  5. Alabama

The lowest academic rankings were for:

  1. Louisiana
  2. Arkansas
  3. Delaware
  4. Wyoming
  5. Nevada

If you are a U.S. based company conducting R&D you may be eligible for the federal and/or state research tax credit. Please contact a Swanson Reed representative to find out further information.

Oklahoma Company Turns Towards Innovation and R&D to Help Boost Business

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Oklahoma City-based oil-field manufacturer Kimray Inc. has begun an R&D project to upgrade its signature valves and other equipment to run on electricity instead of methane or compressed air.

“It’s just going to evolve. I hope we don’t ever have a timeline to when it will be finished,” said Mark Anderson, Kimray’s product support manager. “As technology improves, the things we’re able to do it will just keep going.”

The new design will further reduce emissions and give operators more control of their equipment remotely which will decrease the need for travel. Remote operation is also less expensive and safer.

“If you’re in the energy industry any length of time, you’re going to have people talk about safety,” Anderson said. “The most dangerous thing we do is drive. It’s not the pressure. It’s not the work. It’s driving to and from locations. If we can keep people off the road to make changes and monitor leaks, it will also reduce our environmental impact. That’s a key thing to what we’re doing.”

Kimray is proof that innovation isn’t slowing down with the downturn of the oil and gas industry.

“The downturn actually helped us to know we were on the right track, heading in the right direction,” Anderson said. “It motivated us to get things done and speed things up.”

Many other oil and gas companies are following in Kimray’s footsteps and looking towards innovation and R&D to keep things afloat.

The Oklahoma R&D tax credit is available for those companies conducting R&D within the state. To find out if your company is eligible, please contact a Swanson Reed specialist for further information.

 

Albuquerque builds $35 Million high-tech R&D hub!

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Construction of the first building in Albuquerque’s high-tech research and development hub has officially begun in Central and Broadway Downtown.

The $35 million, 160,000-square-foot facility will house the University of New Mexico’s tech-transfer office and Innovation Academy, along with start-ups and partners involved in collective efforts to build a bustling, high-tech business zone in the heart of Albuquerque. The building will also provide housing for students studying in the entrepreneurial education programs and launching businesses.

Citizens of Albuquerque are very excited about the construction progression of the city’s R&D hub and are eager to be the first to take a tour when it is due for completion in August 2017, they believe the facility will forever change Albuquerque’s downtown skyline and will revitalize the whole area.

The R&D hub will facilitate education for entrepreneurs, provide lab facilities for state research universities and will reserve 2,000 square feet for the Air Force Research Laboratory to open a tech-transfer office.

It is already predicted that the University of New Mexico will intake 500 students into their own academy section of the R&D facility. This Academy will allow students to receive direct experience and real-world skills in entrepreneurship. The academy will consist of meeting areas, classrooms, individual working spaces and a state-of-the-art visualization room.

Academy Director, Robert DelCampo, describes the R&D hub as a one-stop shop, as students will live upstairs in trendy apartments, work on new technology and business ideas downstairs, and then walk to the Supporting Technology Transfer Center next door to get help taking their developments to the market.

While building such an innovation facility may be a huge investment, New Mexico state board strongly supports encouraging the future of its current and upcoming generations. Innovation is the future, without innovation, fresh ideas cannot be developed, resulting in the demise of projects and organizations.

The people of Albuquerque identified the need to significantly invest in the future of its entrepreneurs, business owners and organizations, by building this R&D facility, and are highly optimistic about the positive future outcomes resulting from it.

If you are an entrepreneur, business owner or are simply wanting to know more about R&D and how you may be eligible for the R&D Tax credit, contact a Swanson Reed specialist today.

 

 

Researchers at Binghamton, SUNY and MIT Identify Issue with 3D Printing

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Researchers at Binghamton University, the State University of New York and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have identified an issue in 3D printers that is slowing down the printing process. If improved, it would allow faster production of 3D models.

In a paper titled, “Rate Limits of Additive Manufacturing by Fused Filament Fabrication and Guidelines for High-Throughput System Design,” researchers discovered that when printing at 0.2mm thickness, 3D printers built at a speed of around 10 to 20 cubic centimeters per hour.

Their findings stated that the printing speed is strongly related to temperature. The pinch-roller mechanism that feeds through the building material has a limited force and feed rate for melting the material completely. If the polymer was pre-heated or printed from multiple openings, the melting rate would increase and the polymer could more easily be pushed through the nozzle with the same amount of pressure. The researchers hope that their findings will inspire work like this in the future.

3D Printing for R&D

New York is the number one hub in the world for 3D printing, ahead of London and Paris, providing 453 3D printers for use.

3D printing is being used increasingly for designing, researching, testing and developing products. The creation of new or improved products with a 3D printer is generally considered an eligible R&D activity.

Businesses claiming the New York Excelsior R&D Tax Credit can receive a refundable tax credit equal to 10% of the federal R&D credit. For a free assessment, contact Swanson Reed R&D Tax Specialists to find out whether your business qualifies.

R&D snowboard manufacturing lab opens in Maine

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Winterstick Snowboards, the first modern snowboard manufacturing company in the world, have opened a research and development lab in Sugarloaf Mountain Resort, Maine. The company will be led by legendary riders, Tom Burt and Seth Wescott, and Chief Engineer Daniel LeRoy.

The R&D facility will allow Winterstick to tailor their snowboards to meet respective mountain conditions and the unique styles of today’s riders. The making of each style of board is researched, exclusively designed, and hand-crafting to create a customized product specific to each customer’s requirements. Ultimately, Winterstick creates their state-of-the-art products for riders that seek complete customization in creating their dream snowboard.

The opening of the West Mountain R&D Lab returns Winterstick to its roots when Dimitrije Milovich first started designing and building his own boards in-house, and established the original snowboarding company in 1972. Winterstick has a large worldwide and loyal following and the R&D lab provides the company with the unique capabilities to turn their riders’ dream boards into a reality.

The West Mountain R&D Lab opened to start the 2016-17 season and has already produced hundreds of ‘Maine Made’ custom boards. The opening of this R&D lab allows the company to bring its innovative design and production technologies to life and craft snowboards like never before.

If you would like to find out more about R&D and whether your business could be eligible for the R&D Tax Credit, contact us today. We would be happy to assist you through the process.

Silicon Valley Company Opens Seattle Office

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Snowflake Computing recently announced the opening of an engineering office in Bellevue, Seattle, expanding away from its Silicon Valley headquarters.

Run by former Microsoft executive Bob Muglia, Snowflake is a cloud-based data analytics platform that uses SQL to organize and analyze business data. The platform was ranked the number one cloud data warehouse by Gigaom Research, receiving an impressive score of 4.85 out of 5.

Snowflake plans to hire up to 15 engineers at its new Seattle office in 2017 and expects to eventually expand to around 100. Nationally, Seattle has become a central hub for cloud technology, with companies like Microsoft and Amazon placing headquarters there.

Snowflake illustrates how thinking long-term and investing in R&D is critical in the fast-moving tech sector. In 2015, the company raised $45 million in funding for R&D and business development. Muglia stated that data warehousing was, “Ripe for disruptive innovation, driven by the shift to cloud computing and the explosion of customer interest in data insights.” Snowflake’s vision was to, “Reimagine the data warehouse for the cloud era with a completely new product built from the cloud up that doesn’t require retooling and retraining.”

Companies like Snowflake are putting pressure on even the largest companies. They outperformed Google’s BigQuery and Microsoft’s Azure SQL for the title of Best Cloud Data Warehouse. They also price matched Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service, stating that price was a key consideration for technology officers. “All organizations are keen to harness the insights derived from more and more data… It all comes down to technology and the cost of storing that data.”

Today, many billions of dollars are being invested in R&D by technology companies in order to stay relevant. Alphabet Inc, Intel and Microsoft spent over $12 billion each on R&D in 2016 for projects like Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car technology. Just a decade ago, the list of highest R&D spending was dominated by automotive and healthcare companies.

Corporate spending on R&D in the US is at its highest ever. A study by Bloomberg found that large companies that spent more on R&D got the largest returns with faster market capitalization growth. It also discovered that older companies that invested in continuous innovation performed better over the long-term.

Want to benefit from the federal R&D tax credit? Contact Swanson Reed R&D Tax Specialists today for an eligibility assessment.

Indiana research and development facility creates over 100 jobs

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Faurecia Clean Mobility, one of the world’s largest automotive equipment suppliers, announced plans to open a new research and development production facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The opening of this new facility will create over 100 jobs and provide local job seekers, within the automotive productions industry, with some fantastic opportunities.

An initial investment of $4 million will be made in order to begin operations at the 137,500 square foot facility. Fort Wayne’s Mayor, Tom Henry, said this investment is an outcome of the city’s strategy to remain and attract quality employees in Indiana.

As leading companies in innovation, such as Faurecia, continue to become established and develop their R&D focus in Indiana, the state is able to leverage significant competitive advantage. This highlights the importance of companies approaching business practices from an innovative and unique angle, such as engaging in R&D initiatives.

Innovation and research forms the backbone of Faurecia’s activities from the birth of an idea to the final validation of the concept. The role of Faurecia’s R&D organization is to anticipate the needs of the global automotive market and drive progress. Faurecia currently relies on the network of 30 R&D centers, which employ 6,000 engineers and technicians in 11 countries. This pinpoints the overall impact that engaging in R&D can have on an organization, as it not only affects company developments, however, also facilitates significant employment opportunities.

Faurecia is reliant on its R&D facilities worldwide, in order to be more in touch with the needs of various automotive markets, particularly in growth regions. R&D has allowed Faurecia to advance expertise, form effective collaborations and partnerships, extend the company’s network, and allow it to produce and release groundbreaking and state of the art products.

To determine whether your company is eligible for the R&D Tax Credit and could potentially achieve similar successes from incorporating R&D in its business practices, contact one of Swanson Reed’s R&D tax specialists today.

Maryland Ranked 1st for Innovation Environment

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Personal finance website, WalletHub, has ranked Maryland 1st in the country for its Innovation Environment.

The 12 Innovation Environment indicators were:

  • Share of technology companies
  • R&D spending per capita
  • Ratio of total R&D performed to state GDP
  • Invention patents per capita
  • Entrepreneurial activity
  • Tax-friendliness
  • Industry-cluster strength
  • Drone-friendly laws
  • Average Internet speed
  • Share of households with Internet access
  • Venture-capital funding per capita
  • Average annual federal small-business funding per GDP

Overall, Maryland was ranked the second most innovative state in the US with a ranking of 69.82 on a 100 point scale, just behind its neighbour, the District of Columbia with a ranking of 70.87.

Ranked 2nd overall in the Human Capital category, Maryland came 2nd for its share of science and engineering graduates. It placed 3rd for its share of STEM professionals and projected STEM-Job demand by 2020.

Other states that ranked well were Massachusetts, California and Colorado. Conversely, the least innovative states included West Virginia, Mississippi and Louisiana.

What Makes Maryland So Innovative?

Innovation is fostered by sustained investment in R&D, education and business creation and the development of a strong collaborative attitude. For instance, the University of Maryland plans to open an innovation center this summer to encourage entrepreneurial activities on campus and to encourage all of the University System of Maryland schools to work together.

International projects such as the Maryland International Incubator (MI2) have even greater potential. The MI2 aims to connect Maryland with global organisations, to produce successful joint ventures using world-class resources. This increases commercial activity and provides cultural learning opportunities for students.

Maryland R&D Tax Credits

Innovative businesses in any industry can apply for the Basic and Growth R&D tax credit in Maryland. To be eligible, the company must incur qualified research and development expenses as defined by section 41(b) of the Internal Revenue Code in Maryland. This could include software development or testing of new concepts or technology. The credit is refundable, allowing it to be reinvested into the business. The application deadline is September 15 of the following the tax year in which the expenses were incurred.

To find out whether your company is eligible to apply for the R&D tax credit, please contact Swanson Reed R&D Tax Specialists.

State of the art R&D center opens in Iowa

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The University of Iowa is now home to a state of the art research and development center. Applied Food Science (AFS), recently opened the multi-million-dollar R&D center in Iowa City, which consists of molecular biology labs, advanced analytical and material research laboratories, and a pilot production plant.

AFS are a natural ingredient supplier specializing in botanical extract for food, beverages and supplements. AFS source their ingredients in a manner which is both sustainable and socially responsible. The company seeks to create a solution for producing the healthiest organic products imaginable.

AFS are excited about the plans in store for the company’s endeavors to converge science with food. The primary R&D goals will consist of fostering the growth of plant-based science and testing how the evolution of food fits into the current and future food supply. These research outcomes will assist in not only continuing to feed the growing population, but also providing a healthier and more nutritionally sound food source.

AFS see the University of Iowa to be a great location to base their innovation center, as it beneficially positions them closer to farmers who feed the community, and processors who utilize plants for added-value end products. Additionally, the University of Iowa are renowned for their diligent work ethic, professionalism and innovative culture in the areas of biotechnology and food science, therefore the fit between the two industries deemed as appropriate.

Loretta Zapp, CEO of AFS, states that the following center is evidence of the company’s commitment to its customers and the enhanced value the company seeks to bring in their products. The R&D center will create an ideal environment to foster collaborative teams with the mission of touching all aspects of how food science advances can produce long term benefits in people’s health and wellness. Zappo is optimistic that the research outcomes will add even more value to the current offerings that include supply chain sustainability, innovation, formulation and manufacturing support.

To learn more about the Iowa R&D credit or the federal credit, contact a Swanson Reed specialist by clicking here.