Chris Campbell has desired to be an inventor and a businessman since he was 6.
About that point his father took him to the Minnesota State Capitol and told him “that is where businesses start.”
That dream of being an inventor and entrepreneur has come true through Simpli-Fi Automation, an automation and low voltage design company he founded in 2018. He’s got three products in various stages of development that use scents to assist diagnose health issues.
“This can be a technology that enables diseases to be diagnosed using only the breath,” said Campbell, who was born in St. Paul and is within the means of moving his company there from Florida where it originated. “They’re called breath biomarkers.”
Help from NASA, enterprise cap firm
The technology Campbell used to create the products got here from the NASA Technology Transfer program, which ensures the agency’s innovations developed for exploration and discovery are broadly available to everyone within the U.S. It’s been around for nearly 60 years, with many successes having grown from it, but relatively little fanfare.
“NASA didn’t invent the mobile phone camera, but we developed a technology that led to the power to create the mobile phone camera,” said Harvey Schabes, chief of the Technology Transfer program. “There’s a portfolio of technologies and you may leaf through it. If you happen to find one which jumps out at you, you get it for a limited period of time.”
Just a few years ago NASA tasked Schabes and his team with reaching out to more cities, states, business organizations and other potential partners to make this system more available. Through those efforts, he met Paul Campbell, brother of Chris Campbell and co-founder and managing partner of Brown Enterprise Group (BVG), a enterprise capital company funding technology startups in under-represented communities.
Now, NASA and BVG are establishing a pilot project geared toward broadening exposure to the Technology Transfer program.
“I had heard about tech transfers and know the way useful they’re to entrepreneurs who are attempting to search out some differentiated technologies to grow their business,” Paul Campbell said. “This advantages all of our ecosystem to find out about tech transfer and commercialization.”
The event
NASA and Brown Enterprise Group are announcing the pilot project partnership with a kickoff event Oct. 23 in St. Paul. The event will start a 16-week NASA Inclusive Innovation MashUp designed to attach participating entrepreneurs with industry professionals and business coaches who will help provide tools the firms must launch latest technology-based startups.
The October event will include a panel discussion and opportunities for chosen entrepreneurs to have interaction with mentors and instructors leading this system, including NASA inventors.
They’re still planning the curriculum, but in the ultimate phase of this system, teams will pitch their business concepts and investment readiness to a range committee. There is no such thing as a guarantee any funding will result, but winning teams may have the chance to pitch local and national investors. Runners-up will present to top accelerator and incubator programs.
“There’s going to be a competitive element to it, but that’s not the fundamental focus. The fundamental focus is that this is something that may also help our ecosystem,” Paul Campbell said.
Already involved in efforts to construct downtown St. Paul into an innovation hub resembling Silicon Valley in Northern California or Route 128 in Massachusetts, Paul Campbell has reached out to many Fortune 500 firms, civic and business organizations to tell them of the plans and see in the event that they is perhaps excited about doing business with potential tech firms that develop from this program.
“There are not any guarantees,” he said. “This whole process is a discovery. However it provides latest pathway, a brand new lane for entrepreneurs who’re desirous to determine learn how to license technologies.”
Campbell and Schabes each have each have partners on the local, state and federal levels they would love to usher in to assist the region with commercialization opportunities.
“What made each Silicon Valley and Route 128 corridor in Massachusetts, the MIT area and the Stanford area, was partnership and collaboration with the federal government,” Paul Campbell said. “Now we have a chance to create an inclusive ecosystem that pulls all these talents.”
Already at work
Meanwhile, after a number of years of researching NASA technologies and dealing along with his team on development, Chris Campbell is in various stages of readying three products for industrial sale.
During his research, he settled upon a carbon nanotube sensor used to detect gases within the breath.
“I began imagining, in case you can detect disease in breath, which means you don’t need a blood test, you don’t need a prick, you don’t even must have a lab,” he said.
The Provectus Sport provides non-invasive chemical evaluation of greater than 20 chemicals within the body related to health, fitness and athletic readiness. The Provectus Shield is a table-top device that guards against bacterial infections by scanning the air for C-Diff particles. And Provectus Telehealth uses non-invasive breath biomarkers to diagnose and monitor common diseases.
Initially, the products are being tailored for athletes to realize peak performance. Chris Campbell said he’ll seek approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to start marketing them to health care facilities.
Of note, the inventions belong to Simpli-Fi and Chris Campbell. NASA makes no claim to the inventions created when firms license its technologies. Chris Campbell also received pro-bono assistance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to finish the patent products.
“Over time it would be a medical tool,” he said, adding the inventions will be used to diagnose and, more ideally, put people on the road to stopping chronic diseases brought on by lifestyle selections. “Once we weigh those aspects and the chemistry that goes on contained in the body when those aspects occur, we are able to modify our lifestyles to maintain us out of those disease states.”
Schabes and Paul Campbell point to Simpli-Fi and Chris Campbell as an early example of the impact the NASA Technology Transfer program can have on entrepreneurship.
“Chris is becoming a pleasant poster child for ‘Hey, this has worked thus far and that’s great,’” Schabes said. “That’s great for whoever are his investors, it’s great for the industry and it’s great for NASA. We’re just attempting to create more of those stories.”