About Us

Axon Connected builds companies. We identify significant market opportunities, build intellectual property portfolios and prototypes, and deliver them into specific, well-defined commercial applications. Axon uses these comprehensive IP portfolios and prototypes to create value by setting up independent companies to commercialize products and services.

Our technology transfer and commercialization model has proven successful over the past 30 years. We pioneered technology transfer and commercialization from universities and federal laboratories. Its uniqueness lies in using corporate partner pull rather than technology push to minimize the risks associated with product development.

Our Core Values

INTEGRITY

Uncompromising truth, fairness and consistency in all aspects of our work

RESPONSIBILITY

Being accountable to our customers, our shareholders and ourselves

INNOVATION

Developing world-class products and services for our customers

COMMITMENT

To actions and decisions that promote the success of our customers and the goals of Axon

An Axon Transmits Signals from Neurons to Muscle
Thoughts to Actions
Turning Ideas into Solutions

Definition: axon (from Greek ἄξων áxōn, axis), or nerve fiber, is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, in vertebrates, that typically conducts electrical impulses known as action potentials away from the nerve cell body. The function of the axon is to transmit information to different neurons, muscles, and glands.

Our Process

Our senior management team includes professionals whose unique talents bring operating advantages to the Company. We have instituted a well-organized management process, which includes the setup of new companies to lead researchers in product development and commercialization strategy.

We also maintain an active program to identify technologies for acquisition or licensing in specific market focus areas. Once identified, each technology opportunity undergoes a rigorous screening process to further evaluate its fit within our technology portfolio and the likelihood of its future commercialization success.

Partners & Collaborators

A key driver of Axon’s success is the network of research and corporate partners that it has amassed. These partners provide input to ensure that research and development and marketing efforts are focused on real market needs; they provide technology transfer opportunities and they provide revenues and exit possibilities for divestitures.

Past Successes

Problem: Measuring the shape of surgical robotic arms during surgery.

Solution/technology: Our management team invested in a license from NASA for Dr. Mark Froggatt’s fiber optic measurement technology, we had the team and the intellectual property to solve the problem and built a portfolio of intellectual property around the original NASA patent.

Contracts: NASA, DoD, NRL, NSF

Investors: Intuitive Surgical invested in funding the proof of concept, building on funding from NASA, DoD and Luna.

Exit: Intuitive Surgical, a Fortune 500 company ticker symbol ISRG, bought the rights to the technology and intellectual property and the team. There has been, and still is a division of Intuitive Surgical in Blacksburg, Virginia as part of the deal. Located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center.

Problem: Oil and gas wells are getting deeper and temperatures and pressures are getting higher in deeper wells. Conventional electronic sensors were failing and costly to replace including the need to shut down the well to replace them.

Solution/technology: Kent Murphy invented the Extrinsic Fabry-Perot Interferometric (EFPI) as his Master’s Thesis, which is currently the best performing fiber optic pressure sensor for harsh environments.

Contracts: NASA EFPIs and Sapphire EFPIs were used to measure skin friction (air forces blowing across high speed wings) hash environments in wind tunnels, DoD, DARPA, Baker Hughes

Investors: Funded from internal operating profits.

Exit: Baker Hughes bought the rights to all intellectual property at Luna for the oil and gas industry. Luna built the team that delivered on every milestone. The Baker Hughes division in Blacksburg Virginia has been there since 2004 and still a major part of developing and manufacturing fiber optic sensor for Baker Hughes and their customers. A fiber manufacturing facility was bought and built in Maryland as part of the deal as well.

Problem: Monitoring of remote assets with sensor networks feeding back through wireless and satellite communications networks

Solution/technology: Built on Dr. Phil Couch’s inventions and ideas.

Contracts: DoD, DARPA

Investors: Funded from internal operating profits.

Exit: IHS and Dover Instruments (a billion-dollar sensing company out of Europe) bought Luna i-Monitoring and continued to build a large product line developed and manufactured in Roanoke Virginia for over a decade. In a renovated warehouse row.

Problem: Detecting the binding event and bond strength of protein/protein interactions used as a drug discovery tool.

Solution/technology: Long period grating fiber optic sensor jointly developed with Bell Labs for measuring the change in density surrounding the optical fiber. Density changes occurred as molecules would bind in thin films around the fiber sensor.

Contracts: NSF, DoD, DARPA, NIH

Investors: Funded from internal operating profits, 12 SBIR Phase I, 11 SBIR Phase IIs, and Venture Capital

Exit: BioRad bought the intellectual property and team from Luna Analytics and kept it in Blacksburg VA for two years.

Problem: The development of innovative electronic components and methods and technical services with a focus on critical U.S. military and National Security applications.

Solution/technology: Teamed with expert at Virginia Tech. The group won the DARPA hard challenge detecting all bugs in a chip in competition with Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

Contracts: DARPA, DoD

Investors: Internal management team & internal operating profits.

Exit: MacAulay-Brown, Inc. (MacB), a mid-tier defense contractor bought the intellectual property and team. It has been kept in Roanoke Va.

Problem: Measuring all loss and dispersion properties in optical fiber devices and systems is costly and time consuming. It used to require multiple instruments. We introduced the first optical fiber test instrument that could measure all parameters at once in a single scan.

Solution/technology: We had invested in a license from NASA for Dr. Mark Froggatt’s fiber optic measurement technology, we had the team and the intellectual property to solve the problem

Contracts: NASA, DoD

Investors: Internal operating profits and Venture Capital

Exit: Luna Innovations required Luna Technologies back in 2005. The intellectual property and team led by Dr. Mark Froggatt are the basis of all Luna products today, in optical instruments, optical laser manufacturing, for telecommunications and sensing. The technology and team were sold to ISRG, and is still In Blacksburg Va today as a division of ISRG.

Problem: Effectively treating environmental contaminants

Solution/technology: Exclusive license from NC A&T SU for controlled release polymer systems to deliver active ingredients over extended periods eliminating contamination in-situ without contaminant rebound.

Contracts: NASA, NIST, NSF and NIEHS

Stakeholders: The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering (JSNN) in and the Greensboro Investment community.

Exit/status: Product deployed for evaluation with product sales expected near term.