June 13, 2003
The Pittsburgh Business Times reported that Akustica Inc., ECE and Robotics Professor Ken Gabriel's research spinoff company, has two new investors that provided $2 million in January. FreeMarkets Inc. chairman Glen Meakem and John Rangos, Sr., an entrepreneur and philanthropist from Greensberg, both contributed, raising the total funding so far to $4.5 million.
The article, "A sound concept: With new investors, Akustica Inc. works to be heard in marketplace," describes the company's tiny microphones on computer chips. According to Gabriel, "the smallest traditional microphone chips are 8 millimeters square;" their hope is to shrink them down to 1 millimeter square. Their products could be used in cell phones, regular telephones, hearing aids, and other consumer electronics (such as video cameras and voice recorders). As quoted in the Times, the research will yield many benefits:
"Mr. Gabriel said Akustica's technology, compared to that in other microphones, creates less static and interference, improves performance, reduces cost, increases reliability and enables a microphone to know which sound to pick up and which to suppress. That means getting rid of piercing feedback at a podium or eliminating that noisy bus going by when talking on a wireless phone."
Jim Rock, Akustica's president and CEO, and Gabriel, the chairman and chief technology officer, licensed the technology from Carnegie Mellon. Now on sabbatical from his position as director of CMU's Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) Laboratory, in the past Gabriel has also helped found other local MEMs companies, such as Xactic Inc. and Verimetra Inc. Located in Pittsburgh's South side, Akustica has 16 employees and was established in 2001.