During April, NWI Innovators of the Month shines the spotlight on new Society Members – The ArcelorMittal Global R&D Center Team; Patti Komara; The aqUVPurification Team; and Elizabeth Lynn, Ph.D. Highlighted below is David Price, Olga Girina, Damon Panahi and Pavan Venkatasurya of the ArcelorMittal Team based in East Chicago. Also featured below is Patti Komara, Patti’s All-American & Tumblebear Connection, Dyer. All are being celebrated as part of the 2016 – 2017 Class of Innovators, the largest group inducted into The Society of Innovators. The Society is part of Ivy Tech’s Gerald I. Lamkin Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center. For information, contact O’Merrial Butchee, Director, Lamkin I & E Center at (219) 981-4942, or John Davies, Managing Director, Society of Innovators at (219) 981-1111, 2292.
Global R&D Team Launches Third Generation Steels!
In hot pursuit of solutions for car manufacturers for lighter and stronger steels at a time of intense competition, the ArcelorMittal Global Research and Development Center in East Chicago worked with two USA plants to launch a new “family” of third generation advanced high strength steels that are up to 50% stronger. “When the car manufacturers learned about this new steel, they said, ‘when can we get it,” said David Price, Group Manager. A metallurgical team worked with production crews at ArcelorMittal Indiana Harbor and the Cleveland plants to produce these new grades, resulting in the cross-functional team winning the top Global ArcelorMittal Performance Excellence Award. Amazingly, teams innovated both in the lab and on the production floor to produce never before made steels in the USA as part of the new rollout.
“The greatest challenge,” said Olga Girina, a metallurgist, “was to find a way to increase strength without sacrificing formability.” This happened because of a combination of breakthrough chemistry along with new techniques at the plants involving over 100 people. Developed over four months in 2014, this multi-disciplinary approach also reduced production cycle times. The unique steels are being produced with a significant investment at AM/NS Calvert plant in Alabama, and eventually in Europe. Hi-Fives to the R&D team above: Olga Girina (left), Pavan Venkatasurya, Damon Panahi, and David Price.
Dyer Visionary Influences Global Fitness & Gymnastics Industry!
A visionary who helped shape today’s $80 billion fitness and gymnastics field, Patti Komara has grown her $2 million business while benefiting her industry by modeling best practices. Starting her practice as a junior in high school in a church with 36 students, she now has 1500 students schooled at Patti’s All-American Gymnastics in Dyer, along with 600 students every summer, with 43 employees. Today, her reputation crosses international boundaries that started with her sales of “how to” lectures on videos distributed since 1986 through Tumblebear Connection, her distribution arm. Even as she tours the country as a motivational speaker to the 5,000 gym industry, this pioneer – one of 12 business advisors for USA Gymnastics, the organization that selects Olympians – is perhaps best known for launching an operational manual coveted by gym professionals globally.
Inspired by a book by written by Michael Gerber entitled “The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to do About It,” Patti wrote a 285-page Operations Manual over a two-year period covering 72 different jobs. Nearly 600 of these manuals have been distributed and have helped influence the business success of gyms. “By identifying the responsibilities of each key job, this liberated managers to focus on really the important things – innovation and the future,” Patti said.
Highlighted below is the aqUV Purification System Team consisting of Daniel Blood, Ph.D., Eric Gonzaga, and Ron Damitz, Ph.D. These entrepreneurs have created a breakthrough portable sterilization system for people in Haiti. For details, click on www.aquv.org. Also featured below is new Society Member and Fellow Elizabeth Lynn, Ph.D., Valparaiso University. She founded the Center for Civic Reflection, fostering a new way of applying the humanities to cultivate civic dialogue. Innovators are from Jasper, Lake, La Porte, Newton, Porter, Pulaski and Starke Counties. The mission of The Society of Innovators is to cultivate creativity and innovation as a growth strategy by discovering and encouraging, celebrating and honoring our most innovative people across the 7 counties of Northwest Indiana. Click on www.nwisoi.org for details.
aqUV Purification System is Breakthrough for Clean Water!
Three engineering students attending an entrepreneurial class came up with a breakthrough idea that will provide clean water to people in Haiti and elsewhere, said Daniel Blood, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Valparaiso University. Simply, their portable sterilization system consists of a 40-ounce stainless steel water bottle that utilizes a UVC light secured in its base that is powered by a wireless solar charging pad. It contains 5 lithium batteries and a special coil to transmit the solar energy. A user places the bottle on the pad and within 5 minutes, the UFC light powered by the sun’s rays eliminate over 99.9% of the viruses and bacteria found in water, Dan said, co-founder of aqUV Purification System, along with Erica Gonzaga and Rob Damitz, Ph.D.
The three students were attending the University of Florida when they came up with their brainstorm in 2013. “Working with advisors in Haiti, we probably developed a dozen iterations,” Dan added. The component parts are assembled in Indiana. This July, the team will send its first major shipment of bottles to two orphanages outside of Les Cayes, Haiti. The bottles are sold in the U.S. and sales go to subsidize the cost of distributing the bottles in Haiti. The team invested approximately $70,000 in launching their idea, helped by contest winnings. Shown in picture (from left) are Erica Gonzaga, Daniel Blood and Ron Damitz.
Founder of Civic Reflection Unleashes ‘Moral Imagination!’
Elizabeth Lynn, Ph.D., founded the Center for Civic Reflection (CCR) at Valparaiso University. Now part of VU’s Institute for Leadership and Service, which Lynn also directs, CCR is teaching communities nationwide to use the humanities to foster dialogue, build understanding and inspire common action. Imagine a community divided in its views on immigration. Residents attend public meetings to express opinions—but with each person passionate about his/her point of view, they talk at and past one another, deepening divides. Now enter civic reflection, a practice developed by Lynn to facilitate deep dialogue across differences. Trained facilitators invite participants to discuss a short reading (a poem, say, like Frost’s “Mending Wall”), before moving on to issues at hand.
The room quiets as people think and talk with one another. Differences in understanding the poem emerge but are explored as valuable rather than threatening, and participants now feel freer to act upon differing values for the common good. Solutions arise from reflection; moral imagination is unleashed. “The power of civic reflection lies in accepting that the plurality of perspectives in a democracy are an asset rather than liability; and, in learning to think together, not just argue, in public,” Lynn remarks. To date CCR has trained more than 7,000 people to facilitate civic reflection and led over 20,000 in community and workplace dialogues.