Halifax County Industrial Development Authority (IDA) received word on Tuesday, January 13, 2015 that its second application through the Tobacco Indemnification and Communities Revitalization Commission's (TIRC) Research & Development (R&D) Committee had been moved forward to the vetting stage. "This is a significant milestone," explains Matt Leonard, the IDA's Executive Director. "As with all Tobacco Commission programs, the R&D award process is stringent and outcome driven. The outcome is jobs. The process is multi-staged, and includes independent, outside, expert vetting."

Eligible organizations, like the IDA, can apply through the TIRC's R&D program for funds between $250,000 and $2,000,000 to support the final stages of new product research and development leading to commercialization. The IDA's grant request totals $1,695,314 in support of Autonomous Marine Systems (AMS), a company formed nearly seven years ago by two Princeton educated engineers and businessmen. If awarded, the grant would be matched dollar-for-dollar by the company.

The TIRC R&D program includes the following stepwise approach: TIRC R&D proposals are reviewed by TIRC staff, which makes recommendations to the R&D Committee as to whether they have merit to move to vetting. In this round, the IDA's proposal is ranked third out of thirteen. The R&D Committee then reviews staff recommendations and makes its recommendations to the full Commission. The full Commission votes on which proposals to move to vetting. Vetting takes a few months and results in scoring based on technical merit, commercialization potential and business planning. These scores are reported back to the R&D Committee, who then make recommendation for grant awards to the full Commission. It is anticipated that the full Commission will make R&D program awards in May of this year.

"This project aligns perfectly with the Tobacco Commission's R&D program and what the IDA is trying to do through its Southern Virginia Product Advancement Center (SVPAC), Southern Virginia Advanced Manufacturing Center (SVAMC) and other assets," says SVPAC Executive Director Dr. Doug Corrigan. "The IDA has established programs and assets specific to attracting and growing emerging advanced manufacturers, like the company associated with this current R&D proposal." AMS has already successfully designed and tested successively better prototypes of an unmanned watercraft, which they currently call the "Datamaran."

The Datamaran addresses a need that is unfulfilled in the marine industry: inexpensive and reliable oceanographic data from remote locations that are useful for a broad spectrum of applications. AMS founders, T.J. Edwards and Eamon Carrig, recognized this need from their involvement in the satellite industry where they realized that a tremendous wealth of knowledge existed in the world's oceans. "Research is needed in this sector to develop an autonomous, low-cost, low energy, highly reliable system that can freely navigate the seas in a networking or swarming configuration and collect data for six months or more without maintenance or intervention", says T.J. Edwards, AMS CEO.

"When fully commercialized, this company is projected to bring approximately 47 high paying, advanced manufacturing and technical jobs to Southern Virginia. These are the types of jobs that we need in Halifax County to attract and retain our emerging workforce," says Matt Leonard, Executive Director of the Halifax IDA.