brimRAD is a spinoff of the Brimrose Corporation of America (BCA), which was founded by Dr. Ron Rosemeier in 1980. Throughout its history, Brimrose has stressed the importance of applied R&D, including a significant bonding between R&D and commercial products. The company has generated more than $190 million in federal R&D contracts, yet upwards of 80 percent of its annual revenue is generated by commercial products.

This relationship is best personified by the company’s Concept to Implementation Committee, which evaluates R&D projects in an ongoing manner to see which would be suitable for the manufacture of products. One such key technology is near-infrared, acousto-optic tunable filtering (AOTF), championed by Brimrose’s chief technology officer, Dr. Jolanta Soos. AOTFs use acoustic waves in a crystal to select a specific wavelength or wavelengths of light passing through the crystal. AOTF-NIR forms the basis of many Brimrose products.

The future establishment of brimRAD will mark a change for the Company. Up until now, management has devoted nearly all of its energy and resources to product development, then retained skilled and experienced representatives in the United States and abroad to market these products to customers on its behalf. In addition, Brimrose management has a track record of selecting small, narrow niche markets with limited competition, often going up against just three or four competitors on a global basis. This has worked to keep large, multinational corporations from eroding the Company’s technological foundation as well as its customer base.

This philosophy no longer fits what the company is doing in radiation detection. The materials’ breakthrough achieved by the internal R&D team led by Dr. Sudhir Trivedi has produced an entirely new generation of detectors that employ large-volume crystals of uniform and superior quality that can be grown with a one-step production process that is much faster, and much less expensive, than the two-step scintillator process currently in use.

Dr. Trivedi has directed the advanced materials program at Brimrose for 30 years, and is highly respected on both a national and international level. He originally was able to identify the benefits of the new materials. Trivedi provides a powerful one-two punch in attacking these billion dollar markets.