CEO Today USA Awards

21 CEO TODAY USA AWARDS 2020 range rifle scopes. His work included developing radiation-resistant glass compositions, improving optical clarity, being the first to characterize this material’s microwave properties with the National Institute of Standards & Technology, and developing nonlinear optical applications for the material. In 1990, he joined Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc., (RMD) Watertown, MA as a Senior Scientist. In that capacity, he procured and managed soft-money U.S. government R&D investments that included developing fiber-optic sensors that detect lethal nerve agents at nonlethal (pico-molar) levels, read-write-erase holographic media, and exploratory work on the recordable / erasable digital x-ray imaging technology that has replaced film in medical offices around the world. While at RMD, Mr. de Rochemont developed an alternative manufacturing process to make high-Tc (critical transition temperature) superconducting wire and magnets for the NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA. He successfully expanded the project to include funding that brought in top scientists at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, and the USAF Rome Laboratory Electromagnetic Materials Technology Directorate, Hanscom AFB, MA. Frontier NanoSystems was formed as an initial member of the MagLifter Consortium in 1994. Proprietary rights to the manufacturing technology were transferred to Frontier NanoSystems when NASA concluded it enabled superconductors to be made cost- competitive with copper wire. This innovation was considered a critical technology component for MagLifter, an alternative Shuttle- launch system advanced in the wake of the Challenger explosion. MagLifter proposed removing the spacecraft from the giant fuel tank with its exploding solid-fuel booster rockets and placing it upon a magnetically levitated sled that used electromagnetic propulsion to slingshot it up the side of a Colorado mountain from which it could attain low-Earth orbit with small rockets in its tail. MagLifter was officially killed off in 1996, along with several other major economic and technological drivers created to give Americans high-value industrial jobs when the silicon industry was expected to leave U.S. shores in 2010. At that time, patriotic U.S. industrial planners urged Pierre to never quit and to stay away from the government until it was clear the country was decoupling from the global monetary system and returning its domestic economic focus to a productive industrial footing. They assured him that he had developed a great technology for which he would conceive even more valuable commercial applications. Not realizing what he was committing himself into, he responded to the challenge. The rest is now history that sets the stage for a new and very different future. CONTACT W: www.frontiernano.com E: media-inquiries@frontiernano.com T: +1 (800) 374-9039