Ohio MEMS Association, Inc. is a non-profit organization formed on October 4th, 2002, to advance the commercialization of MEMS technology in Ohio.  Our mission and strategy are centered around fundamental commercialization issues such as industry-wide product launch barriers, workforce development, and inadequate public and investor awareness of MEMS technology. The following narrative is a very detailed and specific concerning planned OMA activities that support the OMA mission.

Overview:

Ohio MEMS Association (OMA) is a MEMS public service organization addressing MEMS product commercialization requirements. Membership in Ohio MEMS is not restrictive and projects can range from activities as simple as creating greater public awareness of the economic benefit of MEMS technology to issues of a much larger scope, such as: educational literature, marketing data analysis, investor awareness, community information needs, the absence of multi-user MEMS packaging facilities, and workforce development curricula. Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) represent the new face of manufacturing in the US and Ohio is fortunate to have various research and technical facilities throughout the State to potentially build a strong MEMS Industry. Unfortunately there exist significant public awareness, educational, and workforce development issues that impede the understanding and growth of MEMS-related activities in Ohio.

The Ohio MEMS Association, Inc. (OMA) was formed for charitable and scientific purposes. General objectives of the organizations Activities are to:

• Promote public awareness of MEMS technology within the state.
• Develop student education and workforce development programs that can be widely used to support awareness and interest in MEMS in inner city or underserved areas.
• Sponsor programs for business people, investors and the general public to better understand the benefit of products incorporating MEMS technology.
• Conduct research to understand MEMS commercialization issues, exploring possible solutions and publicly disseminating the results.

Strategic Plan

Student Education and Workforce Development (35%) Seminars and workshop activities are centered on student education and workforce development and require the development of curricula, presentations, materials and programs of study. These publicly available materials could be used by OMA to sponsor hands-on workshops and seminars or externally by local technical colleges to supplement or upgrade current manufacturing, engineering and trades classes. There is expected to be a nominal cost of training materials to offset production costs, incidental to the primary goal of the instruction-based workshops, seminars, and classes. Registration and participation fees will be set at a level to encourage the public’s participation.

In June 2004 OMA launched their first in a series of Microsystems Academy seminars intended to inform and educate inner city students, post-secondary students, and displaced workers on the basics of MEMS technology, in furtherance of the inner city community educational and workforce development goals of the OMA. Course fees are intended to promote inclusion and public education and thus are not expected to exceed fees associated with similar activities elsewhere. These fees will be used to pay for seminar speaker fees, printing and copying expenses, hands-on demonstration equipment rental fees, and raw materials involved in conducting the demonstrations.

OMA volunteers, guest lecturers (some fee-paid), and support service contractors (technicians needed to monitor, maintain, and operate equipment) will be used to perform the training and administer the training activities.

Conferences (35%) The Ohio MEMS Association (OMA) intends to organize conferences for businesses, community leaders, and the general public, in furtherance of the organization’s public education mission. Conferences will center on MEMS commercialization barriers and promote ideas in which MEMS technology is more visible to the public and to foster thinking about new MEMS products and services associated with regional economic growth of the MEMS and Microsystems industry.

Our initial efforts will concentrate on sponsoring a yearly conference with a very modest registration fee to encourage extensive participation by a wide variety of community stakeholders and individuals. The first conference will be sponsored in September 2004 in Cleveland, Ohio, and will bring together national experts on technology and business aspects of MEMS. It is expected OMA will take significant financial risk in this activity; to keep the registration fee at a modest level we are expecting to solicit donations from several large corporations to offset conference expenses. OMA volunteers and some subcontracted vendor activity (printing, audio-visual, registration desk, etc.) will be used in the production of the event.

MEMS Application Engineering Research (15%) MEMS application engineering (commercialization) issues are not as popular to study as, for instance, silicon wafer material science issues, so relatively little attention is centered at Universities and Colleges on research subjects pertaining to MEMS product development and application engineering processes. In the Fall 2004 OMA intends to bridge this deficiency by engaging in research that advances an understanding of MEMS product commercialization. Information from this research will be disseminated in a timely fashion in public forums so that, for instance, two-year colleges can use this information to improve their ability to upgrade manufacturing technology curricula.

The nature of some research activities is that they may be commercially sponsored. In such cases OMA policy emphases timely publication of research results in a forum readily available to the public (for example, though the OMA website). IRS Revenue Ruling 76-296 makes clear that commercially sponsored research results provided to the public on a timely basis is in the public interest, but that significant delays beyond the time by which ownership rights could be established is not in the public interest. OMA has a timely publication policy consistent with commercially sponsored activities the IRS has approved for 501(c)(3) organizations.

OMA is a product-neutral organization. Any endorsement of a product or service would be considered a violation of OMA’s policies. Additionally, it is expected OMA may possibly make extensive use of specialized MEMS machinery in research activities; however, there is no intent that the work itself leads to further development of such machines in a fashion whereby licenses, copyrights and other intellectual property arises in which the development of machinery is connected in any way with a commercial operation. In the latter case, such activities will be avoided through OMA policy.

The OMA Board will form a research committee (or Advisory Board) to identify areas where OMA can make a public contribution and apply for grants to carry out the research. The research would be carried out by students, faculty or by other qualified researchers, regardless of whether those individuals are affiliated with OMA.

Website (5%) Since its inception, this website (http://www.OhioMEMS.org) has been maintained by OMA in the public interest and for current and prospective users of MEMS technology. The website provides downloads, educational information, news, forums, and so on, all for free. Updating and supporting the website is currently performed by OMA volunteers. It is expected in the future that as OMA grows a webmaster may be contracted to support the website.

Internships (5%) Starting in early 2005, the OMA intends to fund research experience internships to urban (inner city) students who express an interest in research on MEMS, or to secondary teachers that may want to develop educational materials for MEMS. The Board will form an Internship committee to solicit and review proposals consistent with and in furtherance of the scientific and educational goals of OMA.

Fundraising (5%) Because OMA does not collect dues the way a membership-based organization would, OMA intends to solicit contributions from individuals and organizations to fund projects, activities, and OMA overhead expenses. Fundraising activities are expected to be project-based. As a result of a 2003 fundraising activity (grant application to the Civic Innovation Lab) a $17,300 award will be made to OMA in 2004 to support curricula development and hands-on training. This particular project was briefly described earlier in the narrative for Student Education and Workforce Development.

In the second half of 2005 OMA will form a fundraising committee to coordinate and support future fundraising. In the future it is planned that OMA volunteers will sponsor an annual drive – something like a Friends of MEMS campaign.