Biz(941)’s People to Watch lists the newest up-and-comers and movers-and-shakers in Sarasota-Manatee.
SCIENTIST LOUISE SINKS is vice president of US Nano LLC, which moved to Sarasota from South Bend, Ind., earlier this year. She is a pioneer in the growing field of nanotechnology, the process of manipulating matter at the molecular level to make new technologies and devices. Sink and her team of six other scientists are using a nano material that can be made into ink and printed onto a variety of surfaces to create flexible, cost-efficient sensors. The applications—civilian and military—from cell phones to testing water quality to searching for disease markers are almost limitless. “In the Internet of things, every object is smart,” she says. “A bridge can tell you if a strut is expanding. A room can tell you if it’s getting too hot.” Sinks and US Nano, which won $930,000 in National Science Foundation grants, were lured to Sarasota by Alex Gusev, another entrepreneur scientist, who owns locally-based Ultrafast Systems. Sinks says it has been easy to convince other scientists to work in a beautiful community. She can see the Ph.D. staff doubling or tripling in the next five years. “This is going to be the center of US Nano. This is our final location,” she says.—Susan Burns