News & Analysis
Comment
Killntime
Cerberus
Having worked for RCA Defense and my wife for RCA Sarnoff in the mid-80s, the ...
SRI swallows Sarnoff
Mark LaPedus
1/3/2011 5:13 PM EST
SAN JOSE, Calif. - SRI International, an independent nonprofit research and development organization, has completed the integration of Sarnoff Corp.
Sarnoff has been a wholly owned subsidiary of SRI for more than 20 years. In March, SRI International and Sarnoff announced that Sarnoff will be integrated into SRI, its parent company.
''Sarnoff is now fully integrated into SRI. It is no longer a separate subsidiary,'' according to a spokeswoman for Menlo Park, Calif.-based SRI. ''Client-sponsored R&D, plus technology licensing and spinoff ventures, continues to be the focus of (Sarnoff).''
Mark Clifton, most recently Sarnoff’s interim president and CEO, is now vice president of the Products and Services Division in SRI’s Engineering and Systems Group.
Both organizations work with a broad range of government and business clients, including the Department of Defense and Darpa, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Departments of Homeland Security, Energy, and Education, the Army, and aerospace and defense industry contractors.
SRI conducts various R&D programs. In March, for example, SRI was awarded a $4.5 million Department of Energy (DoE) project evaluate the technical and economic viability of carbon dioxide capture using an ammonium carbonate-ammonium bicarbonate (AC-ABC) process at gasification plants, including integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants.
In November, SRI International announced that its Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) CubeSat was launched on a Minotaur-IV rocket as part of the Department of Defense Space Test Program S26 mission. The RAX project is part of a program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to use CubeSats, which are small satellites (typically a 10-centimeter cube weighing about one kilogram), for science missions dedicated to space weather and atmospheric research. This launch marked the first NSF-funded Cubesat launch.
In December, SRI International said it is collaborating with PhenoMatriX (PMX), a biotechnology company, on the development of platin-based chemotherapies. Platin-based drugs such as cisplatin and related analogues are used to treat a variety of cancers and have served as major weapons against solid tumors and other difficult-to-treat cancers since the 1970s.
Sarnoff also conducts R&D. In March, Sarnoff launched the next generation of its Iris on the Move (IOM) PassPort walk-through iris recognition system for high-speed biometric identification. The IOM PassPort is a proven iris image capture system that quickly images the iris of a person in motion and at comfortable distances.
In April, Sarnoff launched Acadia II, the world’s most powerful system-on-a-chip (SoC) with real-time, portable, and low power consumption for vision processing and system control. In the same month, Sarnoff announced the availability of standard audio clips that are calibrated to be compliant with the ATSC recommended practice A/85 and the proposed Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM).
In November, it was awarded a subcontract by Neany Inc. issued under a prime contract with the Naval Air Systems Command to provide TerraSight Ground Stations (TGS) for use in the Persistent Ground Surveillance System (PGSS). The TerraSight Ground Stations will run Sarnoff’s TerraSight video exploitation software.
PGSS is a rapidly fielded system that includes a sensor-equipped, helium-filled aerostat platform. The system increases intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities and provides a more complete surveillance picture through inclusion of information from new sensor systems.
Sarnoff has been a wholly owned subsidiary of SRI for more than 20 years. In March, SRI International and Sarnoff announced that Sarnoff will be integrated into SRI, its parent company.
''Sarnoff is now fully integrated into SRI. It is no longer a separate subsidiary,'' according to a spokeswoman for Menlo Park, Calif.-based SRI. ''Client-sponsored R&D, plus technology licensing and spinoff ventures, continues to be the focus of (Sarnoff).''
Mark Clifton, most recently Sarnoff’s interim president and CEO, is now vice president of the Products and Services Division in SRI’s Engineering and Systems Group.
Both organizations work with a broad range of government and business clients, including the Department of Defense and Darpa, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Departments of Homeland Security, Energy, and Education, the Army, and aerospace and defense industry contractors.
SRI conducts various R&D programs. In March, for example, SRI was awarded a $4.5 million Department of Energy (DoE) project evaluate the technical and economic viability of carbon dioxide capture using an ammonium carbonate-ammonium bicarbonate (AC-ABC) process at gasification plants, including integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants.
In November, SRI International announced that its Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) CubeSat was launched on a Minotaur-IV rocket as part of the Department of Defense Space Test Program S26 mission. The RAX project is part of a program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to use CubeSats, which are small satellites (typically a 10-centimeter cube weighing about one kilogram), for science missions dedicated to space weather and atmospheric research. This launch marked the first NSF-funded Cubesat launch.
In December, SRI International said it is collaborating with PhenoMatriX (PMX), a biotechnology company, on the development of platin-based chemotherapies. Platin-based drugs such as cisplatin and related analogues are used to treat a variety of cancers and have served as major weapons against solid tumors and other difficult-to-treat cancers since the 1970s.
Sarnoff also conducts R&D. In March, Sarnoff launched the next generation of its Iris on the Move (IOM) PassPort walk-through iris recognition system for high-speed biometric identification. The IOM PassPort is a proven iris image capture system that quickly images the iris of a person in motion and at comfortable distances.
In April, Sarnoff launched Acadia II, the world’s most powerful system-on-a-chip (SoC) with real-time, portable, and low power consumption for vision processing and system control. In the same month, Sarnoff announced the availability of standard audio clips that are calibrated to be compliant with the ATSC recommended practice A/85 and the proposed Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM).
In November, it was awarded a subcontract by Neany Inc. issued under a prime contract with the Naval Air Systems Command to provide TerraSight Ground Stations (TGS) for use in the Persistent Ground Surveillance System (PGSS). The TerraSight Ground Stations will run Sarnoff’s TerraSight video exploitation software.
PGSS is a rapidly fielded system that includes a sensor-equipped, helium-filled aerostat platform. The system increases intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities and provides a more complete surveillance picture through inclusion of information from new sensor systems.
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
Cerberus
1/4/2011 12:43 PM EST
Having worked for RCA Defense and my wife for RCA Sarnoff in the mid-80s, the announcement reminds me of Dec 10, 1985 when GE announced their acquisition of RCA, and June 21, 1986 when the deal was completed.
Let's not forget the words of Jack Welsh to congress regarding why the acquisition of RCA by GE was in the country's best interests, "The combined research might of GE and RCA will allow the US to finally beat the Japanese in consumer electronics". And then Jack gave Sarnoff to SRI and traded RCA Consumer Electronics to SG for $1B plus their medical imaging division. I thought it was fitting when SG told GE to take the Nipper logo off the water tower of the Moorestown, NJ defense electronics plant.
As I was told the details at the time, and while SRI 'got' the Sarnoff R&D center for almost nothing, GE retained the highly valuable land underneath it on a 99-year lease. I wonder if that's still the case?
Sign in to Reply
Killntime
12/30/2011 3:58 PM EST
I agree.
I worked at Sarnoff from the mid 90's to late 01 in the I.C. Center and I've heard the stories from a few constituents of mine too.
As to the real-estate. They had already began selling some of it off along Route 1 in early 2001 due to the bad economy at the time.
Also, they had spun-off alot of different companies when the dot com thing was really big. But it didn't pay off like it should have. Thanks to 9-11.
I really miss working there, but it's stories like these that kinda get your head to scratch a bit.
Time will tell.
Sign in to Reply