InfoSense Inc., a startup company founded at UNC Charlotte, topped the Charlotte Business Journal’s 2015 Fast 50 list, which ranks Charlotte’s fastest-growing private companies based on their annual revenue growth percentages over the past three years. The company realized annual revenue growth of 464.9 percent.
A technology-driven company that uses acoustic technology to assess the condition of sewer pipes, InfoSense is a success story that illustrates how University research can have real-world impact.
"InfoSense is a perfect illustration of success built upon the intersection of brilliant academic technical insight, business-savvy management and support from the community and University,” said Paul Wetenhall, president and executive director of Ventureprise Inc., the University’s business incubator. “While housed in the University incubator, the InfoSense team thrived with their strong technical excellence and is one of the best possible examples of UNC Charlotte’s economic development impact.”
InfoSense’s journey began in December 2005, when Ivan Howitt, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Lee College of Engineering, and faculty colleagues met with engineers from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities Department to brainstorm how the groups could work together. One of the subjects that came up was the problem of effectively and efficiently detecting blockages that overflows in sewer lines, in part, because the technology at the time was expensive and difficult to use.
“Charlotte-Mecklenburg has more than 4,000 miles of pipe and on average they had one overflow every day,” said Howitt, who has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Davis. “Finding a blockage before an overflow is the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack problem.”
When initial testing with radio frequency waves proved ineffective, Howitt and his graduate student researcher realized that sound waves had characteristics much more conducive to moving through pipes than RF waves. This led to the development of the company’s main product, the Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool, known and branded as the SL-RAT®.
In 2011, George Selembo and Alex Churchill joined InfoSense as CEO and COO, respectively, to begin commercializing Howitt’s invention.
By 2013, the company had expanded manufacturer representatives to more than 40 states and internationally through formal distribution arrangements in 11 countries, including Canada and India.
Kevin Pitts, president and publisher of the Charlotte Business Journal, noted that the Fast 50 companies collectively contribute $1.2 billion to the Charlotte region's economy.