Los Alamos National Laboratory awarded approximately $100,000 each to four startup companies in northern New Mexico.

The grants come from LANL’s Venture Acceleration Fund, which provides investments of up to $100,000 to regional entrepreneurs, companies, investors or strategic partners who use LANL technology or expertise to create or grow local businesses.

Grant recipients include:

• Adaptive Radio Technologies, which is developing a robust radio system for miniature satellites that offers broad bandwidth for fast communications;

• Los Alamos Visualization Associates, which is constructing a Virtual Museum of New Mexico to include a database and online repository of collections from several state museums;

• Mesa Tech International Inc. of Santa Fe, which is building a handheld and battery-operated “DNA dipstick” to detect food pathogens; and

• ThermaSun Inc. , a Taos-based company developing a solar heating prototype that uses new heat transfer fluids.

The Venture Acceleration Fund has granted more than $1.2 million to local companies since its creation in 2006.

Source: New Mexico Business Weekly