 | History Rushford Hypersonic was founded in 2007 in Rushford, Minnesota, a town of 1,700 in the far southeastern corner of the state, by Daniel Fox. With his experience of business operations in the industrial sector, a company was built on the ability to transform academic research into commercial applications and focus on the world of tomorrow. Working in-depth with the non-profit Rushford Institute for Nanotechnology (RINTek), a nanotechnology support organization, Rushford Hypersonic has helped to bring nanotechnology education and industrial applications to this rural town.
RINTek provided valuable networking and connections during the beginning stages of Rushford Hypersonic's existence. This includes areas such as idea generation; including technologies being created and tested in the laboratories of today's world and where future research will be focusing, to business networking. RINTek played an integral part in helping to foster a valuable relationship between the University of Minnesota and their Institute of Technology and Rushford Hypersonic. Rushford Hypersonic formed a partnership soon after its founding with the University of Minnesota and the Institute of Technology - which houses the Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, and Engineering departments as well as 24 research centers, located on the Twin Cities Campus. In March of 2008, Rushford Hypersonic and the University entered into agreements allowing Rushford Hypersonic to pursue further development and commercialization of Hypersonic Plasma Particle Deposition (HPPD) processes, through the exclusive licensure of two patents, one for the HPPD process itself and one for the focused particle beam. The process was proudly brought to commercialization by Rushford Hypersonic after a decade of development and testing by Drs.Steven Girshick, W.W. Gerberich, Joachim Heberlein, N.P. Rao and Peter McMurry of the University of Minnesota, in April of 2009. The agreement also allowed for Rushford Hypersonic to have complete access to all research conducted, machining, and process design materials which helped in both the speed of commercialization as well as creating a beneficial relationship between Hypersonic and the University for any future research undertaken by both parties. | |
