ITHACA - Gregory J. Galvin attended graduate school at Cornell University and received his doctoral degree in 1984. He went to work for the university as director of corporate research relations and deputy director of the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility.

“I worked for the vice president of research at Cornell, and my job was tying to connect the university with corporations that would support it,” Galvin says.

One research group developed a micro electromechanical (MEMS) portfolio and Cornell patented the technology. There wasn’t a lot of outside interest in the technology, so the group kept returning to Galvin to see if he could generate interest.

Galvin did more than generate interest; he decided to build a company around the intellectual property. In 1993, with co-founder and fellow Cornell graduate Timothy Davis, Galvin founded Kionix, Inc., a company specializing in the design and manufacture of micromechanical and silicon micro-mechanical devices.

The company leased space for a fabrication facility at 22 Thornwood Drive in Ithaca, says Galvin, president and CEO.

In 1994, Cornell granted Kionix exclusive rights to Cornell’s deep-silicon, plasmamicromachining intellectual property. Four years later, Kionix completed its first six-inch wafer. In 1999, the company launched its high-perfermance, single-axis accelerometer. Accelerometers are sensors that measure acceleration. For example, an accelerometer in an airbag senses the rapid deceleration of a vehicle and determines the severity of an accident before deploying the airbag. In 2000, San Jose, Calif.-based Calient Networks, Inc. acquired Kionix’s optical division, which specialized in producing MEMS for the telecommunications industry. Calient Networks renamed the newly acquired business unit Calient Optical Components.

Calient Networks also allowed Ithaca-based Kionix to retain. its name for the remainder of the company, which focuses on the sensors and microfluidic markets.

There are 170 institutional and individual shareholders that currently own Kionix. All 88 employees are stockholders. Ten to 12 institutional investors and a couple of private individual investors own the majority of the shares, Galvin says.

In 2001, Kionix moved down the road to a new, leased, nearly 40,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at 36 Thornwood Drive in the Cornell Business and Technology Park.

This facility is comprised of 25,120 square feet of office and common space; 11,680 square feet of clean rooms; and 3,040 square feet of mechanical and maintenance space.

In 2002, production began on the dual-axis accelerometer, and in 2003 Kionix began automotive accelerometer production. Between 2004 and 2006, the company produced a number of high-performance accelerometers that became smaller in size.

Today, a broad field of accelerometers generates 99 percent of Kionix’s revenue. The company produces around two million accelerometers a month, Galvin says.

The majority of products sold by Kionix fit in a five-byfive millimeter package. The company is about to sample its first threeby-three millimeter products this quarter and go into production next quarter, Galvin says.

The production of gyroscopes also contributes to business at Kionix. Gyroscopes measure and maintain orientation.

Two years ago, the consumer-electronics field created enormous new markets for Kionix, says Galvin. Currently, Kionix’s predominant customer base is consumer-electronic companies, cell-phone companies, and companies that produce GPS devices.

“A big boost this past Christmas was the release of Sony’s PlayStation 3,” Galvin says. The gaming market has been growing steadily, selling 40 million game controllers on a monthly basis, Galvin explains. Game controllers are input devices, usually handheld, that allow consumers to control a video game. Increasingly, Kionix accelerometers are components of these game controllers.

The marketplace for accelerometers historically has been the automotive industry, Galvin says.

“Every vehicle today has a silicon accelerometer in its airbag,” he explains. “The automotive market is attractive because it is a stable and nonsaturated market. Unfortunately, there is no real growth potential.”

Kionix’s growth lies in other industries and markets.

Recently, the cell-phone market which produces one billion phones yearly, according to Galvin - has exhibited some interest in accelerometers. Samsung is dabbling in using accelerometers and cellphone recognition.

“Nothing has hit a resounding success yet,” Galvin says. “However, there are major hints that manufacturers are looking to put motion detection in phones.”

The computer industry has already examined the advantages of accelerometers. Several manufacturers have included the device in notebook computers, so the accelerometer can tell the computer to lock in the hard drive if the notebook is accidentally dropped.

“This is a very exciting time for us because we are at the tip of the iceberg,” Galvin says. “We need to figure out how to make consumer-electronics products aware of motion.”