Missoula Company Wins X-Prize Competition For Ocean Sensor Technology

A Missoula company won big last night, July 20th, walking away with $1.5 million in prize money from the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X-Prize competition. X-Prizes have been awarded for technological innovations in fields like space exploration and health care, but the goal of this prize was to "turn the tide on the ocean's health."

Chemist Reggie Spaulding from Missoula’s Sunburst Sensors says her company has been working for two years to win the technology competition for a sensor that measures PH levels in the ocean. The tech they came up with is a development on the old color strips used in high school chemistry labs. Basically, the sensors take water in, mix it with a colored solution and then shine a light on the mixture. The amount of light absorbed reveals the amount of PH in the water through a process called spectrophotometry.

"Out of the 18 teams that competed for this last night, we won two first prizes," Spaulding said. "One prize was for the most accurate sensor, and the second prize was for an inexpensive sensor. We were competing with people all over the world."

Spaulding says government agencies and researchers are the target market for the sensors and that the company is profitable. The low-cost sensor costs about $1,000 while the expensive sensor, made with titanium costs around $19,000 and can work at depths of 3,000 meters. For many, the real question here, is why a company that designs sensors for the ocean is located in land-locked Montana.

"We get that question all the time," said Spaulding as she laughed. "The company was started by Professor Mike DeGrandpre at the University of Montana in the Chemistry Department," Spaulding said. "He is also a chemist and he developed our original carbon dioxide sensor as a post docket with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He is a native of Montana and came back to Montana when he was offered this position with the University. When he did, he started up this company and it has grown quite a bit over the years."

When asked what Sunburst Sensors plans on doing with the $1.5 million in prize money, Spaulding said they haven’t decided for sure, but that many of the nine employees are hoping the money is used to purchase a newer, nicer facility.