Spotlighting Innovation

A look at the annual honorees of The Society of Innovators of Northwest Indiana.

by Jerry Davich

Innovation. It can be sparked by serendipity, discovered by risk-takers or fueled by fear. It often manifests itself through a new idea, novel device or reinvented process. And it takes place each day in Northwest Indiana at the intersection of imagination and problem-solving.

Innovation can be powered by inspiration or desperation, but always through perspiration. Yet contrary to popular belief, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to define it.

“Most innovation is simply solving a problem in a new way,” says John Davies, managing director of The Society of Innovators of Northwest Indiana.

The role of the society, now in its 10th year, is to recognize and celebrate the spirit of innovation in this seven-county region. It's a project of the Gerald I. Lamkin Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center of Ivy Tech Community College Northwest, led by O'Merrial Butchee, director.

Since its inception, the society has discovered close to 1,000 innovative pioneers, including those associated with teams. It selects approximately 30 new members each year, in addition to team-based trailblazers. The top individual winners are designated as fellows for their significant contributions to society, whether it transforms this region or far beyond. “Innovators change the world in small or great ways,” Davies says.

Each nominated candidate is vetted by 19 judges before finalists are determined and winners announced.

The 2014 class of inducted fellows features a titan of journalism, a candy-coated business giant, the bright idea behind the nation's fifth solar furnace, and the founding farmer of the largest indoor commercial vertical farm, among other region innovators.

“Each of them chose to be at the cutting edge, not in the shadows,” Davies says. “And each one shares a collective vision through the power of their innovative ideas.”

This new class also honors four co-recipients for team-category triumphs. The Chanute Prize for Team Innovation is bestowed upon recipients with a cash prize, a handsome plaque and a traveling trophy. The Accelerating Greatness Award, new this year, is custom-made and displays a pewter medallion. Both come with bragging rights.

The society is helped by principal partners: ArcelorMittal, Bukva Imaging, Doherty Imaging, Horseshoe Casino, Lakeshore Public Media; Krieg DeVault, NIPSCO, Northwest Indiana Business Quarterly, SMDG LLC, and The Times Media Co. The Center for Workforce Innovations is a community partner. Nominations are submitted annually from Jasper, LaPorte, Lake, Newton, Porter, Pulaski and Starke counties.

All of the award winners were inducted in a ceremony on Oct. 16 at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond. Davies, who personifies innovation with every idea, project and ceremony, says, “It's the lasting hope for our region, our state, our nation and world.”

Bill Nangle
Editor Emeritus, The Times Media Company

The society's highest individual award–the Gerald I. Lamkin Fellow for Outstanding Achievement in Innovation and Service–was awarded to Bill Nangle, who helped transform The Times Media Co. into a national model for newspaper journalism.

Known as an editor's editor with old-school newspaper values, Nangle embraces Webster's definition of innovation: “The introduction of something new. A new idea, method or device.”

He launched the “Munster Model,” renowned for providing in-depth local and neighborhood news while highlighting regional news. “Local, local, local” became his rallying cry decades ago.

Nangle also brought Indiana's seven largest newspapers together, producing a statewide audit of access to public records in Indiana's 92 counties. This led to strengthening access laws and establishing the state office of public access counselor. The designated “State of Secrecy” audit has since been repeated in 30 states.

In times of historic change of newspaper closings and consolidations, Nangle navigated The Times through uncharted waters by offering “hyper-local” news to readers. The innovative approach buoyed The Times in a slowly sinking industry.

From serving as the business manager of his high school newspaper to working under 15 publishers over a span of 44 years, Nangle has overseen and witnessed transformational change, from digital formats to niche publications. His headline-styled advice to younger innovators is as direct as his leadership style: “Embrace ideas. Determine the logic, application and value of your idea. Present the idea. Don't give up.”

Neeti Parashar
Professor of Physics, Purdue University Calumet

Neeti Parashar, Ph.D., put Northwest Indiana under the microscope of the scientific world by leading a federally funded, high-energy physics team as part of a global initiative to discover the elusive Higgs-Boson subatomic particle. Her work helped land the 2013 Nobel Prize for United Kingdom's Peter Higgs and Belgium's Francois Englert.

For 17 years, Parashar worked on the massive project, though her greatest contributions came during the last seven years while at Purdue Calumet. She was “totally humbled” by the news of being honored by the Society of Innovators. “Especially because I pursue a very specialized science field in the area of high-energy physics,” she says.

In 1995, Parashar got involved in the Higgs-Boson project after receiving a fellowship from the Italian government. She chose to work in Pisa–home of Galileo, the “father of physics”–where she walked daily through the same church-tower plaza in his historic footsteps.

One of his tasks was lighting candles in the church. Centuries later, one of her tasks was to help shed light on one of the greatest findings in the history of physics.

After arriving at Purdue Calumet in 2005, the school became one of the first, if not the only, undergraduate institution to join research institutions around the world in this historic quest. Their collective mission: Validate this mysterious particle dating back to the earliest origins of the universe. She did so while juggling her full teaching load.

“Innovation is both a new or different idea and the courage to execute it,” she says. “It is very easy to have a dream, but to have your eye on it all the time and work accordingly is the most difficult thing to do. Never give up on what you aspire to become.”

Robert Palumbo
Professor of Engineering, Valparaiso University

When Robert Palumbo, Ph.D., was 12, he watched in awe as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, after listening to radio updates leading up to that historic moment.

“I was quite aware that every family member in every house on my block was watching,” he recalls. “I sensed we had all just witnessed something that was epic and hopeful.”

Palumbo jettisoned from the 1960s with hopeful, if not epic, dreams of someday being a part of something as lofty as the U.S. space program. Today, he's widely regarded as a global expert on solar energy research as a professor of mechanical engineering at Valparaiso University. There, he realized his youthful dream to inspire and build the nation's fifth solar furnace, as part of the James S. Markiewicz Solar Energy Research Facility.

He is part of a pioneering team engaged in experiments to create new fuels and commodities out of sunlight, utilizing undergraduate students. In 2013, Palumbo was named Indiana Professor of the Year, one of only three Valparaiso professors to receive this honor. And now, honored as an innovative fellow.

“It is a wonderful honor, but the award really belongs to a great team of colleagues I work with,” he says, deflecting the warm rays of his latest accolade. “Without them, I would not be able to contribute to the things we are doing.”

Palumbo also credits his Valparaiso University teacher, Gilbert Lehmann, and his graduate school advisor at the University of Minnesota, Edward Fletcher, for guiding him to “a road leading to adventure.”

That road led him to Valparaiso, where the school's solar research facility is the only such one worldwide doing high-temperature solar thermal electro-chemistry projects. There, work is done that might change sunlight and water into fuel to propel our future with CO2 production in planes, trains, automobiles, rockets and space shuttles.

“Working at the university is where innovation begins for me,” he says. “I see myself as part of a community that is talented, passionate and enabling sunlight to play a more significant role in the world economy.”

His advice echoes what he recently advised a group of undergraduate research students: “Bind your work to your play.”

Roger Pradhan
Principal Research Engineer, ArcelorMittal

Roger Pradhan, Ph.D., is heralded as a pioneer by his ArcelorMittal colleagues for many reasons, but especially for his inventive development of new carbon steels. His expertise was leading development and implementation of bake-hardenable steels, mostly at the steel giant's Burns Harbor plant.

The recent retiree developed an almost legendary reputation of working closely with plant personnel in two different states to develop practical technical solutions.

After his distinguished career of 38 years, he not only holds four U.S. patents in the steel industry, he received a gold medal from the American Iron & Steel Institute for his publication (one of 35) describing his work. Its title, “Dent-Resistant Bake Hardening Steels for Automotive Outer-Body Applications,” sounds intimidating. But through the years, Pradhan continually molded his workplace legacy by routinely building relationships in the plant. Because he worked for a steel company, not a university, he understood his role as a research engineer–to create products that can be sold in the global marketplace.

“My goal was always to help the company make profits,” says Pradhan, who organized several conferences to generate new ideas to support the steel industry.

After graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he began working at the former Bethlehem Steel Corp. in 1976. Through the mill's many changes, he forged his reputation using innovative skills, though downplaying his talents. “I did not consider myself an innovator in the true sense of the word, [such as] discovering or introducing something brand new,” he says.

Since then, he learned the word's definition can include making changes to existing ideas, with the goal of developing new methods, products and applications. “I think I have fulfilled these requirements,” he now admits.

Scott Albanese
Founder & CEO, Albanese Confectionery Group Inc.

In his 20s, Scott Albanese didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps with the family bricklayer business, Albanese Construction. He was married with four kids, no health insurance, and in considerable debt from medical bills.

He figured his best shot to make a life, not just a living, was to open his own business. One day his wife came home and told him she bought a pound of pistachios for just $2.99, an incredibly low price. Albanese learned that the guy selling them was going through hundreds of pounds of pistachios at such sale prices.

A light-bulb moment lit up Albanese's imagination: Sell high-quality candy at low-end prices and sweeten the deal with volume, volume, volume. His new company, the Candy and Nut Outlet, laid the brickwork for what is now the Albanese Confectionary Group.

Today his family-operated company boasts nearly $200 million in sales and his candied products can be found nationwide, as well as in nearly a dozen countries. Roughly 300 employees toil in a 120,000-square-foot facility, with an additional 190,000-square-foot expansion in the works.

There, his research team pioneered the first gummies in the world with a distinguishable flavor, a discovery taking years to perfect.

“We are a research and development company that also happens to have operations. We are not an operations company that also has research and development,” he points out. “The future of this company is research and development.”

Robert Colangelo
Founding Farmer, Green Sense Farms

Robert Colangelo is all about the color green, whether it's in his herbs, lettuces or the $2.5 million investment for Green Sense Farms.

“Green is hot right now,” says Colangelo, founder, president and principal investor. “If it doesn't make economic and common sense, it doesn't make green sense.”

His firm is billed as the largest indoor commercial vertical farm, and the largest user of indoor Phillips LED grow lights, marketing locally grown, chemical free produce. Located at AmeriPlex in Portage, the 30,000-square-foot farm is the first in Northwest Indiana built in an industrial building. After opening in May, Green Sense Farms' products now serve 86 retail stores in five states through Whole Foods and Strack & Van Til.

The farm grows leafy greens that are pesticide-, herbicide- and GMO-free using sustainable farming methods, created and implemented by Colangelo.

“Innovation doesn't always have to be something new,” he explains. “It also can be applying something old in a new way.”

His state-of-the-art farm maintains a climate perfect for growing plants, so plants grow perfectly, year round.

He also hosts a radio program emphasizing sustainability, “Green Sense Radio,” aired on Lakeshore Public Radio and 32 other stations across the country.

With an expertise in brownfield development (he started the National Brownfield Association in 1990), Colangelo believes Indiana has undersold its potential to the world. Just as Washington state is known for apples, Indiana could be known for sustainable agriculture, he says. “And it's innovation that can allow this region to brand itself,” he comments.

PCL Alverno

A “wow moment.”

This is how Sam Terese describes the collective reaction from PCL Alverno after being honored by the Chanute Prize for Innovation, which his company shared with the BP Whiting Refinery Modernization Project.

“High levels of excitement, joy and, more importantly, a sense of great pride,” says Terese, Alverno's president and CEO. “Our staff has worked hard to bring in and assimilate our innovative technology as well as continuing to care for our patients. The recognition is greatly appreciated.”

PCL Alverno has been infused with such “wow moments” since it introduced total microbiology automation, revolutionizing the delivery of results to patients and physicians. The company also is the first in this country to be designated as a Siemen's Microbiology Innovation Center.

The laboratory facility is jointly owned by the Franciscan Alliance and Presence Health, serving about 2,500 physicians and 26 hospitals in Indiana and Illinois. For years, the firm has practiced the “lean” Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, by adapting processes to changing customer and market requirements.

“Innovation for Alverno is about being true to our values as an organization and being centered on providing care to our patients as well as service to our physicians,” Terese says. “Being innovative for us is not for the sake of embracing new and exciting technology, but innovation must have a direct link to improved patient outcomes.”

“Remember that achieving your dream does not complete your journey,” he says. “It simply takes you to your next opportunity to be innovative.”

BP Whiting Refinery Modernization Project

The co-winner of the Chanute Prize, along with PCL Alverno, was the BP Whiting Refinery Modernization Project. This was the unprecedented logistical challenge for the multi-billion dollar Whiting Refinery Modernization Project:

* 800 module and vessel moves

* 1,200 pieces of equipment

* 380 miles of pipe

* 50,000 tons of steel

* 1,300 miles of wire and cable check

* 15,000 concrete truck deliveries

* 95,000 truck load deliveries

Utilizing a single-team concept on a world scale, the One Whiting Team conducted the largest and most complex refining construction project in BP history. It involved the transportation coordination of 12,000 workers and 15,000 vehicles each day, with no off days for 40 million work hours. In the end, it built the seventh-largest refinery around the existing fourth-largest refinery without disrupting BP's ongoing operations. That's innovation.

“The global team communication and vision always focused on an end-result while daily managing complex situations, overcoming challenges and developing opportunities and synergies,” says Michael Berna, the project's deputy construction director. “Then, safely and efficiently delivering extraordinary results while keeping operations running at the Whiting Refinery.”

Planning took a decade, completion took several years, and capacity has grown 25-fold, to 425,000 barrels per day at the now world-class facility.

Not surprisingly, Berna's world-class advice to other innovators is to think big and challenge conventional norms.

“Open your field of view to see a bigger perspective than everyone else's,” he says. “What you may find is the only limit between reality and your dream is your viewpoint.”

The James S. Markiewicz Solar Energy Research Facility

Not only is the James S. Markiewicz Solar Energy Research Facility only the fifth solar furnace in the country. It's the world's only solar furnace primarily designed, built and used by undergraduate students. The facility was the co-winner of the Accelerating Greatness Award for Team Innovation, along with the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority.

The state-of-the-art research facility–completed in July 2013 by Valparaiso University's College of Engineering–allows students and faculty to work in high-temperature solar thermal electrochemistry experiments to create new fuels and commodities harnessing the power of the sun.

More than 4,000 parts were manufactured by students over the life of the project, using the department's manufacturing laboratory while reflecting just one of many innovations.

The facility also serves as an educational tool for engineering students and the Northwest Indiana community, with tours offered to explore renewable energy, solar and thermal electro-chemistry.

“I see innovation as the creation and implementation of ideas that have a positive impact on people and society,” says G. Scott Duncan, Ph.D., associate professor of mechanical engineering at the university's College of Engineering.

Harnessing the energy of the sun has such an impact, as it shines with 6,000 times the energy our planet uses daily, Duncan says. Still, there are obstacles to overcome, such as capturing its energy, storing it and transporting it, hence the crucially needed research at this facility.

It not only generates lofty goals and excitement for solar engineering, but this also generates a vital discussion on energy-related issues, with ground zero in Northwest Indiana.

Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority

John and Jane Q. Public don't generally think of quasi-government agencies as “innovators,” but that's what makes the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority so special, and deserving of the Accelerating Greatness Award for Team Innovation, which it shared with the James S. Markiewicz Solar Energy Research Facility.

Heading into its 10th year, the first-of-its-kind organization in Indiana was created by the Indiana legislature to capitalize on the region's strategic location near Chicago, which boasts one of the largest and most vibrant economic engines in the world.

“We haven't taken full advantage of this, and our state is becoming more aware of it,” says CEO Bill Hanna.

The RDA funnels and distributes nearly $30 million annually to invest in failing assets that have been since leveraged into $1.1 billion in investments for infrastructure development. “Much of that boils straight down to jobs of all kinds for our local economy,” Hanna says. “We want to take people to work, bring work to people here, and attract outside people to Northwest Indiana.”

This ongoing investment has already created 5,000 jobs and, by 2025, future projects will generate an estimated $770 million in economic output annually while increasing personal income by $383 million a year, Hanna says. “Our attitude is we don't give up and we don't stop,” he adds.

The very existence of the RDA is innovative in itself, as this type of organization had never been tried before in this state. Its deeper purpose, beyond fund distribution, is to transform the mentality of this region by trumping local politics and parochial priorities.

“Such shortsighted thinking not only robs Peter to pay Paul, but also robs Peter's grandkids,” Hanna notes. “We don't look at our boundaries, but our assets,” he says.

This includes expansion of the South Shore rail line and Gary/Chicago International Airport, as well as shoreline redevelopment and attracting outside businesses. “We believe people will look back at this time period as a substantial era of change and, yes, innovation,” Hanna says.