The Washington Post writes about Luna Innovations:
Part technology company, part incubator and part investment firm, Murphy’s Luna Innovations Inc., which he founded in 1990, in the past two years has built five companies from the ideas at Virginia Tech, Lucent Technologies and from its own labs. All the companies use “Luna” in their name, a moth with finely tuned senses that Murphy saw on the Discovery Channel.
Here are a few projects that Kent Murphy and Luna are working on:
One Luna lab is designing sensors that track how proteins interact to better understand how drugs work. The idea came from Lucent.
Through a couple of doors is an electronics lab, where technicians are working on new kinds of sensors with technology developed in-house.
Around another corner is a lab where scientists turn super-heated graphite into carbon balls — called buckyballs — for use in medical imaging. That technology was pulled out of Virginia Tech.
My gut feeling is that you should keep an eye on this company. Oh yeah, here’s a quick list of Luna spinoffs: