Symbios has had a close relationship with NSF since 2011, when the agency awarded a Phase I SBIR grant that began the development of the Symbios Tubular Plasma Reactor™ (TPR). NSF has continued its support of Symbios through a prestigious Phase II SBIR grant awarded in February 2013 and a supplemental Technology Enhancement for Commercial Partnerships (TECP) grant awarded in December 2013 for electrode advancements to the TPR. NSF Phase II awarded projects average a 2 to 1 leveraging of outside investment capital to NSF dollars invested.
Colorado State University is a strong technology development and research partner to Symbios. Not only was the first generation of the TPR technology developed at CSU by Dr. Derek Johnson and Dr. David Dandy, but collaboration between several faculty members on commercialization of the TPR with major industry partners, as well as new technology development and sponsored research, continue to be hallmarks of the Symbios-CSU collaboration. This includes collaboration between Symbios and the CSU Water Quality Laboratory in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.