A Growing Business

UMBC Incubator Firm Wins an Innovator of the Year Award

Watch an interview with Frank Turano of Plant Sensory Systems.

At Plant Sensory Systems, a husband-and-wife startup technology firm located at the bwtech@UMBC Incubator and Accelerator, the market for green technology is growing almost as fast as the genetically-modified plants in their lab.

According to Chief Research Officer and Co-founder Frank Turano, the company is focused on two booming markets for plant-based technology: biofuels and agriculture. “We move genes into plants that increase their ability to grow,” said Turano.

Since starting the company in 2007, Frank and Kathleen Turano have received grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. Their latest honor is a Maryland Daily Record’s Innovator of the Year award. This puts them in the running for Top Innovator of the Year, which will be presented Wednesday, October 15.

“We’re very excited about the nomination,” said Frank Turano. “It’s nice to see our work get some recognition and validation.”

The Innovator of the Year award honors “people with vision” and those “with the ability to see a need and fill it.” The Turanos recognized an environmental need and decided to use their technology to increase the nitrogen efficiency of plants, which helps save farmers money while reducing the environmentally harmful runoff. This also helps the global green picture, since nitrogen-based fertilizer production has a heavy carbon footprint.

 “One of the major costs for farmers to increase productivity is nitrogen-based fertilizer,” said Turano. “Unfortunately, about 50 percent of that nitrogen runs off into rivers and streams, which is a problem for the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways.”

Another Plant Sensory Systems research project is working to increase the production of plant seed oil, an important component of biodiesel and other alternative fuels. Their lab is full of racks of Arabidopsis plants, a species related to cabbage and mustard which are valued by researchers since they go from seed to flower in just five to six weeks.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Turano was an associate professor of biology and genetics at The George Washington University and prior to that worked for 10 years as a plant molecular biologist and geneticist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Kathleen Turano was formerly a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The Turanos are excited to be at UMBC. “We chose bwtech@UMBC because of its track record for launching successful businesses and its interactive environment. We have been very pleased with our choice. We receive excellent support from the staff and ongoing critical advice regarding how to grow our business,” said Kathleen Turano.

To learn more about Plant Sensory Systems, click the play button below.