When the Duke Blue Devils tip off against the Spartans of Michigan State in Indianapolis on Saturday, it’s easy to imagine Sarah Haig hanging out by the guacamole dip at some flat-screen Final Four party, rooting on her North Carolina-based alma mater.
“I can never anticipate the follow-up questions,” Haig said.”If it’s a physicist they’re going to say, ‘What kind of nuclear bomb detector do you build?’ And then I get into the details.
From her incubator space in Somerville, Haig and her business partner, Andrew Inglis, are working hard to bring to market atomic bomb detectors for use in the United States and abroad. “We’re in Act II of a Shakespearean five-act play,” she said.
Haig and Inglis are the principals at an entrepreneurial venture called Silverside Detectors, which operates out of space formerly that of Ames Safety Envelope Company, once Somerville’s largest employer.
Those 33,000 square feet of what had been industrial space have been transformed into something akin to a fantasy factory for Silverside and some 40 other startups.
In the lab space where Haig and Inglis are breathing life into their nuclear detectors, their business-world soul mates are also building the next generation of 3D printers, or perfecting robots that can inspect hundreds of miles of railroad tracks for imperfections.
One firm is building the first fully functioning airborne wind turbine.
“It’s an amazing feeling to be in the room and to be a part of all of that.”. The 34-year-old Haig found her way here after having already built microfinance companies in China and advised NATO about development priorities in Afghanistan. When she graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2012, she was introduced to Inglis and found a new passion.”I can bite off one tiny corner of this immense issue and do something,” she said.
“Budgets are tight and equipment is expensive and nobody expects an improvised nuclear device.
When she’s not, she’s running marathons or writing limericks – perhaps better icebreakers over that guacamole dip Saturday.
All Credits to Thomas Farragher
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