CFD Research Breaks Ground on Laboratory in Cummings Research Park

Smiles and laughter were in abundance as one of the first post-pandemic maskless celebrations took place in Cummings Research Park. The celebration was for CFD Research breaking ground for a 13,265 square foot laboratory in Cummings Research Park. 

The new facility, behind the company’s headquarters adjacent to the Hudson-Alpha Institute for Biotechnology, will expand the company’s research and development capabilities in the areas of biomedical and energy, while providing new space for capabilities to support growth in electronics, virology, and biomechanics. Among those cutting-edge technologies are drug discovery and development, regenerative medicine, biomedical and clinical diagnostics, human performance, and power generation and energy storage technologies.

Founded in Asktok Singhal’s basement in Huntsville in 1987, CFD Research appeared on Inc. magazine’s 5000 for the first time in 2021 and boasts steady job growth from 78 people in 2016, to 157 currently. The new facility is looking to add 25 to 30 employees next year leading up to the opening in April 2022 and has sized the new lab to quickly expand to 50 people in the first two years of operation.

“We hired about 30 people last year and they have come here from 13 different states, so I always like to talk about how we are bringing the best talent into the North Alabama region,” said President and CEO Sameer Singhal. 

Singhal said this expansion, like past expansions, feed the same vision to transform the future through innovative technology solutions.

Just one month ago, CFD Research completed a 13,000 square foot engineering test center in Jackson County to perform propulsion testing and hypersonic ground test support. 

“This new laboratory will allow us to roughly double our square footage and grow in all the existing research, but also set up new labs in the areas of electronics, biomechanics, and biology, which is the study of viruses – obviously very important in today’s times,” Singhal said. “We will have a Class 100 clean room for performing microfabrication, and a dry room for making batteries.”

He said cleanroom means 100 particles of dust per cubic foot of air compared to a typical office environment of 10 million dust particles in a cubic foot. The dry room takes the moisture out of the air leaving a relative humidity of 2 percent.

“It is probably 75 percent humidity here today by comparison,” he said.

“Batteries are flammable in air so you have to keep the oxygen content down. Right now, we do all our battery research in glove boxes, that is tiny boxes where you put your hands in gloves and try to assemble batteries. Now we’re going to have roughly an entire room with a controlled environment, and you can make much bigger batteries and that will have a bigger impact on society.

While everyone expressed their pleasure at seeing so many smiling faces, including elected officials and their representatives, executive vice president for Biomedical and Data Sciences, Dr. Kapil Pant, told a story about the first time they introduced Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle to their Biobattery technology.

“We were working out of a leaky basement lab on Wynn Drive in the 1990s when Mayor Battle came to visit and we shared with him that one of the emerging technologies to come out of our work was sugar batteries used to generate electricity,” said Pant. “The mayor was fascinated by what he called our sucrose, fructose, and glucose batteries which he memorably mispronounced Bye-Bo Batteries – which we said okay – close enough …” 

As the audience roared with laughter, Chamber Board Director Jeff Gronberg introduced “the butt of today’s jokes”, Mayor Tommy Battle.

“Thank you … I think …,” Battle said to even more laughter.  

“I remember years ago coming here and discussing sucrose, fructose, and glucose batteries,” Battle said to even more laughter. “I was telling someone about it later, and the person said ‘Oh, Huntsville has sugar battery technology?’ 

“I said yeah, we are able to create power using sugar batteries, and the reason it was so fascinating was because it was during the Iraq War and one of the biggest needs the military had was electrical power out there.

“Here we are addressing that need right here in Huntsville at CFD Research.”

He said when he also looked at the modeling and simulation they would be doing in the biotech world, he saw technology that would alter the way the world participated in and did testing.

“That is the kind of work being done here from CFD Research and they have been doing it for years and years.”

Battle also addressed their job growth.

“One of the employees CFD Research hired was one of the city of Huntsville’s city directors,” Battle said with a laugh as the audience anticipated his comeback. “I reflect on that … and we had to go out and recruit an employee from outside the city – still in Alabama, but outside Huntsville, and we were able to recruit that person because of the technology that’s been developed here, because of the quality of life everybody here enjoys, and because of the attractiveness of the Huntsville community. 

“That’s a big lesson to learn. We will all be attracting a workforce in the future, we will all be going out and recruiting workforce, and the key is that we have to have the best and the brightest, and this is part of the best and the brightest right here at CFD Research.

“As we continue to bring in those best and brightest, they’re going to bring along more people. 

“So to the CFD Research family – you are a foundation block of a growing and prosperous community and we thank you for the work you do each day and I’m so proud to have another expansion come along … but don’t take any more of our city employees!”

Singhal thanked Chief Operating Officer Stephen Cayson, Freedom Real Estate, building architects BRPH, Turner Construction who will be building the facility, and Servis 1st Bank for the financing.

The new facility will also have a high-performance computing lab with about 25,000 CORS of computing power with the potential to expand over 25,000 CORS.

“Think of 10,000 desktop computers working away at these modeling and simulation problems … we’re going to be holding intensive computational and laboratory work in this new facility,” Singhal said.

“This is not a new commitment, it is a continued commitment,” said Madison County Commission Chair, Dale Strong. “It is because of relationships CFD Research has made over the years and I believe the future of this company is bright and we can’t reach our full potential without them.”