SFBI Graduate
Aurora Life Technologies
Designs, invents, and tests customized technologies for single-cell analyses by flow cytometry and cell sorting, and develops point-of-care diagnostic devices for use in physician offices and the field.
The AHA moment
Three weeks after retiring and moving to Santa Fe in September 2016, James got a call from a large international company he had consulted for during his years as a professor. They asked if he was done with Purdue. He said yes. They said they wanted to hire him. That call transformed a consulting arrangement into something more: a company that evolved from pure consulting into prototyping, inventing-for-hire, and eventually original R&D.
The SFBI difference
When his major client decided to help him set up a lab to test R&D products from a project in Dublin, Ireland, SFBI was the obvious home. The lab space gave Aurora credibility that a garage never could — James knew from experience that incubators significantly improve early survival rates, so he sought SFBI out even before he needed the lab. SFBI's shared facilities — tissue culture, cell and molecular biology labs, and 3D printing — gave a small company capabilities that would otherwise require millions in infrastructure.
Growth
Aurora Life Technologies has grown from a home office consulting operation into a serious R&D lab with its own instrumentation, prototypes, and original intellectual property. James has reinvested consulting revenues into the lab on a pay-as-you-go basis, building a company that is now seen as a credible biotech firm with considerable independent capabilities. Aurora graduated from SFBI in 2022.