Simone Belmar MMT pipeline mechanical property scratch tester

Belmar's NSF SBIR-funded company doing on-site evaluation of pipeline steel mechanical properties (tensile strength, hoped-for fracture toughness) via a portable scratch tester. ~$1.2M in NSF funding. Used as one of last spring's three live modules.

Simone Belmar has started a company called MMT — on-site evaluation of pipelines for mechanical properties. This is a little scratch tester, and they can measure the tensile strength of the steel, hope to be able to measure the fracture toughness. He's gotten about 1.2 million dollars out of the NSF SBIR program. NSF requires, if you get money you have to go attend some workshops taught by people from industry who'd started their own businesses. So Simone basically went through, and he covers that, and a lot of students really liked that. Has nothing to do with structural materials per se, has to do with starting up a business.