Ocean Server Technology will employ 17 in Fall River after move from Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Ocean Server Technology, which was launched in 2003 at the UMass Dartmouth Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) and has since built a strong reputation for high quality underwater robotics that advance environmental sensing and coastal security, will graduate from the CIE on September 8.
Lt. Governor Karyn Polito will join local elected officials and business leadersat the CIE, 151 Martine Street, Fall River, at 3 p.m. on Sept. 8 to celebrate this milestone. This is the latest evidence of the region’s emergence as a center of marine technology development.
The 15-employee company will set up shop next door at 275 Martine Street in a private location on the shore of Fall River’s South Watuppa Pond, where its technology is frequently tested, and plans to add two more employees over the next six months.
Ocean Server Technology is well known in the marine technology world, having been regularly featured in industry magazines such as Unmanned Systems, Sea Technology Magazine, and Marine Technology Magazine. Its development at the CIE has been assisted by UMass Dartmouth faculty researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate interns. Several of the graduate students and interns are now full-time employees of the firm.
“Besides providing first class facilities in a strategic location, the CIE has connected us to faculty and student brainpower and talent that has been critical to our success,” Ocean Server President Robert Anderson said. “We are looking forward to continuing our growth on the SouthCoast and being at the leading edge of the marine technology sector’s emergence in the region.”
“We are so proud of what Ocean Server has become,” CIE Director Tobias Stapleton said. “This firm’s innovation-based success is tangible evidence that a strong UMass Dartmouth, the only research university south of Boston, is critical to the economic growth of the entire region.”
As Ocean Server Technology is leaving the CIE, the facility will be welcoming PowerDocks, a start-up firm that develops marine-based power docking stations for electric-powered vessels, autonomous surface and underwater vehicle, and aquaculture systems. The technology has global national defense, commercial, oceanography applications.
PowerDocks will join other marine technology enterprises at the CIE, including Boston Engineering, Seavision Underwater Solutions. The CIE was also the host of a major maritime innovations conference earlier this year.
Aquabotix, which manufactures remote-controlled underwater video systems, opened its operation in Fall River in 2015 after graduating from the CIE.