Contact: Bob Ratliff
A computer software company that grew out of Mississippi State University research is receiving one of the nation's top business awards.
MPI Software Technology Inc. is receiving a 2001 Roland Tibbetts Award. Given by the Small Business Administration, the annual honors recognize technology firms with a limited number of employees that achieve excellence in their respective fields.
The SBA is an independent agency of the United States government. This year's 70 Tibbetts Awards, named for the founder of its Small Business Innovation Research Program, will be presented Tuesday [Oct. 2] in Washington, D.C., ceremonies.
Established in 1996, the Starkville company is the only Mississippi winner. Led by founder, president and chief executive officer Anthony Skjellum, MSTI produces software for message passing interface--MPI--applications.
MSTI currently has 21 full-time employees, most of whom are MSU graduates. Customers include businesses and research laboratories throughout the U.S., as well as in Canada, Europe, Australia, and other overseas locations.
"The software enables customers to boost computing power by linking clusters of desktop computers, servers and embedded processors to work together on the same applications," said Skjellum.
Also an associate professor of computer science at MSU, he holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology.
Skjellum joined the MSU faculty in 1993 following more than two years of related research at the U.S. Energy Department's Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco.
"My work in message passing continued at MSU, but after about three years the project was coming to an end," he explained. "Forming a company was a way to apply the research to the real world while continuing to learn about MPI applications."
The company was launched at the Golden Triangle Enterprise Center's small business incubator in the Mississippi Research and Technology Park in Starkville. After "graduating" in 1999, it purchased and renovated a historic bank building in downtown Starkville.
Mississippi State's Office of Research nominated MSTI for the Tibbetts Award.
"The success of Dr. Skjellum's company is an example of how basic university research can be a springboard to business ventures that provide jobs and other economic benefits," said Robert A. Altenkirch, MSU vice president for research.
Altenkirch said MSTI software currently powers a "supercluster" at the university's National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. That "supercluster" recently was named the 158th most powerful computing system in the world and 13th most powerful at a United States university, he added.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For additional comments, feel free to telephone Dr. Skjellum at (662) 325-8435. Dr. Altenkirch can be reached at 325-3570.