Luna Plans To Redefine Its Mission

Luna Innovations in Roanoke has announced a new corporate strategy to grow revenue that focuses on serving high-growth industries with new technology solutions to measure, monitor, protect and improve critical processes in the medical, defense and composites industries.

The strategy, recently approved by the company’s Board of Directors, focuses on three key objectives:

• Become the leading provider of sensing systems and standard test methods for composite materials by offering disruptive technology that revolutionizes the industry.
• Continue to pioneer the way and be the leading supplier of fiber-optic shape sensing technology for robotic and minimally invasive surgical systems.
• Be the leading choice for ensuring the integrity of integrated circuits used in defense systems.

“Over the past few months, our leadership team and board members have worked together to conduct a comprehensive analysis of our products, strengths, market position and market needs,” says My Chung, CEO of Luna Innovations. “We believe that our technologies, our people and our research and development, along with our partnerships in numerous industries, provide us with some very attractive opportunities.”

“Now, following a successful reorganization, we want to provide investors and other stakeholders with a road map to the future that emphasizes the compelling value proposition for markets we serve,” Chung says.

One example of a product implementing our strategy is the ODiSI (Optical Distributed Sensor Interrogator), Luna’s new sensing platform. It provides fully distributed strain or temperature measurements and delivers an unprecedented amount of data by using an optical fiber as a continuous sensor over up to 50 meters of surface. Compared to traditional sensing methods, such as strain gages, Luna's technology provides greater insight into the performance, tolerances and failure mechanisms of structures and vehicles. The company believes the technology will provide value to the fast-growing composites manufacturing market, particularly in aerospace and green energy applications.

Another growth opportunity is in the medical market. Luna maintains product development relationships with two leading players in robotic medical technology – Intuitive Surgical and Hansen Medical and is working with both companies to support the development of high-speed shape sensing and localization of minimally invasive surgical devices using fiber-optic technology. The technology is helping to improve healthcare with advances in medical robotics and minimally invasive surgery.

“These are just a few examples of technology and markets where we’ve identified opportunities to increase revenues and market share,” Chung said. “Together with our continued emphasis on research and development and new focus on cultivating a high-performance team with the energy of a start-up company, we have mapped out a future direction that takes advantage of technology trends and high-growth industries to position Luna for what we expect will be a strong and promising future.”