[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16978-16979]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO STEVE ARMS

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to pay 
tribute to Steve Arms, a technology inventor, innovator, and successful 
entrepreneur from Vermont.
  Steve founded and developed a high tech firm, MicroStrain, which 
creates sophisticated micro sensors that were originally designed for 
arthroscopic implantation on human knee ligaments. Their sensors have 
since evolved and are now used by NASA, on

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car engines, for advanced manufacturing, on civil structures, and by 
the U.S. military.
  When Philadelphia's Liberty Bell needed to be moved in 2003, the 
National Park Service used MicroStrain to detect whether the 250-year-
old bell's famous crack was worsening, even by a hundredth of a hair's 
width. Fortunately, and thanks to MicroStrain's sensors, the Liberty 
Bell was moved without damage.
  A product of Vermont's public education system and flagship state 
university, Steve grew a one-man business based out of his Burlington 
apartment into a more than $12 million a year company. Based in 
Williston, VT, and now employing 55 people, MicroStrain's constant 
innovation and product improvement has earned the company numerous top 
awards in the industry.
  I am proud to see to see Vermonters working on cutting-edge 
technology that will benefit both Vermont's and the country's economy. 
I thank Steve and all of the employees at MicroStrain for their hard 
work.
  I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the recent Burlington Free 
Press article entitled Vt. Tech innovator: Be in the moment, be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Burlington Free Press, Nov. 2, 2011]

                  Vt. Tech Innovator: Be in the Moment

                            (By Molly Walsh)

       Williston.--Back in high school, Steve Arms thought he 
     might want to be a journalist. He'd grown up reading non-stop 
     and often sneaked books and a flashlight under the covers 
     when he was supposed to be asleep.
       He changed direction shortly before graduating from 
     Burlington High School in 1977. During his junior and senior 
     years, a math teacher and a physics teacher ignited a fuse 
     that prompted Arms to become an engineer, inventor and 
     successful tech entrepreneur who runs a Vermont company with 
     55 employees and gross sales of $12.8 million in 2010.
       ``I have a dream job. I can't believe I get paid to do 
     this,'' Arms said during an interview at MicroStrain, the 
     sensor company he founded and leads in Williston.
       The company designs and sells tiny, highly sophisticated 
     sensors used in U.S. military drones, NASA rocket tests, 
     tracking devices and a range of industrial and medical 
     products. Arms founded the company when he was a Ph.D. 
     candidate at the University of Vermont, where he studied 
     engineering and biomechanics. His first product was a mini-
     sensor used in arthroscopic knee surgeries that he began 
     selling after writing the federal grant to help fund the 
     development himself.
       In the early days at his company, Arms typed up the 
     invoices, answered the phone and hustled sales in addition to 
     designing products. He slowly grew the company and says a 
     careful, conservative approach to expansion--no outside 
     investors and a pay-as-you go approach as much as possible--
     allowed the business to thrive and continue developing 
     cutting-edge products as requested by various customers. 
     Because there were no outside money people demanding quick 
     growth, Arms and his staff had the time to try, fail and 
     retry new product design--in other words, innovate.
       Now much of the work is solving problems for clients and 
     continuously pushing for new designs--and that's what science 
     education should teach as well, Arms said. Schools that help 
     young people use science and math to find solutions--whether 
     it's flood prevention or saving the rain forest--are on the 
     right track. ``Kids are amazingly creative and they really 
     want to make the world a better place,'' Arms said.
       It can take MicroStrain up to a year to find certain 
     employees and the company regularly recruits out of state. 
     But many employees are Vermonters or returning Vermonters. 
     And Arms has had great success with summer internship 
     programs for college students, many of whom are studying 
     electrical engineering at local colleges and out-of-state 
     schools such as Clarkson, Stanford and MIT. Some interns 
     spend three summers at the company before they graduate. 
     MicroStrain regularly hires from the intern pool because the 
     interns are up to speed on the work and because they've 
     basically succeeded during an extended job interview.
       As a student, Arms responded to teachers who were well 
     organized, animated and happy to let a curious student run 
     with questions. His foray into bioengineering happened 
     largely because his UVM work study job put him in a 
     department full of doctors and medical researchers. He loved 
     talking to them and soon was writing grants as part of his 
     job--a skill that came in handy when it was time for Arms to 
     found MicroStrain.
       His advice for students is similar to what he gives his 
     three children, including a son at Reed College and twin 
     daughters at Champlain Valley Union High School. Arms was 
     never a grind who obsessed over getting As in everything and 
     he left some homework undone. He worked, but not obsessively. 
     One thing he did learn was to follow his interests and be 
     efficient--by paying attention in class, for example. ``Be in 
     the moment. . . . Make the most of your time when you are 
     there.''
       Schools could help inspire a love of science by making it 
     real, he added. Simple props--chalk and a two-by-four, a 
     bicycle wheel--are great ways to teach calculus, physics and 
     other STEM topics. Computers are can be useful tools but they 
     do not guarantee engagement in class, he said.
       Bringing speakers from STEM employers is another way to 
     reach students, as is career mentoring. Arms still remembers 
     the conversation he had with Sir John Charnley, who pioneered 
     modern hip replacement, after Charnley visited UVM to give a 
     lecture in which he detailed the series of failures he 
     experienced before his big medical breakthrough.
       ``For me, that was just all I needed,'' Arms said. The talk 
     left him with the sense of: ``I'm not giving up either.''

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