For a Growing Number of Companies, UNH Is Home
Olson Center Director John Roth, Airtho President Brandon Bogart, and N.H. Governor Kelly Ayotte at the dedication of Airtho's new cleanroom at the Olson Center.
When Airtho, a New Hampshire-based controlled environments developer, outgrew its office, it moved to a new yet familiar location: UNH. For several years, Airtho had worked with UNH’s John Olson Advanced Manufacturing Center on product development and testing, and half of its employees were UNH alumni. In 2022, Airtho co-located its growing business with the Olson Center.
“Moving to UNH has given me a more accessible pool of talented people and that has helped me grow the business pretty significantly,” says Airtho President Brandon Bogart, adding that the company has doubled its revenue year-over-year since co-locating.
Airtho’s success is hardly an outlier. A dozen companies currently co-locate at UNH in Durham, a 400% increase since 2022, and more are in the wings.
“UNH’s resources and reputation are attracting business and industry innovators to campus and the local area, who in turn generate economic benefits for the entire state of New Hampshire,” says Jennifer Miksis-Olds, interim vice president of research and innovation. “Partners are coming to us from across the state and around the globe to access our state-of-the-art facilities, research expertise, and students.”
Miksis-Olds was the founding director of UNH’s Center for Acoustics Research and Education, which is a key collaborator with UNH’s most recent co-locator: defense technology and software company Integer Technologies. Integer established a presence in Conant Hall in spring 2026 to develop advanced acoustic technologies that enhance U.S. Navy capabilities.
“Through this partnership with UNH, we are helping to advance the understanding of how sound behaves in the ocean while strengthening the specialized workforce needed to develop technology and apply that understanding in support of critical missions,” says Integer CEO and co-founder Duke Hartman.
Come for the Lab Space, Stay for the Students
For most industry partners, UNH’s facilities resources are the initial draw. Johnny’s Selected Seeds lacks sophisticated climate-controlled greenhouses like UNH’s Macfarlane Research Greenhouses. “We have high tunnels, like farmers,” says Johnny’s Vice President of Research and Development Kevin Cook, referring to the unheated plastic-covered structures, but not a space to grow and develop a new, disease-resistant variety of cut zinnias in the winter, when they’re less busy.
What’s more, UNH professor emeritus Tom Davis and his Ph.D. student Mamta Kajal are doing the very specific breeding research that’s likely to yield the zinnias Johnny’s hopes to produce. “This expertise is basically in our backyard,” says Cook.
“Very quickly we came to understand that [students] provide a fantastic opportunity for us. Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to do what we’ve done, which has helped us advance several drug discovery programs.”
Laboratory facilities are what drew RexChem founder Mark Spyvee, a longtime New Hampshire resident, to UNH after his company outgrew its incubator space in Massachusetts. He found his way to UNH, where RexChem shares lab space with professor of chemistry Erik Berda.
“Very quickly we came to understand that [students] provide a fantastic opportunity for us,” says Spyvee, who has hired nine undergraduates since RexChem has been at UNH. “Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to do what we’ve done, which has helped us advance several drug discovery programs.”
The collaboration benefits the students, too. “Essentially they have been doing what a professional chemist would do,” Spyvee says: gaining on-the-job skills, networking with industry, and pursuing research that has a real impact are among the benefits co-locating partners offer students.
Manufacturing Connections
Two trade organizations also call UNH home. The New Hampshire Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NH MEP), a public-private partnership that provides resources to Granite State manufacturers, recently moved its primary office to the Olson Center. And the trade consortium New Hampshire Aerospace and Defense Consortium (NHADC) has found UNH Manchester to be the ideal hub from which to connect manufacturing, government, and education.
The Queen City location puts NHADC at the center of the state’s manufacturing ecosystem, and it also helps NHADC leverage student talent. “Being able to directly connect our students with our membership is really important,” says NHADC Director Randy Makee ‘09G, who also teaches a course in operations management at UNH Manchester.
In July, UNH hosted U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and others at a beam-signing ceremony for a 70,500-square foot building that will house the Center of Excellence for Operational Ocean and Great Lakes Mapping and co-location space for industry partners. The facility, on the edge of the UNH campus, is expected to open in 2027.
Unanticipated Advantages
Mamta Kajal, a Ph.D. student in professor emeritus Tom Davis's lab, is working with Johnny's Selected Seeds to develop a new variety of zinnia seeds.
Co-location has brought some unexpected benefits to industry. RexChem utilizes some of the extremely expensive shared equipment in the University Instrumentation Center, nearby in Parsons Hall. Johnny’s Selected Seeds, which has a four-decade relationship with UNH’s cucurbit breeding program, sees future possibilities in utilizing UNH greenhouses for breeding biennials like Swiss chard, onions, and carrots.
For Airtho, which counts other research universities among its clients, its UNH address gives it more credibility than “an industrial park in some small town in New Hampshire,” says Bogart.
Airtho employees and clients alike enjoy what UNH has to offer, whether watching a Wildcats football game or grabbing lunch in downtown Durham. Being a part of the UNH community, he says, is “more of an added bonus than I expected it to be.”
A rendering of the 70,500-square-footbuilding that will house the Center of Excellence for Operational Ocean and Great Lakes Mapping, the Olson Center, and co-location space for industry partners.
