Pensacola is home to world-class innovation and smart manufacturing technology businesses in wind energy, robotics, life science, chemicals, aviation and more. Companies like GE Wind Energy, Ascend Performance Materials, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pall Corporation, Pegasus Laboratories and ActiGraph are all trailblazers in the field of research, development and innovative solutions that drive continuous improvement and our economy.
ActiGraph, a leading provider of wearable biometric sensors for the global scientific community, has moved its offices and is expanding thanks to a $850,000 grant from the University of West Florida. The Industry Resilience and Diversification Fund (IRDF) grant was facilitated by FloridaWest Economic Development Alliance and is designed to help companies committed to investing in the region.
ActiGraph operates in multiple sectors of bio-science research, technology, and smart manufacturing engineering. Using intellectual property originally developed for the U.S. military, ActiGraph activity monitors were among the first commercially available tools capable of quantifying human movement in the free-living environment.
The company announced in May 2022 that the Pensacola area was the preferred location to pursue their expansion, and ActiGraph CEO Jeremy Wyatt says the grant will allow the tech company to add jobs and grow their headquarters as they expand their offerings.
“We’re so excited to be able to turn this grant into jobs and investment in Northwest Florida,” said Wyatt. “Through this UWF grant, we’re going to be able to have a workforce in the Pensacola area of at least 43 positions and anticipate the Pensacola area workforce to ultimately be much higher than that. What this grant means to the future of greater Pensacola area is at least $7.8 million in economic impact.”
Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Pensacola, Florida since 2007, ActiGraph has established its reputation in the clinical research market to become the most widely used medical-grade wearable technology solution in the world. More than 2,000 global biopharma, academic, and scientific research organizations in more than 150 countries use ActiGraph’s solution, and their name appears in more than 20,000 published scientific papers to date.
Scott Luth, CEO of FloridaWest Economic Development Alliance, said ActiGraph was an ideal candidate to apply for and receive the University of West Florida IRDF expansion grant.
“ActiGraph has become an industry pioneer in the field of objective physical activity and sleep measurement and has been actively diversifying and growing its offerings,” said Luth. “I’m proud the FloridaWest team was integral in helping this important company secure the IRDF grant from UWF that will make this growth possible and, in turn, lift up the region. ActiGraph is ideally positioned to carry on this high-growth trajectory.”
Starting in 2015, ActiGraph began diversifying market segments, taking data capture and management technology into the largely untapped realm of pharmaceutical drug development. Despite significant barriers, they have advanced from 10 industry sponsored clinical trial studies in 2016 to nearly 250 in 2023.
ActiGraph’s potential to continue advancing its leading cloud-based metadata repository for clinical trials is significant. Their goal is to create an end-to-end platform for the capture and analysis of automated, high-volume patient-derived clinical sensor data in order to improve patient outcomes and increase drug development efficiency.
The IRDF fund was established in 2010 following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2021, UWF, who administers the fund, announced there was $10 million remaining in the State of Florida program to distribute to companies that are committed to investing in the impacted area’s footprint. Eligible areas include Bay, Escambia, Franklin, Gulf, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Wakulla and Walton Counties.
Prior recipients of the grant include Navy Federal Credit Union, ST Aerospace, Paradigm Parachute and International Paper. More information about IRDF can be found here.
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About FloridaWest Economic Development Alliance: FloridaWest Economic Development Alliance is the designated economic development organization for Pensacola and Escambia County. They are an alliance of public and private community leaders dedicated to collectively building, growing and sustaining the economic potential and prosperity of individuals, businesses and our Northwest Florida communities.
About ActiGraph: ActiGraph is pioneering the digital transformation of clinical research. We provide end-to-end digital health technology (DHT) solutions by integrating and operationalizing the best hardware, software, and algorithms to generate reliable evidence and get the right treatments to the right patients, faster. ActiGraph’s medical-grade wearable technology platform has been used to capture real-world, continuous digital measures for nearly 250 industry-sponsored clinical trials and thousands of academic research studies. Appearing in over 20,000 published scientific papers to date, ActiGraph is the most experienced and trusted wearable technology partner in the industry.
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