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Airtho recently donated a clean room to the John Olson Advanced Manufacturing Center.

When Airtho, a New Hampshire-based controlled environments developer, outgrew its office, it moved to a new yet familiar location: 91��Ƭ��. For several years, Airtho had worked with 91��Ƭ��’s  on product development and testing, and half of their employees were 91��Ƭ�� alumni. In 2022, the company co-located its growing business with the Olson Center.

“Moving to 91��Ƭ�� 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. “We’re excited to be a part of this collaborative environment and to be close to the latest research, engineering talent, and emerging technologies that help inspire the next generation of innovators.”

Airtho’s success is hardly an outlier. A total of 10 companies currently co-locate at 91��Ƭ�� in Durham, a 400% increase since 2022, and more are in the wings. In fiscal year 2025, they occupied more than 13,000 square feet of space in 91��Ƭ��’s Olson Center, Parsons Hall, Rudman Hall, and elsewhere. On campus, they access state-of-the-art facilities, innovate with faculty researchers, and nurture a vital workforce.  

“91��Ƭ��’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, 91��Ƭ�� 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.”

Among them:

• SPEE3D, an Australian 3-D metal manufacturing company that made the Olson Center its first U.S. location;
• French maritime robotics innovator Exail and New Hampshire-based sonar technology company Klein Marine, two companies that deepened longstanding partnerships with 91��Ƭ��’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping by co-locating at the Olson Center;
• Johnny’s Selected Seeds, which crossed the state border from its headquarters in Maine to collaborate with plant geneticists in 91��Ƭ��’s  ;
• , which provides pharmaceutical laboratory services from 91��Ƭ��’s Parsons Hall;
• , a 3D concrete construction firm based in Rochester, New Hampshire;
• Defense technology and software company , which will establish a presence at 91��Ƭ�� in spring 2026 to develop advanced acoustic technologies that enhance U.S. Navy capabilities.

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.

Come for the Lab Space, Stay for the Students 

For most industry partners, 91��Ƭ��’s facilities resources are the initial draw has limited heated greenhouse space and lacks sophisticated climate-controlled greenhouses like 91��Ƭ��’s Macfarlane Research Greenhouses. “We have high tunnels, like farmers,” says Johnny’s Vice President of Research and Development Kevin Cook, 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, 91��Ƭ�� 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, who notes that zinnia seeds were one of their strongest-selling flower seeds last year.

Laboratory facilities are what drew RexChem founder Mark Spyvee, a longtime New Hampshire resident, to 91��Ƭ�� after his company outgrew its incubator space in Massachusetts. That state, he acknowledged, “is not the cheapest place in the world to rent anything,” so he looked north and found his way to Parsons, 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 in the two years RexChem has been at 91��Ƭ��. “Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to do what we’ve done, which has helped us advance several drug discovery programs.” RexChem has several compounds in clinical trials, thanks to the bench work of students.

The collaboration benefits the students, who “keep our robots busy by finding chemicals, weighing out chemicals in various prescribed amounts into what we call reaction vessels,” Spyvee says. “Essentially they have been doing what a professional chemist would do.” 

Unanticipated Advantages

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 — and the company’s 91��Ƭ�� student-employees get trained to operate it.

Cook jokes that other breeders at Johnny’s Selected Seeds are jealous of the flower breeders’ access to 91��Ƭ��’s Macfarlane Research Greenhouses; he sees possibilities in utilizing the greenhouses for breeding biennials like Swiss chard, onions, and carrots. This work extends a four-decade relationship between 91��Ƭ�� and Johnny’s Selected Seeds, which licenses  bred at 91��Ƭ��.

For Airtho, which counts other research universities among its clients for clean rooms and other technology, its 91��Ƭ�� location gives them more credibility than “an industrial park in some small town in New Hampshire,” says Bogart.

His employees and clients alike enjoy what 91��Ƭ�� has to offer, whether watching a Wildcat football game or grabbing lunch in downtown Durham. “We knew that we would be a part of the Olson Center, but actually we've enjoyed being a part of the 91��Ƭ�� community,” he says. “It’s more of an added bonus than I expected it to be.”

If your business is interested in co-locating at 91��Ƭ��, contact Justine Stadler.