Reed’s technology, known as Automatic Continuous Online Monitoring of Polymerization (ACOMP), also aims to improve product quality and enable the manufacture of more sophisticated polymers, while reducing emissions and energy consumption and increasing the safety of workers and surrounding communities.

Within a year of conceiving his idea, Reed and his students constructed their first prototype for their new process and published their first peer-reviewed article, which immediately drew the attention of major industries. 

“At that point, I envisioned the technology coming into widespread industrial use in about five years,” Reed said. “But it actually took 25 years for it to go from proof-of-concept to adoption by a global high technology company.”

Early in 2023, Yokogawa Electric bought the company that licensed and commercialized Reed’s innovation, Fluence Analytics, making it one of Tulane’s most successful spinouts ever.

In lauding Fluence’s success story, Tulane President Michael A. Fitts said he envisions a future where the lab-to-market process is completed in much less time. 

“This type of innovative, translational work embodies our vision for research at Tulane,” Fitts said. “Fluence is a case study in tech development and deployment. Tulane recently launched the Innovation Institute to bring breakthroughs and research like this to market faster.”

Kimberly Gramm, the David and Marion Mussafer Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer at the Tulane Innovation Institute, called the acquisition of Fluence Analytics by Yokogawa “a spectacular story about excellence and perseverance.”

“This is a great example of what is possible,” she said. “Their journey is precisely what the Innovation Institute is here to help other innovators and entrepreneurs accomplish ... We want to provide guidance, so more ideas and technologies are de-risked quickly to make a difference.”

It’s a move that Reed embraces.

“We want to help young innovators and entrepreneurs get oriented in the fraught waters of IP and startups,” he said. “It’s not for the faint-hearted.”

The co-founders of Fluence Analytics, which got its start as Advanced Polymer Monitoring Technologies, are all Tulane graduates, including Reed’s son Alex Reed (SLA ’09), Michael Drenski (G ’05) and Bill Bottoms (G ’69).

Fluence Analytics is among numerous companies that began at Tulane with assistance from the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center and the Tulane Office of Intellectual Property Management, which protects technologies created from research and assists with patent strategies and de-risking technologies for commercialization. 

In addition to ACOMP, the Fluence Analytics portfolio includes an innovative lab instrument to dramatically accelerate and optimize the development of biotherapeutics, which use natural biological substances to fight disease.