Draft:AVN Corporation

About

AVN Corporation (“AVN”), formerly known as the Mid-Atlantic Technology & Innovation Center (MATRIC), is a research and development (R&D) firm with core competencies in chemicals and chemical manufacturing, technical engineering, and advanced software technologies. The company is headquartered in South Charleston, West Virginia, and has approximately 100 employees.

History

In 1917, the Union Carbide Corporation (“Union Carbide”) was formed upon the merging of five electric arc furnace and acetylene companies to develop ethylene and similar chemicals. Union Carbide purchased chemical plants in 1925 for ethylene and propylene production, starting in South Charleston and expanding to other locations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, supplying 100% of global ethylene production. In 1949 it expanded to a new Technical Center to house research, development, and engineering. By the 1960s, Union Carbide was producing over 400 plastics and chemicals for industrial products and employing more than 2,000 people in South Charleston, Union Carbide’s largest R&D center.

As competition in the chemicals and plastics industry substantially increased in the 1950s, Union Carbide sold almost half of its productive businesses before it was acquired by Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) in 2001. After purchasing Union Carbide, Dow downsized its operations in South Charleston, moving most of its R&D work to Michigan and Texas and releasing 150 Ph.D. researchers and 900 degreed staff over the next four years.

With the sudden regional unemployment and departure of highly qualified employees, Dr. George Keller founded the Mid-Atlantic Technology Research & Innovation Center (MATRIC) in 2003 as a nonprofit R&D center to extend the Chemical Valley’s history and retain researchers and specialists in the Kanawha Valley, and its first employee and CEO was Keith Pauley. MATRIC started in a small office at the Charleston Area Alliance business incubator. Without access to labs, researchers took on jobs that could be done on computers, pencil, and paper, offering services such as technology assessments, consulting, and computer modeling. In 2005, MATRIC moved into the Union Carbide labs, formerly known as Dow Technical Center. Without any equipment, apart from a few glass distillation columns left over in the lab, employees used project earnings to purchase equipment and begin small-scale work.

Dow donated 258 acres in 2010 to the state of West Virginia, turning the former Carbide research campus into the West Virginia Regional Technology Park. In 2012, MATRIC had grown to 50 research employees and expanded its operations into one of Union Carbide’s previous facilities that housed pilot plants, upgrading its infrastructure to have blowout walls and a process control system. In addition, there were also steam, nitrogen, and waste remediation facilities. Three pilot plants were in operation, with the capability of operating 10. By this point, MATRIC had amassed a revenue of $9.4 million, with an operating surplus of $720,000.

In 2013, Steven (“Steve”) B. Hedrick became the president and CEO of MATRIC, replacing Keith Pauley, and Thomas A. Heywood became the chairman of the board of directors.

In 2022, senior management recognized that MATRIC’s non-profit status was impeding its growth and ability to raise larger amounts of money for projects. As a result, Steve Hedrick, Elton Bond, John (“Jack”) P. Dever, and John T. Miesner founded AVN Corporation (“AVN”) as a for-profit, employee-owned company, with the intention of acquiring MATRIC’s operations. In 2023, some 20 years after MATRIC’s founding, AVN completed the acquisition, absorbing MATRIC’s operations, assets, technology, patents, and facilities. All MATRIC employees maintained their same roles at AVN and received shares in the company. MATRIC, then MATRIC-WV, continued as a nonprofit and is now governed by a separate volunteer board of directors.

As of 2024, AVN has a global presence, having served mid-to-large-sized chemical and energy companies in six continents, with headquarters in the Appalachian Region of West Virginia at the West Virginia Regional Technology Park.

Company Awards & Success

From 2008 to 2011, MATRIC received 89 patent applications, 65 of which were for customers, and 24 for MATRIC’s own technology.

MATRIC was recognized by R&D World Magazine, alongside the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), as a 2019 R&D 100 Award winner for Offshore Risk Modeling (ORM).

MATIC co-authored a paper with NETL, titled “Assessing Offshore CO2 Saline Storage Potential with the NETL Calculator.”

In 2022, MATRIC received a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to collaborate with the Iowa Corn Promotion Board and researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) to develop cost-effective chemistries that could replace chemicals with corn in plastic production.

When RAPID Manufacturing Institute received the Rapid Assistance for Coronavirus Economic Response (RACER) grant in 2022, RAPID partnered with MATRIC, Teich Process Development, and Procegence to use $4.64 million to develop a testbed that will domestically manufacture critical pharmaceutical ingredients in the Appalachian region.

In 2022, MATRIC established the National Center of Excellence (CoE) for process design with RAPID, to streamline the process development of chemical manufacturing.

In 2023, AVN (previously MATRIC) joined the Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates (SOCMA), a peer advocacy network that supports the commercial growth of the specialty chemical industry.

Employee Awards & Recognition

Dr. George E. Keller, former Chief Engineer at AVN and co-founder of MATRIC, was a pioneer in chemical engineering. Early in his career, Dr. Keller lectured in President Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace Program. He worked for Union Carbide Corporation for 36 years, where his work helped reduce process waste, cost-effectively treat industrial waste streams, and recover valuable products from waste streams. Dr. Keller’s research on how to convert methane to hydrogen feedstock is one of the most cited papers in catalysis work, which earned him the Chemical Pioneer Award in 1996 by the American Institute of Chemists (AIC). The technology showed the potential for low-cost raw materials in petrochemical production during the shale gas revolution. Dr. Keller was a key leader at Carbide’s Separations & Process Fundamental Skill Center, one of the highest-profile industrial separation groups in the U.S., and he was recognized as a senior corporate fellow at Union Carbide. He developed the oxygen concentrator that separates oxygen from air to treat respiratory diseases, co-authored more than 35 publications, and held 21 US patents with his colleagues. He helped Union Carbide receive the Kirkpatrick Award in 1991 for his contributions to developing spray-coating technology that reduces volatile organic compounds. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) from 1988 to 2019 and was named a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The AIChE recognized Dr. Keller as a top 100 chemical engineer in the modern era and awarded him the Institute Lecturer Award, Clarence Gerhold Award in Separation Science and Technology, and Institute Award for Excellence in Industrial Gases Technology. Governor Jim Justice presented him with the Distinguished West Virginian award in 2017, and he was recognized by Senator Shelley Moore Capito in the US Senate. Dr. Keller passed away in 2019.

Steve Hedrick, AVN Chairman and CEO, was elected to serve on the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors in 2013. Hedrick has since served on several boards with service as an officer of a number those boards, including the West Virginia Business Roundtable since May 2021, Discover Real West Virginia Foundation, West Virginia Manufacturers Association, Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences of West Virginia and the West Virginia Regional Technology Park Corporation. In 2016, Hedrick testified before a U.S. Senate field committee on Energy and Natural Resources, speaking on the importance of having modern, reliable energy infrastructure in West Virginia and the United States. Hedrick presented at the Marcellus Utica Houston Conference as CEO of the Appalachia Development Group (ADG) in 2018, while working with the ADG to develop the Appalachia Storage and Trading Hub. That same year, Hedrick was the keynote speaker at the fall convocation of the West Virginia State University (WVSU) College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. In 2019, Hedrick was recognized as a Sharp Shooter by the West Virginia Executive for his active engagement in West Virginia community service and philanthropy. He has spoken about the Manufacturing Renaissance in America, the strategic importance of manufacturing in Appalachia, accelerating process ideation and innovation, and was a guest on the ROI podcast. He has spoken internationally in Europe and Asia about accelerating collaboration, onshoring of critical chemistries and the circular economy of plastics.

Dr. John (“Jack”) P. Dever, AVN Chief Technology Officer, was inducted into West Virginia University’s Academy of Engineers in 2020. In 2023, Dr. Dever received the Lawrence B. Evans Award in Chemical Engineering Practice, presented to leaders and innovators in chemical engineering by the AlChE.

Parvez Wadia, AVN Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, received the 2023 Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership in Chemical Research Management in sponsorship by Dow.

Dr. Madan M. Bhasin, AVN Chief Scientific Advisor, has been a member of the NAE since 2006 in the Chemical and Materials sections. Bhasin co-authored a publication in the Journal of Catalysis Science & Technology titled, “Investigating the influence of acid sites in continuous methane oxidation with N2O over Fe/MFI zeolites.”

Raymond Rooks, AVN Principal Engineer, was elected as the Treasurer of the Process Development Division (PDD) at AlChE in 2023. In the same year, Rooks was also elected as an AlChE Fellow by the Board of Directors. This status is the AlChE’s highest grade of membership. Only candidates with significant experience in chemical engineering, significant commitment to the profession, and more than 10 years of AlChE membership are considered. Rooks gave a presentation to the AlChE and Global Congress on Product Safety (GCPS) at the 2022 Spring Meeting and 18th GCPS with AVN Principal Engineer Glenn Graham. The presentation was titled, “Innovations in Pilot Plant Distillation Design.”

In 2018, Glenn Graham co-authored white papers with Pratik Pednekar and Don Bunning, titled, “Experimental Validation of Distillation Column Simulations,” and “Experimental Methodologies to Verify Distillation Simulations.” In 2020, Graham and Bunning co-authored “Design and Operation considerations for Distillation Experiments” with Jeremy Rader. With AVN in 2023, Graham and Rooks co-authored “Pilot-Scale Distillation Process Design,” and in 2024, published “Innovations in Pilot-Plant Distillation Process Design,” and “Challenges of Minor Impurities in Process Development.” Like Rooks, Graham was also named a corporate AlChE fellow.

Rob Nunley, AVN Director of Manufacturing, was nominated as Chair Elect in 2023 by the PDD leadership team at AlChE.

Brooke Albin, AVN Senior Manager of Laboratories, received the Emerging Leader Award from SOCMA in 2023. This award recognizes trailblazers in the industry of specialty and fine chemicals.

Jennifer Pramuk, AVN GIS Developer II, received her GIS Professional certification in 2023.