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Catching people smoking inside schools, hospitals and hotels can be difficult, and violators often face no consequences for any damages they may cause. FreshAir Sensor, a company based in Lebanon, New Hampshire, has come up with a solution: sensors that can detect and identify hazardous smoke, pinpoint what room it’s in and send data directly to a business.
FreshAir is entering its 10th year and focusing on growth after spending its first five years as a start-up. To get the word out, the company made its fourth-ever appearance at Tech Jam in Burlington, Vermont, an annual convention that plays host to high-tech companies in and around Vermont seeking new employees and interns.
According to Mike Healy, a part-time software engineer with the company, FreshAir has about 30,000 sensors in operation and aims to get to the 100,000 mark over the next few years — or, as Healy put it, install “as many as we can handle.”
The company’s PolySen sensors work by using polymer technology that can chemically sense molecules from tobacco or cannabis smoke. Each sensor then sends that data over Wi-Fi to FreshAir, which analyzes the results and sends it back to the client to decide what to do.
Currently the company is focused on the hospitality industry and has partnered with hotels and casinos across America such as Best Western, Hilton and Live Casino and Hotel. In the future FreshAir also hopes to reliably detect vapor from e-cigarettes — the company is currently testing sensors that do that at Oxbow High School in Vermont and Hanover High School in New Hampshire, said Healy.
Chris Billiau, a web developer with the company, noted it can be difficult to find prospective hires in the area with the computer, data and coding skills needed, especially with competitors such as Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center nearby. The Tech Jam convention always helps them to make a “couple of great finds,” said Billiau with a smile.
Indeed many of the people approaching the company had computer science backgrounds and found FreshAir’s concept interesting.
Recent Washington State University grad Alison Siemiering, who studied software engineering and computer science, recently moved to Vermont to join her girlfriend, a graduate student at the University of Vermont. Now she is looking for a job nearby.
Siemiering found FreshAir “intriguing” and exchanged contact information with Healy after a laughter-filled conversation and a handshake.
Aaron Dunmore, a software engineer who recently moved to Burlington, also approached Fresh Air’s table. Dunmore loves the climate and mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire and just wanted to “check things out.”
Ben Tyler, a junior data and computer science student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, was scoping out potential internships at Tech Jam while visiting home in Shelburne, Vermont. He found FreshAir’s technology to really engaging and he simply, “wanted to learn more.”
Both Healy and Billiau feel passionately about their company’s mission and culture and hope new hires will feel the same. Billeau appreciates that he can spend time with family and work on his own schedule, which he attributed to being “just treated as an adult.”
Billieu and Healy also emphasized the fun team building FreshAir promotes, such as its pancake biathlon, chili cook off, disc golf competition and company trips to Maine to support the childhood Boy Scouts chapter of Joe BelBruno, one of the firm’s three co-owners.
Healy is partially retired after working for 35 years as a programmer for General Electric and moving to Burlington with his wife, who grew up here. He enjoys working part time for FreshAir because, “from a coding standpoint, the technology is fascinating.”
Healy chuckled to himself. “The environment is relaxed, and I really enjoy it — even though I am mostly doing grunt work,” he said, before adding, “Although my kids sometimes call me a ‘narc.’”
FreshAir has expanded greatly from its once simple design by BelBruno, who at the time of the sensor’s creation was a professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College. At that time, he was trying to create a handheld sensor for pregnant women to identify second-hand smoke. Now it is a full-scale commercial vision that, according to Healy, “will just keep on growing and improving.”
