UF materials science and engineering professor's wife was called to the White House to take part in a panel on clean energy technology and discuss their company.

In a White House speech about clean energy on Monday President Barack Obama specifically mentioned Sinmat, a Gainesville-based start-up company that develops low-cost manufacturing technologies for smarter energy systems. The President categorized Sinmat as one of the companies that is helping America overcome the economic crisis by creating jobs and developing clean energy technologies. Technology development from the firm that was founded by a UF engineering professor and his wife will be central to America’s economic recovery, Obama said as he promoted his stimulus bill and budget plan in .
“It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention,” Obama said Monday. “At this moment of necessity, we need you. We need some inventiveness.”
Deepika Singh, Sinmat president and co-founder, attended the speech and spoke about the company on a White House panel earlier in the day. 

“[Obama] did come down after his speech, and he shook hands with three people and one of those was me,” she said.

Her husband, Rajiv Singh, is a UF materials science and engineering professor and Sinmat co-founder, vice president and chief technology officer.
Singh said Sinmat began operating in 2002 after the company licensed technology he developed at the university. 

Since then, Sinmat has received three R&D Magazine’s “R&D 100” awards, which recognize the 100 most significant new technologies around the world. 

Most recently, Sinmat received a 2008 R&D 100 award for developing a slurry (a mixture of nanoparticles and chemical additives) for wide band gap semiconductors. These slurries are used during the polishing process of microchips that are a key component of hybrid cars and energy-saving lighting systems.
“Our technology allows us to reduce the cost [of manufacturing] while making it more energy efficient,” he said.
Singh said his wife received an e-mail over the weekend inviting Sinmat to the White House for Obama's speech on clean energy. At first, they weren’t sure if it was a scam or the real deal, he said.
When the White House confirmed the invitation on Saturday, they arranged for Deepika to travel to Washington, D.C., the next day. It wasn’t until an hour before the event that they learned Obama would specifically talk about Sinmat during his speech.
“The way he said what the company does, I could not have said it better,” said Rajiv Singh, who watched the speech from Gainesville. “It was very exciting to see he had captured the essence of what we do in clean energy.”
In the speech, Obama pledged his support for companies like Sinmat and touted the $59 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that is invested in clean energy and tax incentives.
He also discussed his plan to invest $150 billion in clean energy and energy efficiency over the next 10 years, fund $1.2 billion of Department of Energy research, and make the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit permanent.

Singh said Sinmat could have access to much of this money when it applies for grants from organizations such as the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. He said Sinmat might attract more national attention since it was featured in Obama's speech, and he hopes this awareness could increase the company’s chances of obtaining funds.

Deepika Singh said the tax credit would be especially helpful because Sinmat, which has only 15 employees, is such a small company.

“I think the fact that we got picked or selected to be in D.C. has given us a lot of motivation to our employees,” she said, “We are really pumped up to take our products to the next level and contribute towards clean energy.”