OUR STORY
Lisi Global was founded in 2013 by Jason Crisp and Jeffery McComb to advance their proven technology applying energy to the soil to control pests. Based in Richland, Washington, the partnership actually started a year earlier as a medical imaging (x-ray) service and sales business servicing eastern Washington and the surrounding region. Several years prior, intrigued by the research work of close friends in the field of nematology and the struggles they faced developing an effective method of management, Jason theorized that applying energy to the soil would affect the nematodes and reduce their negative impact, and with the proper scaling could be achieved on a large scale.
In 2012 the long-time friends put structure to the idea and began the development of the DES. Jason knew that simply putting energy into the ground wasn't enough, it had to be the right kind of energy concentrated and controlled to make the application safe and effective. The team scraped together components found primarily on Ebay; parts from disassembled equipment from a variety of high voltage applications. None of the parts were exactly what was needed but were "close enough," and by working within the limits of the components a circuit design was taking shape. A challenge remained: how to generate the amount of energy necessary to overcome the soil's impedance and get to the nematodes.
A series of fortuitous events befell the project early on, the first was finding - on Ebay - a perfectly-suited power supply unit (one of only two in existence we would come to find out) which would deliver the energy needed to begin bench top efficacy trials. Work began building a functioning circuit and test apparatus around the now-known energy output. Another of the fortuitous events was unfettered access to the lead product engineer for the power supply we'd acquired. Despite not purchasing it from the manufacturer we benefited from his knowledge and experience as we completed the acquisition and assembly of components. Still more good fortune came in the form of a local machinist who graciously allowed us to plug in our crazy idea at his shop (a veteran who continues to support our efforts consulting and building the increasingly complicated apparatus). Engineering support via publicly-funded programs was instrumental in streamlining the circuit's development and side-stepping numerous pitfalls awaiting the project were it not for the additional expertise.
The project rapidly moved from a pile of components to a functioning circuit; no small achievement by any measure and a milestone praised by our engineering support. With the circuit stable and reliable, trials began in earnest to prove our concept. Starting small we incrementally upped the power along with the size of the treatment volume until we'd maxed-out the components. Over the course of only a few months we had nearly a dozen trials addressing a long list of objectives to determine efficacy on nematodes. Each trial proved that our concept worked and warranted continued focus to develop it to a useful scale. We set out to develop the next phase of the DES confident that we were on to something.
The next step for the DES was scaling up the output to treat a volume of soil several times larger than that of our early trials, and require an extraordinary increase in complexity from the bench top apparatus we'd cut our teeth with. Component technology that emerged just a few years earlier was now attainable, albeit expensive, and allowed us to concentrate and control the increased doses of energy and apply it safely to the larger volume of soil. In hindsight, we were exceptionally lucky, not just to find the components but we would find out later that acquiring them was a small coup.
The consistent results and increasing efficacy seen in the 2013 benchtop trials meant we could justify the purchase of a new power supply to match the one we had and the Infineon HV components we needed to control the energy. We were lucky, again, that John and Vici McComb offered to loan us the money for the new parts and equipment. It took until May, 2014 to the get all the pieces in one place and the component layout completed. We ran a number of trials in larger pots with infested soil from our research collaborator, we'd run the trials then Jason would carrying them to the east coast where the samples were analyzed. An early, exciting (alarming) setback occurred when one of our HV monitoring probes failed resulting in a very loud bang and very broken equipment. MORE TO COME. NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME.
There is much, much more to this story but you get the idea; the path from theory to working prototype is a long, twisty one but here we are. We have scaled our research prototype DES and delivery apparatus ready to deploy and demonstrate in the field the effects we observed in our bench top trials. We've leveraged the profits of our "day job" to pursue and be awarded a patent for our technology so we can launch unencumbered into the public realm. We have a lengthy list of development and research objectives that will demonstrate the potential of our technology beyond simply putting energy into the soil to effect nematodes. Starting small, focusing on one or two cropping systems we'll continue to develop the numerous delivery apparatus to expand the technology's reach and impact. It's an exciting time for us and we're looking forward to what the future holds and continuing the story from here...
In 2012 the long-time friends put structure to the idea and began the development of the DES. Jason knew that simply putting energy into the ground wasn't enough, it had to be the right kind of energy concentrated and controlled to make the application safe and effective. The team scraped together components found primarily on Ebay; parts from disassembled equipment from a variety of high voltage applications. None of the parts were exactly what was needed but were "close enough," and by working within the limits of the components a circuit design was taking shape. A challenge remained: how to generate the amount of energy necessary to overcome the soil's impedance and get to the nematodes.
A series of fortuitous events befell the project early on, the first was finding - on Ebay - a perfectly-suited power supply unit (one of only two in existence we would come to find out) which would deliver the energy needed to begin bench top efficacy trials. Work began building a functioning circuit and test apparatus around the now-known energy output. Another of the fortuitous events was unfettered access to the lead product engineer for the power supply we'd acquired. Despite not purchasing it from the manufacturer we benefited from his knowledge and experience as we completed the acquisition and assembly of components. Still more good fortune came in the form of a local machinist who graciously allowed us to plug in our crazy idea at his shop (a veteran who continues to support our efforts consulting and building the increasingly complicated apparatus). Engineering support via publicly-funded programs was instrumental in streamlining the circuit's development and side-stepping numerous pitfalls awaiting the project were it not for the additional expertise.
The project rapidly moved from a pile of components to a functioning circuit; no small achievement by any measure and a milestone praised by our engineering support. With the circuit stable and reliable, trials began in earnest to prove our concept. Starting small we incrementally upped the power along with the size of the treatment volume until we'd maxed-out the components. Over the course of only a few months we had nearly a dozen trials addressing a long list of objectives to determine efficacy on nematodes. Each trial proved that our concept worked and warranted continued focus to develop it to a useful scale. We set out to develop the next phase of the DES confident that we were on to something.
The next step for the DES was scaling up the output to treat a volume of soil several times larger than that of our early trials, and require an extraordinary increase in complexity from the bench top apparatus we'd cut our teeth with. Component technology that emerged just a few years earlier was now attainable, albeit expensive, and allowed us to concentrate and control the increased doses of energy and apply it safely to the larger volume of soil. In hindsight, we were exceptionally lucky, not just to find the components but we would find out later that acquiring them was a small coup.
The consistent results and increasing efficacy seen in the 2013 benchtop trials meant we could justify the purchase of a new power supply to match the one we had and the Infineon HV components we needed to control the energy. We were lucky, again, that John and Vici McComb offered to loan us the money for the new parts and equipment. It took until May, 2014 to the get all the pieces in one place and the component layout completed. We ran a number of trials in larger pots with infested soil from our research collaborator, we'd run the trials then Jason would carrying them to the east coast where the samples were analyzed. An early, exciting (alarming) setback occurred when one of our HV monitoring probes failed resulting in a very loud bang and very broken equipment. MORE TO COME. NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME.
There is much, much more to this story but you get the idea; the path from theory to working prototype is a long, twisty one but here we are. We have scaled our research prototype DES and delivery apparatus ready to deploy and demonstrate in the field the effects we observed in our bench top trials. We've leveraged the profits of our "day job" to pursue and be awarded a patent for our technology so we can launch unencumbered into the public realm. We have a lengthy list of development and research objectives that will demonstrate the potential of our technology beyond simply putting energy into the soil to effect nematodes. Starting small, focusing on one or two cropping systems we'll continue to develop the numerous delivery apparatus to expand the technology's reach and impact. It's an exciting time for us and we're looking forward to what the future holds and continuing the story from here...
