Native of St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood used NASA tech to revive shuttered company

Christopher Campbell spiraled to a low after COVID-19 nearly shattered the self-labeled serial entrepreneur's company.

Now, the native of St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood, a historically Black community, is banking on NASA technology that can detect illnesses in someone's breath to make a comeback.

Simpli-Fi Automation, which moved to St. Paul's Osborn370 building this year, is licensing NASA's invention to create air-sniffing sensors that can detect such health problems as C. diff, a bacteria that often spreads in health care settings.

The company has raised about $950,000 and looks to launch a built-in-America product next year. It has also drawn roughly $1.3 million from the state of Minnesota as it plans a $12.2 million expansion that is expected to create or retain 75 jobs in the next three years.

Campbell, 45, said the company still faces years of development as it looks to create sensors that can recognize other diseases, such as stomach cancer.

But the return home has made the chief executive "feel alive," he said. Growing up in Rondo, Campbell said he saw examples of Black excellence often, including doctors and professionals who spent time with his father, an inner-city minister.

"I got exposed to the concept of coming up with a vision and then seeing the vision through no matter what challenges came up," Campbell said of his father being his greatest inspiration.

From a young age, Campbell said, he gravitated toward technology, bugging his father by taking apart and tinkering with all his electronics, such as radios and speakers, because he "wanted to see how it worked."

After moving to Virginia as an adolescent, Campbell learned about wiring, installation and programming while building recording studios. That, he said, "set a fire up under" him.

"That's the most powerful feeling I can imagine: to wake up every single day and to know that the work I'm going to do that day is going to leave a lasting legacy not just for my family but for humanity," Campbell said.

Simpli-Fi's concept grew out of the NASA Technology Transfer program, which makes the space agency's inventions available to the public for commercialization. The company licensed the agency's E-Nose, a device using tiny sensors to mimic a mammal's sense of smell, according to a study that found the device could correctly identify COVID-19 in the air 79% of the time in preliminary testing.

Commercializing the technology will be a long road, Campbell said. "I don't want to imply that we have it all figured out," he said.

Before Simpli-Fi, Campbell began his journey as an entrepreneur by starting a home automation and security company at age 23.

"I was able to see how it really is to be a business owner," he said, "all the stress that comes along with it, all of the promise that comes along with it."

That hasn't ebbed with Simpli-Fi. The startup incorporated in 2018 as a Florida-based company that integrated technology systems together in commercial buildings to work as a single unit. But business sputtered when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and Campbell had to make staff cuts to his team of 16 employees. He called it one of "the worst times" of his life.

"But during that time is where we made a pivot," Campbell said.

He set out to find a new technology, eventually spotting NASA's electronic nose, thanks to Brown Venture Group, a St. Paul-based firm that supports Black, Latino and Indigenous tech startups. Campbell's brother, Paul Campbell, is a partner at the firm but said he recused himself from the investment decision.

Chris Campbell was skeptical of the electronic nose's capabilities at first but sprang for a commercialization license after spending a year researching the technology. By this past summer, he had moved the company to Minnesota and specifically the Osborne building because both are "known for device creation," he said.

Simpli-Fi's sensor packs some of the science of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, which require huge machines, into a sensor the size of a dime, Campbell said. Using nanotubes, the sensor picks up metabolic qualities in the air and breath, he said.

For now, the company is focused on the C. diff-sensing Provectus Canary device. It scans the air around a hospital patient to detect the bacteria that causes the infection, which has gastrointestinal symptoms like diarrhea. The company is working toward the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval for using the sensor to detect various diseases.

The main challenge for now, Campbell said: "How do we go from making a handful of sensors by hand to making millions of sensors?"

The company is building out a 7,500-square-foot space on a subterranean level at Osborn370, where it can produce prototypes and small batches of devices. The company plans full-scale production at a facility in Brooklyn Park, starting in late 2025.

Mary Rick, St. Paul's director of business development, said the city wants to keep building med-tech momentum, and Simpli-Fi has been a great partner.

All this rapid growth has come with "a whole lot of self-doubt," Campbell said, adding there's no guarantee any of this will make a difference.

"But I think the whole point of greatness is that you do it in spite of not knowing," he said.

That perseverance is something that he said he started to forge as a child. And he's reminded of that daily.

Campbell said he can look out the window of his seventh-floor office and see across the Mississippi River, down the Robert Street Bridge and to "the very house where this was all inspired."