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The Tech Council of Maryland honored several companies, including Germantown's Integrated BioTherapeutics as the 2009 Emerging Company of the Year, at its recent awards dinner in North Bethesda.

M. Javad Aman, Integrated's founder and chief scientific officer, accepted the award, which is given to small businesses that have shown "vision and enterprise in starting up and, through a well prepared business plan and market performance, are meeting targeted financial goals."

Integrated, which is developing vaccines and therapeutics to fight infectious agents, started operations with a $50,000 grant from the Maryland Technology Development Corp. in 2006.

The company has since garnered more than $30 million in government grants and contracts, including a $22 million, four-year contract with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop a vaccine to protect against Ebola and Marburg viruses. The contract would be worth $65 million if all options are exercised.

"It feels reassuring that we are on the right path. There is so much support and encouragement in the state of Maryland for entrepreneurship, and from the very first day we were dependent on support by state, and we got a $50,000 grant from Tedco," he said. "So we have been very fortunate to have support, not only financially but also from business development from our stay in the [Frederick] incubator and connections we through the incubator."

Other award winners were David Kline, chief information officer, Discovery Communications of Silver Spring, Executive of the Year; Catapult Technology of Bethesda, Government Contracting Firm of the Year; Sucampo Pharmaceuticals of Bethesda, Biotechnology Firm of the Year; and Fairchild Controls of Frederick, High Technology Firm of the Year. Also, Kim Bickerstaff, a science teacher at Western School of Technology and Environmental Science in Baltimore, received the Tech Council's first award as Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Educator of the Year.

Catapult Technology is a service-disabled veteran-owned business that provides information technology and management consulting, enterprise systems and information management services to the federal government and private sector.

The Tech Council awards are a good way to promote technology companies in the state and promote the state's reputation as good for business, said Eric Brahney, director of corporate communications for Catapult, which employs about 500 people in the area.

Aman said profits at Integrated, which has 23 employees, are several years down the road for its lead products, but the company has other ideas to make money.

"We have started a parallel service business, and we expect that to become profitable next year," Aman said. "It is basically testing for drug development for other companies, focusing on expertise that we have in-house. We are not trying to be a service company — we are an R&D company. … We want to develop products. The service business supports us, brings in a little more cash and helps our main mission."

This report originally appeared in The Business Gazette.