Mike Cheiky started Ohio Scientific immediately after college, with his wife, Charity. Ohio Scientific, an early microcomputer company, is credited with shipping the first fully assembled floppy-disk-based microcomputer and the first non-removable (Winchester) hard-disk microcomputer. It was sold to M/A-COM Corp. (now part of Tyco) in 1980 for a large return to investors. As company president, Charity was the cover story of Money Magazine in January 1981.
Mike went on to form M/A-COM Santa Barbara Labs, whose technology was later acquired by Hewlett-Packard for HP's Vectra line of touch-screen PCs. Mike subsequently ran a think tank for HP from 1985 to 1993.
In the '80s, Mike and Charity ran an electric-racecar/research team, Dreisbach Electromotive Inc. (DEMI), which set numerous electric-vehicle speed and range records and won the Department of Energy's first electric stock car race (earning it a spot on the front cover of Popular Science, July 1991). An investor group spun out DEMI's zinc air battery technology: Air Energy Resources Inc. (AERN). Later-stage management took AERN public on Nasdaq via Prudential Securities in 1994, yielding a large multiple to DEMI's race-team backers. The result of this work appears in modern digital compatible hearing-aid zinc-air cells.
In the late '90s, Mike formed V-Star and Zinc Matrix Power Inc. V-Star pioneered rich media on cellphones in the U.S. via a development contract for the Sprint Vision system. Mike invented 1KTV, an ultra-low data rate video system for limited bandwidth cellphones, which is still used today on select Sprint and Nextel phones. V-Star is now GOTV networks: www.1ktv.com.
Concurrently with V-Star, Mike founded Zinc Matrix Power Inc. (www.zmp.com) to develop rechargeable zinc batteries for emerging smart phones. The company conducted a highly successful handheld field test in 2000 at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), but repositioned to military applications soon after 9/11. ZMP entered into a strategic partnership with Intel in 2004 for laptop computers and received investments from Intel Capital and OnPoint, a venture capital fund of the U.S. Army. Mike brought in later-stage management to both V-Star and ZMP, which have subsequently attracted later-round venture capital funding.
For the last few years, Mike has been very concerned about global warming and the world's dwindling oil supply. As a pioneer of air cathodes as used in fuel cells and some batteries, Mike has come to the opinion that radical technologies such as fuel cells and the hydrogen economy cannot be deployed fast enough to address the world's near-term energy and greenhouse gas problems. Because of this, Mike has worked intensely on a group of technologies which could dramatically increase the efficiency of gasoline engines, thus reducing fossil-fuel needs and global warming without massive new infrastructure.
In late 2005, Mike developed working prototypes which have been confidentially reviewed by several leading university experts. In July 2006, he formed Transonic Combustion Inc. with several of America's top venture capital firms, to bring these new engine technologies to the internal combustion engine marketplace.
Mike has 48 patents issued/pending and sited as reference in more than 230 additional patents in four areas of technology. He holds a BA in Physics from Hiram College (1974). He was named "Top Physics Student in Ohio" (high-school category), in 1969, by the Ohio Academy of Sciences.
