Two companies in the bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County were listed among the top 50 growing businesses in the region by a local business magazine.

SmartCEO Magazine named Next Breath, which provides pre-clinical development of inhalation and nasal products for pharmaceutical and medical device companies, and Solvern Innovations, which provides IT development and consulting and business management services to federal intelligence and military outlets, to its 2008 "Future 50" companies.

The companies were recognized for their high growth in revenue and number of employees in the last three years.

Next Breath, a graduate of the bwtech@UMBC business incubator program, grew from nine employees to 22 in the last year and a half, according to Julie Suman, the company's president and co-founder.

Suman would not comment on revenue growth, but credited bwtech@UMBC with helping the company build business connections in the region.

She said the company is strong despite the recent downturn in the economy.

"We're certainly grateful in that we had a strong contract backlog and a strong pipeline of new prospects that kept us going and also set the stage for 2009," Suman said.

Solvern Innovations, founded by UMBC graduate Andre Gudger, currently has 120 employees and has grown by more than 3,000 percent since it was founded in 2003, according to its Web site.

The nod from SmartCEO is Solvern's second recognition of growth from a business publication in the last few months.

In October, Inc. Magazine's ranking of 5,000 companies nationwide named Solvern as the 52nd fastest growing privately-owned company, the fifth fastest growing government services company and the fastest growing Baltimore-based company.

The magazine reported Solvern's revenue went from $309,375 in 2004 to $9.3 million in 2007.

Gudger could not be reached for comment.

According to Georgia Patton, senior editor at SmartCEO and project manager for the Future 50 project, the magazine's staff merged data on revenue and employee growth to produce its list.

The list, in its fifth year, names the top 50 growing businesses alphabetically, not in order of growth.

The list is a particularly powerful indication of success this year because of the economy, Patton said.

"It's important, given the current state of the economy, to be able to say that while a lot of companies have fallen by the wayside or have not been doing as well, some companies are doing well," Patton said. "It's kind of a light in the clouds."

Both Next Breath and Solvern will have half page profiles in SmartCEO's January 2009 issue.

According to Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of bwtech@UMBC, the recognition of the two companies' growth is an honor for the companies, the research park and UMBC.

"For the companies, it's really helpful from a business development standpoint to get this type of recognition, but it's also helpful for our program," Hemmerly said. "We worked very closely with the companies and provided a lot of different business services and support, so we think it's also a reflection of the effectiveness of our program."

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