Community Involvment at PADT, Inc.

AZBio seeks to unify, empower and advance its member organizations, who collectively form Arizona’s bioscience community. As the unified voice of the bioscience industry in Arizona, AZBio strives to make Arizona a place where bioscience companies can grow and succeed.

As a tenant of ASU, PADT leases our facility from the ASU Research Park, the company has a unique opportunity to interact with this school.PADT, Inc. has an active internship program with the College of Engineering where we hire very promising students to work with our engineers in design, analysis, testing and manufacturing. Some of the company’s best employees started at PADT as interns.

PADT was also an early supporter of the schools PRISM (Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling)Interdisciplinary Research Center. Over the years the company has provided funding, expertise and exposure to new rapid prototyping technologies.

PADT’s involvement at UofA primarily consists of offering our experience to classes through lectures and seminars. The company also participates in the annual Engineering Design Day, including sponsorship for the Mechanical Engineering Design award.

2008 Design day judges, including PADT’s Eric Miller

PADT was introduced to NMT through their heavy use of ANSYS software in the teaching. Engineers visit fairly regularly to lecture and mentor students on their project. In addition, PADT is honored to sit on the Industrial Advisory Committee for the Mechanical Engineering accreditation effort and to also serve as a judge of senior design projects.

University of California, Berkeley - After the untimely death of one of PADT’s most valuable employees and a friend to all, Ken Camino, PADT honored his families request and both employees and the company have made generous contributions to the Berkeley Engineering Fund. If you remember Ken as fondly as we do and would like to honor his memory, please visit their website.

Arts

Even though PADT is a technology company, we feel that art plays an important part in our community. As such, PADT has offered support for art and music events in our community when employees or close associates of the company are involved. Currently, PADT is a sponsor of the Sonoran Desert Chorale.

Professional

Invest Southwest - PADT is an accredited investor attendee and, for 2008, an event sponsor for Invest Southwest. This annual gathering is the premier capital conference in Arizona and the Southwest connecting the region’s most promising ventures with knowledgeable investors. This is yet another way that PADT works to improve the technical business climate in Arizona. Learn more at www.investsouthwest.org.

SME - PADT’s involvement with the Society of Manufacturing Engineers is very similar to the relationship with AIAA. Many employees were active student members and still participate in Phoenix Chapter events.

The Arizona Technology Council is a non-profit trade association founded to connect, represent and support the state's expanding technology industry. To promote economic growth and professional development in Arizona's technology sector, the Council provides members networking opportunities, business support and access to educational forums. The Council strives to distinguish Arizona as a leader in the technology community and offer resources that are exclusive to its members. Visit www.aztechcouncil.org to learn more about the council.

The Arizona Technology Investor Forum (ATIF) is an investment community of accredited private equity investors, venture capitalists, corporate, and institutional investors. Forum members invest in high-quality, diverse investment opportunities. The community is strengthened through its involvement in Arizona State University’s Fulton School of Engineering. This focus provides a constant deal flow stream of early-stage technology ventures. PADT participates by investing and providing technical and business experience to funded companies. Visit atif.asu.edu to learn more about this important organization.

SME - PADT’s involvement with the Society of Manufacturing Engineers is very similar to the relationship with AIAA. Many employees were active student members and still participate in Phoenix Chapter events.

AIAA - While in college many of PADT's employees were active members in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Their involvement has carried over into further participation. In fact, two employees were past Phoenix Chapter presidents. This is one of the strongest engineering organizations in Artizona.

User Organizations

3DSUG - PADT is a long time participant in the 3D Systems User Group in its current and previous forms. This group is dedicated to providing information and feedback on Stereolithography (SLA) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) technologies developed by 3D Systems, Inc. In 2006 one of PADT's engineers, Brad Palumbo, was elected to serve as secretary for the group. The choice of a PADT employee by the users for this position highlights the leadership position that PADT holds within the community as well as Brad's recognized long time expertise in the area.

XANSYS - PADT is the sole sponsor of XANSYS, a worldwide on-line user group for over 2,500 ANSYS users. The company provides the hardware, software and maintenance of www.xansys.org. In addition, PADT’s engineers are frequent contributors to the community.

Local Charities

Each year PADT makes donations of time and funds to a variety of local charities that our employee’s or other business associates recommend. This includes small donations of time and funds as well as adopting families for Christmas.

As part of PADT’s commitment to local charities that impact local people, the company recently gave financial support to a benefit event for the local food bank located in Maricopa, AZ, a growing community south of the Phoenix Metro area. The benefit was in support of F.O.R Maricopa (Food/Opportunism/Resources) which recently celebrated its one year anniversary. On a weekly basis over this past year, F.O.R. provided food for approximately 60 families. To learn more about F.O.R. Maricopa please visit www.formaricopa.org The event was held in June 11, 2008 in Maricopa and besides raising money and collection food for F.O.R. the benefit featured resources booths from the Pinal County Health Department, EMPACT-SPC, MASH Collation and various local churches and organizations. The event also included a live music concert.

PADT is proud do be a sponsor of one of the largest underwater robotics competitions in the country: NURC. These competitions promote the involvement of High School and University students in hands-on engineering. Visit their web page to learn more h2orobots.org

PADT strongly promotes greater diversity in the engineering community.  To help promote this the company helped sponsor the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Underwater Robotics team from ASU in 2007.  Somehow in between classes, finals and busy lives, this very talented group of women built and ran a robot that finished 2nd in their first competition. To read the full article on the ASU WISE team - Click Here. To read the ASU WISE teams competition report - Click Here

National and International Charties

PADT is dabbling in the Microcredit world by investing in entrepreneurs from developing countries through Kiva.org. Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back. Click Here to see PADT's lender page: Learn more about Kiva at: Click Here

After the Tsunami in Asia and Hurricanes in the United States, PADT has taken a more active role in supporting national and international charities that provide significant services to those who need it the most. Most recently, the company has made significant matching donations to the American Red Cross. When making sizeable contributions, PADT always checks with CharityNavigator.org. This is an invaluable resource that publishes how much of the money donated to a given charity actually ends up going to programs.