Bright Ideas

By Naperville Magazine
August 2024 View more Featured

By Jeff Banowetz

Local innovators are transforming the fields of entertainment, health, engineering, and design

Paramount Theatre’s Million Dollar Idea

From My Fair Lady to Frozen, the Paramount Theatre in Aurora has served as a model of innovation since it launched its Broadway Series in 2011. Instead of merely hosting touring shows, Paramount decided to produce four Broadway-caliber musicals each year in its renovated 1931 art deco theater along the Fox River. The move has not only helped revitalize downtown Aurora, but its subscriber base of more than 40,000 has made it the largest subscription house in the country.

Since then, the Aurora Civic Center Authority, which oversees the Paramount, renovated the 165-seat black-box Copley Theatre across the street and created the BOLD series in 2022, which presents both plays and musicals better suited to the smaller space. It also oversees the Paramount School of the Arts and RiverEdge Park, the 6,000-seat outdoor concert venue just north of the Paramount.

While that would seem to be quite a plateful for any organization, the Aurora Civic Center Authority has just debuted yet another performing space—the Stolp Island Theatre (5 E. Downer Pl.), along the river just south of the Paramount—for an immersive theatrical experience. “This isn’t watching what happens up on a stage,” says Creg Sclavi, who is the project manager for the construction of the theater and codirecting its first show. “The idea is to create a different kind of space, where the performance is a part of a unique experience.”

The theater will open with Million Dollar Quartet, the musical that drops into Sun Studio in Memphis on December 4, 1956, when Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley all happen to be there at the same time—and recorded an impromptu jam session. For this production, the space has been transformed into a re-creation of the studio, complete with its storefront on Union Avenue. “The audience will go through the doors of the studio, just as you would if you were in Memphis in 1956,” Sclavi says. “And then you’re inside the studio. It’s as if you’re a fly on the wall of the actual recording.”

The only visual difference from a real recording studio are the audience seats along the walls. Those 99 seats allow patrons to sit in and experience, up close, the music of these four legends in a way that wasn’t possible as a traditional stage production. “Lots of people have seen this show before,” Sclavi says. “But they haven’t seen it like this.”

Indeed, many of that Paramount subscriber base will recall its 2017 production of Million Dollar Quartet, performed on the big stage of the 1,800-seat house. “It’s actually one of the shows that we get asked about most, about when we’re going to do it again,” says Jim Corti, Paramount’s artistic director, who directed that 2017 show and is codirecting this reimagined version with Sclavi. “We thought this was an opportunity to rethink what the show can be within a completely different context. And then [set designer] Jeffrey Kmiec just knocked it out of the park with this incredible concept.”

The idea for this new theater evolved quite quickly, after Tim Rater, president and CEO of the Aurora Civic Center Authority, saw Sleep No More in New York City. That show features a retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth as told through a 1930s film noir lens. It’s staged in a series of rooms that patrons walk through at their own pace, creating a unique experience for every member of the audience. “Tim loved that show,” Corti says. “He came back and said we should come up with something like that.”

As luck would have it, Aurora mayor Richard Irvin approached the theater soon after, asking if some vacant building space nearby could be turned into a theater. “That’s what Tim does, he says ‘yes’ to things,” Corti says. “And we went about figuring out just what we could do to make this space interesting.”

Sclavi, who had performed in Million Dollar Quartet as an actor (he was Elvis), was brought on to help oversee construction and guide the production. “I’ve learned a lot about building codes,” he says with a laugh. “It’s been a challenge. It’s a challenge to put on any show, but when you are building a theater from scratch, it’s a different set of problems. But the support has been overwhelmingly positive. I think everyone can see that we’ve got something special here.”

That support includes strong initial interest from the public. When tickets for the show, which opened July 19, originally went on sale in May, the first four weeks of the show sold out in 30 minutes. Eight weeks sold out in less than 48 hours, and the run was extended through the end of the year. “It’s been amazing to see the interest even before people can see it,” Sclavi says. “I don’t think it will disappoint.”

While all involved expect a long run for Million Dollar Quartet, the Stolp Island Theatre can be adapted for future productions with the same level of creativity. “When we’re done with Million Dollar Quartet—far, far, into the future, hopefully—we remove the studio and start from scratch with another show,” Sclavi says. “Each show gets its own unique space.”

But with only those 99 seats at each performance, we can expect Presley, Cash, Lewis, and Perkins to be regulars along the Fox River for quite some time. “With theater, you never know,” Sclavi says. “But we hope that people from all over will want to come to Aurora and be a part of the experience.”

Bringing the Hospital to Stroke Victims

When you dial 911, help arrives quickly. But sometimes even an ambulance can’t get patients the treatments they need soon enough. “When it comes to a stroke, every second counts,” says Harish Shownkeen, medical director of the stroke and neurointerventional surgery programs at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield. “Every minute you delay treatment, you have millions of brain cells that are dying. The earlier you can treat the patient, the better the outcome and the better the chance that the patient will be able to go home instead of going to a rehab facility or being permanently handicapped.”

Stroke patients require sophisticated imaging tests to determine the course of action. Even when an ambulance arrives, the patient is typically brought back to the ER before treatment can begin. But what if you could bring the ER to the patient?

That’s exactly what Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital has done with the creation of its Mobile Stroke Unit. The vehicle features a 16-slice CT scanner, a telemedicine connection, and a lab stocked with stroke-specific medications. It’s staffed with a critical care nurse, a CT technician, EMT technical driver, and critical-care paramedic. Upon arrival, the patient can be immediately scanned to determine if the stroke was caused by bleeding (hemorrhagic) or a blockage (ischemic), and an ER doctor, who’s connected to the technology remotely, can see the results and prescribe immediate treatment.

“We’ve found that we save on average 30 minutes with the unit, and sometimes it’s a lot more than that,” Shownkeen says. “Once the unit is in the field, it can do everything that you can do in the emergency room. You can get a CT scan done, you can get blood testing done…you are in contact with a neurologist via telemedicine, and the decision of what drug to give you can be given right away.”

The Mobile Stroke Unit is deployed throughout the western suburbs when a 911 call is received for a possible stroke. Shownkeen estimates that the team is deployed between 400 and 500 times a year.

One deployment was at the Roselle home of Karen Blinstrup, a former nurse. She had recently seen the Mobile Stroke Unit while attending a touch-a-truck event with her granddaughter, but little did she know that it would soon save her life.

She received medication while the vehicle was in her driveway, and it almost immediately helped with her symptoms. “I said ‘hello’ to everyone in the Mobile Stroke Unit,” she says.

Back at the hospital, physicians removed a four-centimeter clot from her cerebral artery. “My recovery was excellent,” Blinstrup says. “When my kids arrived, I could talk with them and had good movement…I could be in a totally different circumstance if not for the Mobile Stroke Unit.”

Right now, the Mobile Stroke Unit is the only one of its kind in Illinois. Shownkeen estimates that there are about 15 similar vehicles operating in the United States and 30 around the world. One of the things holding back further adoption, according to Showkeen, is the lack of Medicaid payments for the service. “The hospital loses money with this because right now, there’s no billing code created by the federal government to cover the payment,” he says. “We do it because it’s a benefit to the community. It saves lives and it’s a better outcome for all. It’s a matter of time before the reimbursement all gets worked out. But you know how things are with Medicare and the federal government—it might take another five years, who knows?”

Keely Buffo, the Mobile Stroke Unit program manager, emphasized that the benefits of the treatment only work if people recognize the signs of stroke early. “It is extremely rewarding to see our patients return to an active and full life,” Buffo says. “That can only happen if patients are treated quickly. Call 911 at the first sign of stroke.”

Building a Better Battery

This May, both the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago were on hand to celebrate the announcement that Bedrock Materials was establishing its headquarters and a research and development center in Chicago. Of course, politicians are always happy to highlight more jobs coming to the state. But in this case, they were there because the company chose the Midwest as the place to innovate a key piece of technology that may help shape how we travel in the future, and in the process, perhaps, make the Chicago area a leader in the development of electric vehicles.

Spencer Gore, a Naperville North grad and cofounder of Bedrock Materials, is working to create a sodium-ion battery that, unlike the lithium-ion batteries that power most electric cars, can be built without relying on rare elements that are difficult and expensive to mine. “Sodium-ion batteries are being produced now in China but at a very small scale,” Gore says. “It’s interesting that they’re using technology that was invented at Argonne National Lab like 13 years ago. They work, but they’re not yet living up to the true potential of the material technology either in terms of its performance or in terms of using abundant materials. Sodium-ion technology that’s working in China today is still based on using a lot of nickel, so it’s really expensive.”

A potential roadblock, for sure.

“Science has come a lot further since then,” he says. “So, the name of the game is to take some of the innovations that have happened and figure out how to perfect those and take those to scale so that sodium ion can live up to its true potential.”

Naperville resident Spencer Gore, cofounder of Bedrock Materials, is working to create a sodium-ion battery for both electric and gas-powered vehicles.

That’s the goal of Bedrock Materials, which is building a research team to further advance the design so that sodium-ion batteries become a cost-effective alternative to the lithium-ion batteries currently on the market. “Historically, sodium-ion has been challenged in that it hasn’t carried as much energy per weight or energy per volume as lithium-ion batteries,” Gore explains. “It’s been getting better over the past several years, and now we need to figure out how we can keep those gains without relying on some of the expensive metals that helped it get there. Instead of using, for example, nickel or cobalt, we need to find a way to use more abundant metals like iron and manganese.”

Gore, who graduated from the University of Illinois and Stanford before working on batteries for Tesla and Enovix, cofounded the company in 2023 with Rafael Vila, another battery scientist from Stanford. Their initial thoughts of setting up shop in California ran into the problem of out-of-control housing costs, making it difficult for them to recruit scientists. “We thought about what we needed for a successful startup,” he says. “It didn’t take long before it became clear that Chicago was going to rise to the top of the list.”

He has returned to Naperville, where he now lives with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. He praised the education he received at Naperville North—he graduated in 2010—and credited the math and science departments with helping him to discover a passion for technology. “I was actually a pretty terrible math and science student my first year at North,” he says. “A lot of credit goes to my teachers who went above and beyond to instill excitement about math and science in a student who, frankly, they had no reason to believe could be good at it.”

With $9 million in seed funding this spring, Bedrock Materials is on track to produce its first sodium-ion battery in the next year.

While electric vehicles are getting most of the hype, Gore hopes that this new technology also will change batteries being used by gasoline-powered vehicles. “It’s interesting because the battery technology has not changed that much over the years, but the needs have,” he says. “Cars these days increasingly have driver assistance and autonomous driving features on board, which are safety critical. If those components shut down while driving, you have a crash. What that means is that you have to have a really robust ability to predict the health of the low-voltage, 12-volt battery on board. And that’s really hard to do with 150-year-old lead-acid technology. It’s easy to do with lithium-ion and with sodium-ion, so we’re already starting to see that market transform.”

For electric vehicles to dominate the car market, a more sustainable and predictable battery is necessary. “Car manufacturers need stability in their battery prices, and the only way they can get that is to stop the use of volatile, critical materials in their construction,” Gore says. “That’s really what sodium-ion promises.”

Rethinking How We Sit

It was a happy coincidence that Eddy Zhang and Ben Zhang ran into each other at the Naperville Public Library. The two had attended the same elementary and middle schools (they are not related), but now Eddy was a junior at Naperville Central while Ben was the same year at Naperville North.

Eddy recently had found out about the Conrad Challenge, one of the country’s most prestigious STEM-related student competitions, and he was trying to put together a team. Another friend of his, Andrew Bukowski (also a Naperville Central student), already was onboard, but Eddy was trying to find other people to make a commitment. “I hadn’t seen Ben in a couple of years, but we just clicked together again instantly,” Eddy says. “I thought he’d be a perfect fit.”

Turns out he was right. The three of them began working on the challenge, which tasks students to come up with a new product “applying science, technology and innovation to solve problems with global impact.” They rather quickly came up with a product idea—the SmartSeat, a seat cushion that uses sensors to map pressure and an algorithm-based adjustment system to vary stiffness. It’s designed to alleviate seat-related health issues, such as lower-back pain, pressure ulcers, and blood clots.

They were one of 25 teams to be invited to Space Center Houston, where they spent five days this spring in the final phase of the competition. When it ended, they were one of just five teams to bring home the competition’s top prize, a coveted Pete Conrad Scholar award, in the category of health and nutrition. “It was just the most amazing experience of my life,” Ben says. “It’s almost like you can’t put into words what it was like to be at the Space Center Houston with all these smart people. It’s a dream come true.”

Their idea for the seat came from a real-life issue that most people can relate to: discomfort from sitting too long. “I had this long-running joke with a lot of people that I have a bad back because of sitting so much during COVID,” Ben says. “And it turns out, Eddy and Andrew, they could definitely relate to that. There’s a lot of health issues that come from sitting, so it didn’t take long for it to become a passion project for us. We all had a personal connection with it.”

Ben and Eddy had some experience with pressure mapping through a previous class project. “Andrew handles all of the software—he’s the magician in the crew,” Ben says. “He also did a great job with all the data.”

But the difficulty came with working out how to create a physical product that worked as well as what they designed on paper. “Figuring out how to adjust the stiffness, that was something that’s totally new to us,” Ben says. “There are not too many chances to get hands on with a project like this in high school. It took a lot of time and work to figure things out.”

A lot of time.

“We spent so many hours on this project,” Eddy says. “Once we got going, it was a big commitment. Lots and lots of late nights. Lots of weekends. We’re still doing our school work and other activities, but this started to really dominate our lives to make the deadline.”

They considered getting invited to Space Center Houston as victory enough, but winning a top prize there was icing on the cake. “I think we all thought we’d already won [just by being there],” Ben says. “Once we were there, we weren’t too concerned with winning. There were so many great teams there. But we did think, maybe we have a chance? Our idea is pretty good.”

They are now hoping to pursue their idea even further, perhaps even eventually taking the product to market. “To be fair, our prototype isn’t a prototype,” Eddy says. “I can’t hand you a cushion right now. It’s more proof-of-concept testing. For this competition, we needed to impress people. We needed to explain what could be done. But moving forward, it’s more about what we can actually build.”

While they all have high hopes for the product—and plan to continue working on it—they also realize that the contest has helped them focus on careers in innovation. “One of the most interesting things is the exposure to these different fields,” Eddy says. “We met so many industry professionals. It really helped solidify my beliefs. You see what it takes to become an entrepreneur—and that’s something that’s really appealing to me.”

Photos: Ross Feighery (opening spread and directors); Jeffrey D. Kmiec (theatre rendering); Northwestern Medicine; Bedrock Materials (lab and Spencer Gore); David Duncan Photography LLC