DEKA Research & Development

DEKA Research and Development is perhaps best known for its founder and president Dean Kamen -- and for the Segway Personal Transporter he invented. DEKA is a design and engineering firm that develops innovative technologies, many of them in the field of medical devices. The Segway itself was an offshoot of the iBOT, an all-terrain, stair-climbing wheelchair the company developed with Independence Technology, a unit of Johnson & Johnson. (Kamen founded a separate company in 1999 to market the Segway.) DEKA's other products include a portable dialysis machine developed in partnership with Baxter International and an improved intravascular stent made with J&J's Cordis. DEKA was founded in 1982.