Company profile: CEM Corp.

Inside a nondescript, brick, warehouse-sized building in rural Matthews, N.C., a company is quietly revolutionizing the way many common laboratory procedures are done. They are doing it with that ubiquitous kitchen appliance: the microwave oven.

CEM Corp. is a pioneer in what may be the only technology ever to go first to the kitchen, then to the laboratory. The same property that makes microwave ovens so popular in the kitchen, fast heating, is now speeding up laboratory procedures from hours to minutes.

The ideas behind CEM were a collaborative effort of three fo