Hutchinson ? Max Ary, former director of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, has been hired by a specialty design and manufacturing firm in Eureka to lead its “advanced projects group.”

Invena Corporation, founded in 1998 as a consulting company, is now a design-build manufacturing and support company that develops primarily prototype equipment or systems for customers in more than 20 countries, said Invena President Matt Wilson.

It employs 18 people.

The company will draw on the same skills Ary used to develop the Cosmosphere into a premier space museum and to direct its one-time subsidiary, Space Works, in creating replica artifacts for other museums around the country and world, Wilson said.

“To think about what he’s accomplished in his career,” Wilson said. “He’s created amazing things in good ol’ Kansas. He is the obvious choice to take us to the next level.”

Ary, convicted of stealing and selling artifacts from the Cosmosphere, was released in June from a federal minimum-security prison camp in El Reno, Okla. Ary served about two years in prison and continues to profess his innocence.

Wilson said he followed Ary’s career, as well as his legal battles, and “the day he got out of prison I sent a message and told him I wanted to hire him.”

“I followed the details of the trial, and I can completely sympathize with the situation,” Wilson said. “It looked like a big mess that probably should have been handled in civil court. It’s a great travesty of justice that Max ever went to prison.”

Ary, who resides in Wichita, said he served his time in prison “pretty unscathed.”

“It wasn’t what most people think of in their mind what prison is,” he said. “It was absolutely the most minimum security. There were no doors on the rooms and the front doors had no locks. There were no fences. It was difficult to be away from the family, and so on, but I learned a lot. I went into it with a positive attitude.”

He was around people, Ary said, who he normally wouldn’t be.

“But I learned a lot of the character of people and how we sometimes judge unfairly,” he said. “I found out there are some really nice guys under those tattoos. It really broadened my mind about a lot of things.”

Invena’s story reads much like that of a small Hutchinson planetarium that became the Cosmosphere, Wilson said.

“Invena is all about doing amazing things in the most unlikely places,” he said. “We don’t have a product. We solve problems. We do weird projects for others. And Max is in that alley. His job is to bring in the complicated projects we can do.

“We had a customer in California in the wheel and tire business,” Wilson said, in explaining what his business does. “He was told he had to use ‘seismic tread wheel tracks.’ We had to find out what that means and then make the city fathers happy. Another company in pork processing couldn’t get the hogs to turn their heads to wash their mouths out. We came up with a pig head positioner.”

The company has also reverse-engineered equipment to build replacement parts or new equipment for clients, similar to what Space Works did for many years, Wilson said.

Ary said he’s on a sharp learning curve with the company, but looked upon the job “as a great opportunity and a very positive direction to go.”

“They are so much stronger in the engineering and design than we ever were,” Ary said. “I’m learning subjects that I never even thought I’d deal with.”

For example, Ary said, one specialty at the company is cryogenics, a process to “super cool” liquids.

“One of the jobs I have is to try to spot new emerging technologies, to see how they might be able to utilize them,” Ary said. “To find new business opportunities to diversify the company.

“I’ve always liked a challenge and I’ve definitely got one here,” he said.