KETTERING — Mound Laser & Photonics Center broke ground on a new $4 million, 20,000-square foot facility here Monday. The company has outgrown its current 15,000-square foot facility in Miamisburg, said president and CEO Larry Dosser.

The new site, located in the Miami Valley Research Park, is within easy distance of its research partner, Wright State University, Dosser said, as well as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and its Air Force Research Laboratory.

“That’s extremely important. There’s so much change coming out of the universities and out of the Air Force allows us to capitalize on all that knowledge and all that talent,” Dosser said.

Collaboration is key, he said.

“We see a tremendous growth in medical device manufacturing coming out of this,” Dosser said.

Partnerships between the manufacturing, education and government sectors are “absolutely critical” for advancement, he said. “The next wave of manufacturing is coming out of the universities,” he said. “You can’t have them isolated in a silo and us isolated in a silo. We have to work together.”

The new building should be completed in mid-March.

Mound Laser now employs 43 people, compared to five a decade ago. With the expansion, it will add jobs; over the next year, Mound Laser will add another 30 or so workers, said sales and marketing manager Lauren Goodman.