Aspen Technology Inc
The company makes industrial software that helps energy, chemical, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing firms design, optimize, and run their plants more safely and efficiently. It was founded in 1981, spun out of a joint MIT and US Department of Energy research effort called the ASPEN (Advanced System for Process Engineering) Project, which was born in response to the 1970s energy crisis. Despite the name, "Aspen" has nothing to do with the tree — it comes straight from that government-funded project's acronym.