Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico

From the Lab to the Marketplace

April / May 2008 By: John Mott Volume 6 Number 2

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Safeguarding the nation has been a core mission for Los Alamos National Laboratory for more than 60 years. In our work to preserve national security, our world-class scientists and engineers routinely achieve breakthrough solutions to many of the nation's most crucial challenges. From fundamental research in biology and global climate change to problems related to nuclear nonproliferation, energy and infrastructure, and countermeasures to nuclear and biological threats, outstanding science underpins the laboratory's past, present and future.

In today's increasingly competitive global economic environment, our nation's economic future depends more than ever on our ability to transform fundamental science discoveries into new products, services and technologies that better our world. At Los Alamos, the technology transfer, or TT, division is committed to maintaining what has been recognized as one of the most innovative programs for technology transfer among the DOE national laboratories.

TT translates innovations into products and services across a continuum of activities. At one end of this continuum, we form mission-critical strategic alliances with large corporations in areas such as energy security and modeling and simulation.

Through the Alliance for Advanced Energy Solutions, Los Alamos and Chevron Corporation have engaged in several joint research projects to develop promising energy technologies that will deliver additional energy supplies. Over the past four years, Chevron and Los Alamos have cooperated on a variety of projects and breakthrough technologies, including radio-frequency telemetry, advanced sensor technology for the collection and transmission of oil well data and the mitigation of deepwater, ultra-high casing pressures.

In an "open innovation partnership," Los Alamos and Procter and Gamble have engaged in joint research projects that have enabled major breakthroughs in both materials science and predictive modeling and simulation. The relationship, spanning a dozen years and an equal number of projects, encompasses manufacturing processes, materials science, physics, chemistry and modeling and simulation. A pinnacle project of the partnership resulted in creation of PowerFactoRE, reliability engineering software that resulted in saving over a billion dollars in P&G's manufacturing businesses while enabling LANL to validate reliability engineering software critical to our stockpile stewardship mission.

At the other end of this continuum, we partner with investors and local, state and regional economic development organizations to create new startup companies based on Los Alamos technology. Regional economic development facilitated by the commercialization of Los Alamos technology is a metric by which we measure our ability to transfer technology for the public good, and we have created a variety of innovative programs to encourage the creation of new businesses based on laboratory technology and expertise.

In 2002, TT initiated the Technology Maturation Fund to meet a significant, unmet need for bridge funding to help early stage technologies reach commercial viability. The fund provides up to $50,000 per project to laboratory inventors to refine and mature commercially viable innovations. To date, the fund has shown an impressive return on its investment of $2.4 million in 45 projects, including helping to launch five startup companies that have cumulatively raised over $7 million in private investment.

The Tech Maturation Fund typically supports prototype and proof-of-concept projects. For example, in FY 2005, researcher David Reagor developed a novel device—€”the Underground Radio—€”that enables two-way communication in mines, subways, other subsurface structures and buildings. Two Technology Maturation Fund projects, totaling $49,000, enabled Reagor to improve his system and demonstrate its operation. As a result, the technology has been commercially licensed and we expect that a commercial device based on the Underground Radio will soon be a life-saving tool for first responders.

TT division also invests its retained income from its licensing activities in larger, longer-term, strategic initiatives. For instance in 2005, TT made a $100,000 investment in new technologies to harness radioisotopes for medical applications. This investment provided momentum to the newly created New Mexico Center for Isotopes in Medicine, a joint effort between Los Alamos and the University of New Mexico expected to lead to significant advances in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Los Alamos National Security LLC, manager of the laboratory, also invests a portion of its management fee in technology maturation activities. The LANS Venture Acceleration Fund invests up to $100,000 in projects that facilitate the creation and growth of regional ventures based on Los Alamos technology or expertise. The $350,000 annual fund builds on the success of TT's other investments by serving as an externally focused fund that supports businesses with a laboratory affiliation. To date, awards totaling around $600,000 have been made to six regional startups—€”all of which have licensed LANL technology.
The Venture Acceleration Fund already has had a positive economic impact in the northern New Mexico business community, attracting additional investment, creating jobs and enabling startups to reach larger markets faster. For example, APJeT Inc., a small Santa Fe-based startup company, licensed technology from the laboratory and created products for advanced textile finishing applications such as making textiles resistant to water, stains and other substances in an environmentally friendly manner. APJeT used its award to accelerate development of a commercial prototype and to attract significant private equity investment.
As a result, the company has formed important partnerships with a manufacturer and a university to demonstrate the technology in a limited production environment.

While capital is a necessary ingredient in creating new ventures, capital alone is not a sufficient ingredient. Startups require capital, technology and people. TT has launched two programs to help provide the latter ingredients. Our Entrepreneurial Leave-of-Absence Program permits employees to create or join new ventures while maintaining ties with the laboratory. In many cases, these entrepreneurial scientists have formed companies around technology they have created as Los Alamos employees. Since the program's inception, lab entrepreneurs have created 25 new startups. Research scientist John Elling took entrepreneurial leave in 1997 to start BioReason, a Santa Fe startup established to develop advanced statistical molecular analysis software for drug discovery research. Subsequently, Elling founded and successfully exited two other biotech companies.

In 2005, the TT Division launched the Visiting Entrepreneurs program to identify technology opportunities and to introduce those opportunities to entrepreneurs and investors. The program assists TT with achieving the laboratory's regional economic development and other technology transfer goals by assisting in creating new companies based on laboratory technology or expertise; facilitating access for and engagement from the local venture community in Los Alamos deals, and increasing participation by Los Alamos technical staff in entrepreneurial, licensing and cooperative research and development activities. In its first three years of operation, the program contributed to the formation of four new startups in New Mexico.

John Mott is Technology Transfer Division Leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory

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Some Los Alamos-bred Innovations

High Definition Laser Scanners for Surveying
Los Alamos engineer James Lunsford developed his patent for "Offset Stabilizer for Comparator Output" to satisfy the need for more precise time-interval measurement increases "as we probe ultrafast processes in the physical and biological worlds." Today this innovation is a crucial component in a line of high-definition surveying (HDS) laser scanners produced by world-class manufacturer of precision measuring instrumentation, Leica Geosystems. It contributes the ability to maintain the high accuracy of 6 millimeters at a distance of 50 meters during a survey, reducing or eliminating the need for costly return visits to a site. It also contributes to more accurate, complete as-builts for retrofit design projects, enabling more cost-effective retrofit designs. This sub-nanosecond interval timing ensures that each interval is absolutely equal to other intervals. Leica's recently introduced ScanStation 2 runs at 50,000 points per second at peak with its speed and accuracy directly attributable to Los Alamos' patented technology.

Transpire Inc.
In 2002, John McGhee and Todd Wareing took entrepreneurial leave of absence from Los Alamos to participate in founding Radion Technologies. Through a licensing agreement, the company built on core laboratory technology to develop a complete radiation transport software product, Attila, that can predict how radiation behaves in a broad range of applications faster and more accurately than other products on the market. Since the first official release of Attila in 2004, interest has grown rapidly. Attila is now being used in over seven countries for applications as diverse as radiation shielding, radiotherapy, medical imaging, fusion research, homeland security, spacecraft design and reactor analysis. The company, renamed Transpire Inc., has received numerous small business innovation research grants, including two from the National Cancer Institute for medical imaging and radiotherapy. In addition to licensing its software to healthcare companies, Transpire has active collaborations with the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center for radiotherapy and Baylor College of Medicine for medical imaging.

Knowledge Reef Systems Inc.
Knowledge Reef Systems Inc., a recent Los Alamos spin-off based in Santa Fe, N.M,, is developing a new social networking platform that will enable a new generation of online communities that share a common value—€”a desire for sharing knowledge. In contrast to existing networks, such as myspace.com and Facebook, which are mostly entertainment-based venues for young people, Knowledge Reef will allow thousands of knowledge workers to find each other for online collaboration and information sharing.
"The selection of Knowledge Reef as a funding recipient was the compelling event that drove formation of the company. Not only was the Venture Acceleration Fund award instrumental in securing additional funding from Flywheel Ventures Gap Fund, but it also permitted us to accelerate building our engineering team and meeting our goal of delivering an early prototype in January. This enabled us to close our first customer last month," said Gary Ebersole, Knowledge Reef's president and CEO.