Bob Cochnar, Editor

At Last, a New Website

Editor's Note

August / September 2010 By: Bob Cochnar Volume 8 Number 4

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When we launched Innovation almost eight years ago, we also launched a website, which, of course, is what one must do in this internet-dominated world. While the magazine underwent various and sundry tweakings over the years (including a change of name from TechComm to Innovation) the website traveled on its merry way with barely a nip and a tuck, not to mention a tweak. And so it was well past the time to give the site a major overhaul. But now it’s done, thanks to the yeoman (yeowoman?) work of our associate editor, Valerie McKinney, who is also our überwebmeister.

We post complete issues and the archive contents of every issue we’ve published, which can be useful since all articles are indexed. In addition, we’re providing regular technology transfer news and plenty of links. Check it out at www.innovation-america.org.

Speaking of tweaking, in this issue you’ll find two new columns that deal with topics that are of particular interest to our readers—technology transfer and entrepreneurship. The first is a product of the new Office of Technology Transfer at the Department of Energy. It’s over there, on the opposite page, and it’s by Rochelle S. Blaustein, a senior advisor on tech transfer. Her observations are likely to be of keen interest to those scientists and entrepreneurs who are looking to commercialize things invented at national energy laboratories.

The other column (on page 8) is by John Freisinger, a director of project development and business assistance at Technology Ventures Corporation, the nonprofit foundation that, among other things, publishes this magazine. John offers down and dirty practical advice to those folks yearning to become entrepreneurs (card-carrying entrepreneurs are likely to be interested as well).

I’d also like to call your attention to two interesting and exclusive interviews in this issue, one with Kristina Johnson, DOE’s Under Secretary for Energy (page 12), and one with Curt Carlson, president and CEO of SRI International (page 30).

An editing error in the article about the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, Calif., published in the June/July issue, gave the institute a grant of $500 million from BP. Not so. BP’s $500 million established the Energy Bioscience Institute on the UC, Berkeley, campus. Close, but no cigar. The editor was confused and apologizes. A DOE grant of $135 million helped create JBEI.