A New Emphasis on Tech Transfer

October / November 05 By: Tom Michael Volume 3 Number 5

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Technology Transfer —€“ it's a term that means little, if anything, to most people but certainly not to readers of TechComm, the National Journal of Technology Commercialization. For a few visionaries in government, science and business, it means an opportunity to improve lives, create jobs, bolster communities and maybe even transform energy, health care, national security and other pillars of American life.

Tech transfer—€”or turning government-funded research over to the private sector and letting entrepreneurs take it to the marketplace—€”is something most leaders in Washington say they support. But voicing support and actually following through with political muscle and money are two very different things.
Most politicians, scientists and entrepreneurs with an interest in tech transfer say the government's commitment to it over the years has ebbed and flowed. Most also agree that in recent years, tech transfer, especially at the science-rich Department of Energy, has mostly ebbed.

That could change under a couple of relatively obscure provisions tucked into a major new energy bill that President Bush signed into law in August. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 would, among many other things, put a renewed emphasis on tech transfer at the Department of Energy. The measure would establish a tech transfer coordinator who reports directly to the secretary of energy. Just as important, this new high-level official would have a budget, although its ultimate size is yet to be determined.

The Energy Policy Act also calls for the establishment of Advanced Energy Technology Transfer Centers that would be located strategically around the country at the energy secretary's discretion. These centers, authorized at $10 million a year for 2006-2010, would act as business incubators, much like Technology Ventures Corp. in Albuquerque.

Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee wrote much of the new energy law. He said the new tech transfer provisions are designed to elevate the issue within the DOE bureaucracy. "It has to be done with real push and some resources, and that's what the whole technology transfer section in the bill is all about," Domenici said in an interview with TechComm.

Clay Sell, DOE deputy secretary and the second-highest ranking official in the agency, said the department is committed to making good on the legislation's promises. "We take tech transfer as a very serious part of our mission," Sell said. "We will enthusiastically carry out the provisions of the statute."
"If it's in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 we're going to implement it," he said.
Sell noted, however, that budget constraints within the federal government are severe. Record deficits and the war in Iraq were already squeezing congressional spending before the colossally expensive Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

Sell said it was too soon to tell how much money would be available for the new and improved tech transfer mission. The legislation calls for the establishment of an Energy Technology Commercialization Fund that would be used to pay for the new initiatives.

The money, under the legislation, would amount to 0.9 percent of the budgets of the national laboratories, or about $22 million based on current-year spending, according to congressional estimates. But that money could be reduced when lawmakers finalize DOE budgets later this year.

Domenici, who also chairs the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, holds the Senate purse strings for all DOE spending. He said the tech transfer provisions will be paid for when the spending bill comes out of his subcommittee. But there's no telling what will happen when the full Senate spending panel molds its spending bill, or when House and Senate negotiators hammer out a final amount for DOE later this year.

Much of the new tech transfer budget is riding on the White House's commitment to the provisions, Domenici said, adding that recent administration budget support for energy initiatives in general has been "trivial."

"We're going to get some of that money just because of the committee I handle," Domenici said. "Whether we're going to get it funded enough depends on whether they (the White House) ask for it, and I don't know that they will." Sell, a former advisor to President Bush on energy policy, said it was premature to say how much of a budget push the administration would give the matter.

A spokeswoman for Representative David Hobson, chairman of the House subcommittee that pays for DOE budgets, also said her boss could not yet commit to any specific funding for DOE and its tech transfer budget. "Chairman Hobson has not taken a formal position," said Sara Perkins, Hobson's press secretary. "Funding for this and other new programs included in the energy bill will be considered during the joint (House-Senate) conference committee."

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the top Democrat on the Senate energy committee, also from New Mexico, has worked with Domenici for years to improve the ability of the national laboratories to help industry create jobs and bring cutting-edge science to the marketplace. Bingaman said members of Congress with a keen interest in tech transfer will be watching closely to see how well the department does in making the provisions in the bill a reality.

"I hope very much it's implemented and given the priority it deserves," Bingaman said. "We're undoubtedly going to have oversight hearings to see how the department is implementing the various provisions of this bill. That will be a chance for us to talk to them about these provisions."

However, Bingaman said he's not holding his breath for full funding of the tech transfer requests in the new energy bill. "Getting funding for anything back here in Washington is a challenge these days with the size of the budget deficits we've got," Bingaman said. "We've given a lot of speeches about the importance of these things, and issued a lot of press releases. I hope we can now see the administration follow through."

Officials at DOE laboratories around the country seem excited about the prospects if the new tech transfer initiatives are paid for by Congress. However, as one lab director says, "no details are available yet on how these provisions might be implemented."

"Having an individual in a coordinating role should have a positive impact on uniformity of standards and practices across the lab complex," said John J. Grossenbacher, director of the Idaho National Laboratory, in a written response to TechComm's questions. "Undoubtedly, establishing the technology transfer coordinator as a direct report to the secretary with a significant budget makes a statement about the importance of technology transfer in accomplishing departmental missions.

"I am sure that when the commercialization funding mechanism gets established, the Idaho National Lab will work to utilize it given the variety of energy technologies in which we work," said.

Karena McKinley, director of industrial partnerships and commercial development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said she welcomes any push from Congress that emphasizes tech transfer.

"Tech transfer has had a lot of ups and downs—€¦not just within DOE but in general," McKinley said. "This legislation is a sign that there is some renewed interest emerging."

McKinley said she's heard Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman speak frequently of the importance of tech transfer, so she's convinced he's committed to it. Bodman, a former administrator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helped lead that institution's widely respected tech transfer efforts. "He has said he'd like to see the DOE labs follow on and basically surpass the successes that universities like MIT have had," McKinley said. "We certainly would like to help the secretary achieve that vision."

She also said there "really hasn't been anything like (a tech transfer coordinator at DOE) in the past. When there is a possible policy issue that may cut across DOE boundaries it would be really, really helpful to have somebody in a position like that to help get answers."

Duncan McBranch, leader of the technology transfer division at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said LANL could use more money to help move science from the conceptual stage to the applied stage.

"Typically there has not been a lot of funding," he said.

Los Alamos has a small program called technology maturation that is paid for largely from royalties it receives from private-sector sales and leases of lab-generated technology.

"If we could expand that program to take in a larger number of potential projects and maybe spend a little bit more money, we could have a much higher impact on getting things to the technology commercialization stage," McBranch said.

McBranch said part of the challenge in getting more money for tech transfer is that money previously spent on it didn't yield immediate results. DOE actually put a substantial amount of money into government-industry technology collaborations in the 1970s and 1980s. "Too much money was put into it too quickly and nobody saw an immediate benefit and it got a bad rap as corporate welfare," he said.

The new moves at DOE, including the establishment of a tech transfer guru, should be more helpful than simply sinking a lot of money into far-flung energy-related efforts. "We see a lot of disparate pieces at DOE that want to do this and the biggest barrier right now is that there is no institutional owner for tech transfer to bring all these pieces together and cut through the red tape," Mc Branch said. "There has to be a high-level owner of tech transfer that reports directly to the secretary of energy, and that person has to have control of some budget somewhere or that person has no clout within the organization."
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a former DOE secretary under Bill Clinton and a possible 2008 presidential candidate, agreed that DOE's tech transfer mission needs a full-time booster.

"It elevates the issue and that always helps in a bureaucracy," he said. "When you have an office dealing with this issue you know you can't escape it. This is a good step forward. Clearly, there has been progress, but there is a lot more that needs to be done."

Tom Michael reports from Washington for TechComm.