Raymond L. Orbach

Orbach's the Man to See for DOE Tech Tranfer

April / May 2008 By: Tom Michael Volume 6 Number 2

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The congressional mandate seemed simple enough. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to designate one person within the sprawling Department of Energy to overhaul the agency's efforts to move government funded science and technology to the marketplace.

Making an appointment for such a big job wasn't easy, but the greater challenge—€”spurring the DOE to work more effectively with the private sector—€”was even more difficult in a vast bureaucracy with a reputation for treating so-called "technology transfer" as something less than a priority.

Ray Orbach, whom Bodman appointed to the new position of Tech Transfer Coordinator last summer, said he aims to change that. In an interview with Innovation, Orbach, who also leads the DOE's Office of Science, said a new policy statement issued by Bodman earlier this year lays out the DOE's guiding principles for tech transfer. The last time anybody wrote such clear directions for tech transfer policy at DOE was 17 years ago—€”in 1991.

"There was no structure or framework for tech transfer that was current for today's market conditions," Bodman explained. "The policy statement was very important." The three-page statement reads in part that the DOE will engage in tech transfer "with a special emphasis on enhancing the nation's energy security, scientific discovery, economic competitiveness and quality of life through innovations in science and technology."

Orbach said he hopes to foster a collaborative environment among all the different departments at DOE that will work toward a single, unifying effort to move DOE science to the marketplace. And he wants entrepreneurs and other private-sector types to know where to go for help.

"What I hope to have is a one-stop shop—€”a single place where a person from the private sector can go, ask the right questions, and get directed to the right place in an effective and efficient fashion and then develop the technologies our labs are producing into a product in the marketplace," Orbach said.

The DOE had a technology transfer coordinator in the 1980s, but Orbach said at some point "the position went away. After that, there was no single person in the department that the secretary could point to on tech transfer. Every program was interested in it, and each laboratory did it, but there was no unifying element within the DOE."

Even before Bodman issued the tech transfer policy statement, Orbach said a tech transfer policy board was created to represent different science areas within DOE.

"The board gave every program in the department a voice in setting tech transfer policy," Orbach said. "This board has been meeting continuously (every month) since last summer and we're swamped with responsibilities
The board is comprised primarily of career employees, instead of political appointees like Orbach. "That's important because the political appointees, like myself, will change from time to time," Orbach said. "The board gives continuity for tech transfer policy that a single individual would not be able to maintain."

Beyond revising the structural framework within the DOE, Orbach said he and his board have reexamined the way the agency approaches the entire job of tech transfer.

"We want to be able to work with private sector," Orbach said. "Rather than looking at the private sector from the perspective of the DOE we've flipped that relationship and gone directly to the private sector and said "what's the problem?"

One of the biggest problems is as basic as the DOE's organizational structure itself.

"We've found that we look very confusing," he explained, "especially to some of the small businesses who are interested in some of the technology in our laboratories. We are told we look like a maze, that every lab is different, that the requirements we have are impossible to negotiate and on and on. What we are trying to do is consolidate, liberalize and streamline the mechanisms for tech transfer across the laboratories."

Orbach said a long-standing suspicion on Capitol Hill that the DOE isn't interested, or can't be bothered by tech transfer isn't completely valid.
Senators Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici, the top Democrat and Republican, respectively, on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote the new tech transfer directives into the Energy Policy Act of 2005 in part because of perceived apathy at DOE toward the subject.

"There has been an urge to do tech transfer that our scientists feel," Orbach said. "Our scientists are very proud to see their technology adopted by the private sector so that initiative was always there. The difficulty is that we were looking at the private sector and telling them how we would transfer technology to them," he continued. "This wasn't the most effective and efficient vehicle for transfer. It was with that in mind that we began to take a look at how we actually look to the private sector."

Orbach also said Congress has set up funding mechanisms and generally nurtured the DOE's efforts to improve its tech transfer efforts.

"They've been wonderful," Orbach said. "It's really our turn. I think Congress feels they've given us the ability to put together a program in this area coordinated with the private sector. Now what are we going to do about it? We need to take this structure that congress has created and make it work."

When Bodman announced Orbach's appointment last summer, Domenici and Bingaman complained that they had intended someone to take on the job full-time. But Bodman simply added it to Orbach's already daunting list of responsibilities as the DOE's director of the Office of Science.

So does he have enough time to do all that is expected in the realm of tech transfer?

"If you were to ask me could I do it alone, the answer is no," Orbach said with a laugh. "But some of the blessings I have are a great staff and the policy board itself. General counsel, NNSA, etc. With the structure we have, its getting done."

Orbach said the potential for the DOE's national laboratories and the private sector to create jobs and help give the U.S. economy a boost are limitless.

"I'm very excited about it," he said. "Our laboratories are the last stronghold we have for very large interdisciplinary research within the United States. We used to have the big corporations that had the research laboratories of major proportions. Well, they no longer exist. This is it. We have a superb record of achievement in these laboratories. Given this resource and the competitive situation the United States finds itself in in the global economy, not to use that resource for our competitiveness is nuts.

"What drives me is being able to develop our economy on a global scale using the very best technologies and science available, and that's our laboratories."
Orbach also encouraged any entrepreneur, scientist, investor or businessman with an idea to contact DOE. He promised that someone will at least hear them out.
"Just call us. We have an open door," he said. "We'd be delighted to work with them."

Tom Michael reports from Washington for Innovation.