Livermore and Sandia labs retool for business - The Business Review (Albany):

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Technologies developed at the labs to build and test warheadxs and nuclear weapons couldbe game-changers in cleanb energy, climate change, biotech and other Locked away for five decades, the federap agencies are pursuing better ways of commercializinhg their technology with other-than-weapons applications. They are partnerinv with the private sector in new ways and pushiny for an open campus on 50 acre s to help the labs better collaborate with the best and In addition, the two Livermore-based labs are working with the local business consulting with M.B.A. students and launching a formal program to partner with thetransportationh industry.
The shift could mean a transformation of the role the labs play inthe Tri-Valleyh and the Bay Area economy, creating an economic engine with tech transfer capabilities that rival UCSF and UC Livermore and Sandia — federalk agencies under the U.S. Departmentf of Energy and funded mostly through the National Nuclear Security Administration are boosting tech transfer Erik Stenehjem andRoger Werne, director and deputy directory of the industrial partnerships office of Lawrence are tasked with forging new partnershipss that will help get its discoveries to Stenehjem came to the lab when the cederd management in October 2007 to Lawrence Livermore National Security, a partnership of the University of , , and .
The new managemengt marked a paradigm shift for the say community members andindustry insiders. “(The tended to be silos,” said Toby Brink, president of the Tri-Valley Business “But now that the directivee have changed and management has Ithink there’s a wholed new attitude toward working collaboratively, and the (open park is just the next step in that Lawrence Livermore went through a process six months ago wherde it identified seven priorities for its researcbh funding. Energy and climate change modelinbg are twoof them.
Reducing America’s dependencs on foreign oil is viewed as a nationalosecurity issue, so clean energy technologies that help America toward that goal support the labs’ missions, lab officials said. For the recently opened National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermorse was built to test what happens inside a nucleatrfusion reaction, but the same technology could also create nuclear fusionn energy to meet massive energyg demands. “Energy is almost exclusivelhy a product of theprivate sector. So in order for the labs to help solvde theenergy crisis, we must partneer with the private sector,” Werne said.
Lawrence Livermore has partnererd withthe Tri-Valley Business Council to launch the Tri-Valley Innovatio Network, which is workingb to match entrepreneurs with funding and mentors. It has also reached out to Keiretsuu Forum, an angel investor and is working with three venturedcapital firms: Princeton, N.J.-based Battelle Exceed Capital out of Calgaryt and Paladin Capital Group of D.C. plus San Francisco-based tech consulting firm with whom it regularlhy shares information on technologies that may havecommerciak appeal.
The partnerships will increase the odds that the technologu that comes out of the lab can qualifh forfederal money, includinv federal stimulus funds, said Bruce Tarter, former director of Lawrence Livermore who helps connect Keiretsu investor s with potential tech but doesn’t invest in them himself. “(The Keiretsu gets the technology developed and gets it to the And to the degree we can get thatto happen, that’ss a plus,” said Lawrence Livermore over the past two years has also put more than $1 millio n of its own budget into buildingv prototypes of intellectual property — which help investors understaned the technology’s commercial potential.
Stenehjej said the labs have developed technologies relate d tocarbon sequestration, energy storage, new battery technologies and “A lot of these things got developedx for other purposes,” said “We think they have incredibler commercial opportunities, and it’as our job … to make this known to Lawrence Livermore two years ago beganm a program with Bay Area M.B.A. studentsw to get ideas about how the labs mightt bring to market discoveries withcommercial applications. Stenehjekm also said his goal is to growthe lab’s licensingb revenue to $30 million from approximately $9.5 millioh last year.
Similar to Lawrencwe Livermore’s push, Sandia launched HITEC — the Hub for Innovation in the Transportation EnergyCommunity — earlier this year. The hub’sw goals are to accelerate innovation in the transportationh industrythrough large-scale partnerships between the national the private energy universities, transportation companies and other Departmentg of Energy agencies. It’s seeking thosre partners now.