Awards and Rewards

Three ORNL technologies honored by Southeast tech transfer group

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 26, 2006 — Three technologies developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have earned Excellence in Technology Awards from the Southeast Region of the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer during its annual meeting in Nashville.

The three technologies include alerting patients and medical personnel of an epileptic seizure, a light system that uses natural sunlight and a computer designed methodology to produce steel alloys.

The consortium's South region includes federal laboratories in Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

SeizAlert is a personal device for alerting patients and medical personnel of impending epileptic seizures. Event anticipation is provided via advanced analysis of brain waves that can be transmitted wirelessly from scalp electrodes.

A warning from SeizAlert enables a patient to take preventive actions, such as stopping hazardous activity, taking medication, lying down in a quiet place or contacting a physician. The technology earned a 2005 R&D 100 Award from R&D magazine.

A palmtop implementation of SeizAlert has been developed by Lee Hively, Kristopher Daley, Kara Kruse, Nancy Munro and Vladimir Protopopescu. Brett Bosley is ORNL's commercialization manager for SeizAlert. The SeizAlert technology is licensed to Hercules Development Corp, whose chief executive officer is Tracey Dedenhoff. Hercules is planning to sponsor a future clinical trial at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. SeizAlert technology and development was supported by DOE's Basic Energy Sciences.

The ORNL-developed hybrid solar lighting system uses a roof-mounted solar collector and small fiber optics to transfer sunlight to hybrid fixtures with electric lamps. A control system enables sunlight to power the light and illuminate about 1,000 square feet during sunny daylight hours while clouds and darkness allow the system to revert to providing regular electrical light.

The hybrid lighting technology reduces energy usage not only for lighting, but also for cooling due to the system's ability to block ultraviolet and infrared heat. The technology, which recently earned a 2006 R&D 100 Award, could be particularly valuable in areas where there is an abundance of sunshine.

The hybrid lighting team is composed of David Beshears, Melissa Lapsa, Art Clemons, Dennis Earl, John Jordan, Randall Lind, Curt Maxey, Jeff Muhs, Christina Ward and Wes Wysor. The late Larry Dickens was ORNL's commercialization manager on the project. John Morris of Sunlight Direct is also a member of the team. The technology's development was funded by DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Solar Technologies Program.

TMA 6301 and TMA 4701 are two heat-resistant cast austenitic stainless steels with improved durability and lifespan at higher maximum operating temperatures that have been developed using a computer-aided micro structural design methodology. This reduces the time required for the development of new alloys to about three years, which compares from the six to 10 years typically needed with traditional trial-and-error methods.

These new alloys will be used in various industrial materials processing equipment applications in the heat treatment, steel processing, chemical and petroleum industries. Upgrading with these new alloys will provide energy savings, as they can be used at higher temperatures for longer time periods.

The TMA team is composed of Govindarajan Muralidharan, Neal Evans, Ken Liu, Philip Maziasz, Michael Santella, Vinod Sikka and Christopher Stevens, Ashok Choudhury is the ORNL commercialization manager. Other team members are Roman Pankiw of Duraloy Technology and Scott Sexton of Nucor Steel and the Indiana Sheet Metal Group. The work is supported by DOE's Office of Industrial Technologies, Industries of the Future program.

Earning honorable mention were the LandScan™ 2004 global population dataset and the MEMS-based uncooled infrared imaging.

LandScan is a high resolution population distribution model for the world. At a 1-square kilometer resolution, LandScan provides the most accurate global population data available with several orders of magnitude higher resolution 25 times higher resolution than the previous standard for global population database.

The system has become the community standard for estimating population at risk and is useful for coordinating disaster response, humanitarian relief, sustainable development and environmental protection.

The LandScan team is ccmposed of Budhendra Bhaduri, Edward Bright, Phillip Coleman, Amy King and Eddie Tinnel. Choudhury and Mark Reeves are the commercialization managers.

MEMS-based uncooled infrared imaging is a sensitive infrared camera that operates at room temperature using a two-dimensional cantilever array to produce a thermal image that has applications for night vision, process monitoring, medical imaging, fire fighting and night driving.

ORNL team members are Thomas Thundat, Joe Cunningham, Panos Datskos, Irene Datskou, Boyd Evans, Slobodan Rajic, Eric Wachter and Bruce Warmack. Russ Miller is ORNL's commercialization manager for the project. Matt Miller and Scott Hunter of Multispectral Imaging are also members of the team. LandScan is supported by funding from the Department of Defense.

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Since May 2005, research and technologies developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have won prestigious recognition at both the regional and national level. This continues a record of exemplary performance by ORNL researchers over an extended period of time.

In just a few months, ORNL researchers earned:

• Four Excellence in Technology Transfer Awards from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC). This is the third year in a row that ORNL has won four awards, the maximum number possible.
• Three Excellence in Technology Transfer Awards from the Southeast Region of the Federal Laboratory Consortium; and
• Three R&D 100 Awards, bringing to 122 the number of these awards won by ORNL researchers, second only to General Electric.

National FLC Awards

FLC is a consortium of 711 federal laboratories and facilities representing approximately 100,000 scientists and engineers. Its awards recognize federal laboratory employees for outstanding work in the process of transferring a technology to the commercial marketplace.

The ORNL technologies recognized nationally are the MicroCAT X-ray micro-computed tomography for biological research, the AquaSentinel real-time water supply protection monitoring biosensor system, the Photo-Molecular Comb biomolecular separator and the miniature californium-252 neutron source for cancer therapy.

The MicroCAT technology was developed by Shaun Gleason and Michael Paulus of ORNL's Engineering Science and Technology Division. The project is funded by DOE's Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.

Other ORNL members of the research team were Derek Austin, Miljko Bobrek, Gary Alley, Kenneth Tobin and Chris McKinney of the Engineering Science and Technology Division. Michael Licata of Philips Medical Systems of Bothell, Wash., was another member of the research team.

ORNL researchers involved with AquaSentinel project were Elias Greenbaum, Miguel Rodriguez and Charlene Sanders of the Chemical Sciences Division, David E. Hill of the Metals and Ceramics Division, Richard L. Stouder of the National Security Directorate and Mark Reeves of the Technology Transfer and Economic Development Directorate. Also working on the project was John D. Harrell of ORNL's Facilities and Operations Directorate and Steven McCarter of United Defense.

The Photo-Molecular Comb project is a joint effort with Protein Discovery of Knoxville, Tenn., along with funding from DOE's Office of Biological and Environmental Research. ORNL researchers working on this project were Thomas Thundat and Thomas Ferrell of the Life Sciences Division, Gilbert Brown of the Chemical Sciences Division, Robert Warmack of the Engineering Science and Technology Division and Russ Miller of the Technology Transfer and Economic Development Directorate. Protein Discovery researchers involved were Charles Witkowski, Jay Harkins, Dean Hafeman and Kilin Dill.

ORNL staff members participating in the miniature californium-252 neutron source for cancer therapy with Manfred Sandler of Isotron were Rodger Martin of the Metals and Ceramics Division, Ian Gross of the Nuclear Science and Technology Division, Larry Pierce of the Facilities and Operations Directorate, and Mark Reeves and Russ Miller of the Technology Transfer and Economic Development Directorate.

FLC Southeast Regional Awards

The ORNL technologies recognized regionally by the Federal Lab Consortium in 2005 are the Polyelectrolyte Thin-Film Array Slide, the Flame Doctor® Burner-Monitor System and the Laser-Based Item Monitoring System.

In addition, the consortium awarded its first Partnership Award in recognition of a partnership between ORNL and the United States Enrichment Corp. to demonstrate and deploy gas centrifuge technology. The latter was the organization's first Partnership Award. The Partnership Award to ORNL and U.S. Enrichment Corp. is for a cooperative research and development agreement for development of a new generation of gas centrifuge plants to produce nuclear fuel for commercial power reactors. Teams from the two organizations have worked on the project based on improvements in materials and computer-based control systems that have occurred since centrifuge enrichment technology was discontinued more than 20 years ago.

Members of the ORNL team that have worked to make this project possible are Doug Craig, Ted Fox, John Shaffer, Steve Hamel and Dickens. The U.S. Enrichment Corp. team is composed of Dave Mason, Dennis Scott, Dan Stout and Dean Waters. Representing DOE's Oak Ridge Operations are Jim Reafsnyder and Emily Schneider.

Earning an honorable mention in for Excellence in Technology Transfer was the SensArray® Integrated Wafer Wireless Microchip Fabrication Monitor. ORNL participants in this effort are Carl Sohns of the Engineering Science and Technology Division and Robert Lauf and Don Bible, retired ORNL research staff members. Ashok Choudhury of the Technology Transfer and Economic Development Directorate also participated.

ORNL staff working on the Polyelectolyte Thin-Film Array Slide project were Jizhong Zhou and Xichun Zhou of the Environmental Sciences Division, Russ Miller of the laboratory's Technology Transfer and Economic Development Directorate. Mark Fins of Diversified Biotech was also recognized.

ORNL staff working on the Flame Doctor® Burner-Monitor System are Charles Finney and Stuart Daw of the Engineering Science and Technology Division. Larry Dickens of the laboratory's Technology Transfer and Economic Development Directorate was also involved. ORNL partnered with Babcock and Wilcox, whose principal team members are Timothy Fuller, Thomas Flynn and Ralph Bailey. Jeff Stallings of EPRI was the project manager.

Researchers working on the Laser-Based Item Monitoring System project are Peter Chiaro, Curt Maxey, Timothy McIntyre and Fred Gibson of ORNL's Engineering Science and Technology Division. Dickens was also involved with the project as commercialization manager. John Murphy of DOE was also part of the effort.

Researchers and engineers at ORNL have also won three R&D 100 Awards, presented each year by R&D Magazine in recognition of the year's most significant technological innovations.

R&D 100 Awards

The R&D 100 awards “demonstrate that DOE scientists and researchers are hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have played an important role in both our economic and national security."

With these three awards, ORNL's national lab-leading total increases to 122 and is second only to General Electric. Jeff Wadsworth, lab director, noted that the honors demonstrate the relevance of research taking place at ORNL.

"I am absolutely delighted that ORNL staff members have won three more of these prestigious awards," Wadsworth said. "The fact that we have both repeat winners and first-time winners is an impressive statement about the depth of the laboratory's scientific talent."

The honors were for the following inventions:

SEMCO Revolution, developed by Jim Sand of ORNL's Engineering Science and Technology Division and John Fischer of SEMCO.

SensArray Integrated Wafer, developed by Robert Lauf, Don Bible and Carl Sohns of ORNL's Engineering Science and Technology Division and Wayne Renken, Earl Jensen, Brian Paquette, Jeff Parker and Jim Barnett of SensArray.

SeizAlert, developed by ORNL's Lee Hively and Kara Kruse of the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, Vladimir Protopopescu of the Computer Science and Mathematics Division and Nancy Munro of the Life Sciences Division.