"We are extremely proud of the efforts of these men and women. Their hard work and ingenuity should be applauded," Tom Meyer, associate Laboratory director for Strategic and Supporting Research, said in his keynote address at the ceremony.
"The intellectual property that they generate helps the Laboratory meet the stockpile stewardship mission, attract funding from federal and private sponsors, encourage strategic alliances with private industry and foster technology transfer activities that benefit the Laboratory and the nation's economy," said Meyer.
Approximately 150 current and former employees were honored at the ceremony for work that resulted in patents, copyrights or license royalties. Patents, copyrights and the royalties they generate from commercial licenses are significant to the Laboratory, Meyer said.
Deputy Laboratory Director for Business Administration and Outreach Joe Salgado expanded on this point in his opening remarks at the ceremony. "Cooperation between Laboratory researchers and the private sector provides important exchanges of new ideas, capabilities and technologies that ultimately help the Laboratory achieve its programmatic mission. Collaborations with private industry help us to assimilate 'best industrial practices' to maintain and develop our skills. And as these Laboratory awards show, such interactions also have positive impacts on regional economic development."
In fiscal year 1999, 50 U.S. patents were issued for Laboratory inventions, and 38 commercial licenses were approved, totaling $866,000 in license income. Since the inception of the Laboratory's licensing efforts, the program has generated more than $3 million in licensing income.
Eighty-five percent of this income is redistributed to the Laboratory inventors and to the technical divisions for scientific research and development, technology transfer activities and education programs at the Laboratory.
At the ceremony, awards were given to employees in several categories. A team of three researchers from the Laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division received the Distinguished Patent Award, based on technical advance, benefit to the mission of the Laboratory and adaptability of the invention to public uses. Paul Arendt, Xin Di Wu and Stephen Foltyn received the award for their patent of high-temperature superconducting thick films. The process creates a thick-film superconductor by depositing superconducting materials on a flexible metal substrate. The resulting sueprconductor delivers world-record current levels at relatively high temperatures.
The Distinguished Copyright Award was given to a Laboratory team led by Chris Barrett and Dick Beckman of the Technology and Safety Assessment Division for the team's Transportation Analysis and Simulation System, or TRANSIMS, an extensive software system that simulates human mobility on an urban regional scale. The software system was judged to be the copyright with the highest potential for commercial applications, programmatic impact and potential to enhance the reputation of the University of California and the Laboratory. TRANSIMS' detailed transportation and vehicle emissions simulations can help urban planners and decision makers address how pollution, energy consumption, traffic congestion, land use planning, traffic safety and transportation infrastructure affect quality of life, productivity and the economy.
Shimshon Gottesfeld, also of the Materials Science and Technology Division, received the Distinguished Licensing Award for his successful licensing of fuel cell technologies that he developed or co-developed. Gottesfeld's fuel cell inventions are covered by 22 patents, applications or disclosures. One of his patents is the keystone to the efficient operation of a hydrogen fuel cell. This patent has been licensed to a major company, and two other licenses are pending. Gottesfeld initially focused on applying his research to the transportation industry, but has expanded to commercialization of the technology for powering portable electronic devices.
The final awards of the evening were for Entrepreneur of the Year. The 1999 Entrepreneur of the Year, or EOY, awards honor individuals whose hard work, ingenuity and perseverance have created successful, growing companies in Northern New Mexico. Four local companies received this distinction. Funding for the awards was provided by Los Alamos National Bank, Valley National Bank of Española, Community Bank of Santa Fe and Century Bank of Santa Fe. All of this year's winners are former Laboratory employees or Laboratory employees on entrepreneurial leave of absence.
The "Pharmacopia" EOY Award was given to John Elling of Bioreason, a Santa Fe-based start-up founded in 1997. Bioreason creates data-mining tools that enable researchers to rapidly interpret large amounts of biological and chemical data produced by drug companies in their search for new drugs. Elling, who is Bioreason's co-founder and executive vice president of technology, discovery and evaluation, is on entrepreneurial leave from the Laboratory. Elling and the other principals at Bioreason have worked extensively in laboratory automation and artificial-intelligence-supervised automated-chemistry data analysis.
Benjamin Mattes, who resigned one year ago from a distinguished career as an award-winning research scientist at the Laboratory, was the winner of the "Fed Fund" EOY Award for his work in launching Santa Fe Science and Technology. SFST, which seeks to exploit the unique properties of conducting polymers, is currently operating under a multimillion dollar contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to improve the manufacturing process. In particular, Mattes and his colleagues are working on polyaniline, which combines many of the desirable properties of metals and plastics. Polyaniline is the preferred conductive material for many applications because of its environmental stability and the ease with which it can be processed into films and corrosion-resistant coatings.
The "Quick Turnaround" EOY Award was given to a pair of Laboratory researchers, John Russell and Ron Trujillo of SolutionWerx, Inc. Russell took entrepreneurial leave from the Laboratory in July 1999 to join former Laboratory staff member Trujillo and SolutionWerx founder George Longmire, himself a former staff member at Sandia National Laboratories. The company, based in Santa Fe, markets a software called Partnerworks, which is used to manage intellectual property and research agreements at Los Alamos. Other Department of Energy sites also use Partnerworks to manage their technology transfer agreements. Partnerworks was authored by Longmire and is being licensed from Sandia. The company plans to expand beyond its current DOE laboratory clients by enhancing, marketing and selling a derivative of Partnerworks in the commercial market.
The final EOY Award, the "Doc to Dollars" award, was given to Steve Cook of Kinetisis, Inc. Cook made the transition from post-doc to company president in a few short months. The regional start-up company is commercializing a Laboratory-developed thin-film growth process. Cook did research on thin films at the Laboratory after receiving his doctorate from the University of Texas. Kinetisis is applying kinetic-energy-activated molecular-beam epitaxy, a crystal growth technique, to develop and market novel microelectronic and optoelectronic products and devices. Kinetisis has a user facility agreement with the Laboratory. The Laboratory also provides technical expertise to Kinetisis through a small business Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, or CRADA. The company has similar agreements with Sandia and the University of New Mexico.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Washington Group International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.