A team of Laboratory employees received a check for $25,000 for further development of Long Carbon Nanotube Arrays for Fiber Spinning during a ceremony last Thursday at the Laboratory.
Acting Principal Associate Director for Science Technology and Engineering (PADSTE) Terry Wallace presented Invention Disclosure Electronic Application System (IDEAS) contest winners Qingwen Li, Yuntian Zhu, Paul Arendt, Raymond DePaula, and James Groves – all from the Superconductivity Technology Center (MPA-STC) – with the check.
The team’s invention was selected by Technology Transfer Division (TT) and Laboratory Counsel (LC) as “most likely to succeed commercially” from among the 103 disclosures submitted during the IDEAS contest conducted from January 1 through March 31. The contest was sponsored by TT and designed to introduce Laboratory inventors to this new online process for disclosing inventions.
The Lab’s IDEAS Web-based application enables inventors to create, modify, review, and submit invention disclosures electronically — a significant improvement on the previous paper submission process. The impact of the new tool has produced a 124 percent increase in disclosure submissions compared with the same time period in 2005.
"The science at Los Alamos is in the national interest, and moving that science to technology and products is something that is an important element of our mission,” said Wallace. “It is great to see an increase in the Laboratory's intellectual property, and the IDEAS contest winners are a wonderful example of getting science to market.”
Wallace also presented a check for $25,000 to Dynamic and Energetic Materials (DE-2), the technical group that won the lottery draw with Mechano-Electrical Initiation of Energetic Material, submitted by Blaine Asay and Lloyd Davis. Each inventor who submitted a complete disclosure — one with sufficient information to permit a thorough evaluation by TT and LC reviewers — was eligible for the drawing. Each winning selection receives $25,000 in research funding contributed from TT Division’s share of the Laboratory’s licensing and royalty income.
“Disclosure of an invention is the first step toward obtaining a patent or copyright. Once protected, Los Alamos inventors’ ideas can lead to beneficial collaborations with industry and provide additional funding sources through licensing activity,” said TT Division Leader Duncan McBranch.
Click here for more information on IDEAS.
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