Commercialization Fellowship

EERE has created three one-year NREL Commercialization Fellowships to accelerate the commercialization of laboratory-developed intellectual property. This position is responsible for developing and implementing commercialization strategies for NREL. This includes:

• Conducting technical and business evaluations of NREL innovations, and
• Developing recommendations for protecting innovations as intellectual property.

Technologies that appear promising are evaluated in more detail, and are used to develop marketing materials. These materials describe the business case for commercializing technology to develop business leads for licensing and collaborative development.

The Fellowship is a mechanism for highly skilled business professionals to assist NREL on a short-term basis to achieve commercial products from laboratory R&D. It will not evolve into a permanent position.

Job Duties:

• Leading evaluations of NREL innovations
• Developing recommendations for how to best commercialize the technologies
• Developing marketing materials for the most promising technologies
• Contacting companies, entrepreneurs and investors personally to identify opportunities for licensing NREL intellectual property

Required Skills:

• Knowledge of business plan requirements for security early stage capital investment
• Ability to rapidly research new ideas and market opportunities across a broad range of clean energy technologies
• Strong networking capabilities with entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists
• Ability to work in a multidisciplinary team environment without supervision
• Excellent interpersonal skills that build good relations with NREL inventors and potential partners outside the lab

If you are interested in applying for the NREL Commercialization Fellowship, please contact Tom Williams, NREL's Director of Technology Transfer.