News Release
Media Contact: Fred Strohl
Communications and External Relations
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Marasco elected to board of directors

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Nov. 24, 1997 — Joseph A. Marasco, supervisory patent agent of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has been elected to the board of directors of the National Association of Patent Practitioners (NAPP).

NAPP is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting patent practitioners and other individuals in matters relating to patent law, its practice and technological advances.

NAPP, established in 1996, works to promote the exchange of ideas, to distribute information among those in patent law, to create a collective, nationwide voice to respond to changes in patent operations and to support enrichment of the relationship between inventors and patent practitioners.

As a supervisory patent agent with the Office of General Counsel at ORNL, Marasco provides research and counsel on patent matters, reports subject invention disclosures, reviews technical literature for publication, and files and prosecutes patent applications before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Marasco, a native of Washington, Pa., joined ORNL in 1976 after earning a bachelor of science degree in biology and chemistry at West Virginia Wesleyan College, in Buckhannon, W. Va.

He has written patents for a variety of scientific inventions, including exotic metal alloys, ceramics, semiconductors, chemical and biochemical methods and compositions and analytical instrumentation. He is also the co-inventor for U.S. Patent No. 5,494,811 titled "Biparticle Fluidized Bed Reactor."

Marasco and his wife, Karen, live in Kingston with their two children, Andrea, 20, and Eric, 16.

ORNL, one of DOE's multiprogram national research and development facilities, is managed by Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corporation.