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Far West News Briefs 2011 FLC Far West / Mid-Continent Regional Meeting Review
The meeting was highly rated by its attendees, and the varied topics and training sessions were judged to be of great value. Complete details of the meeting and the presentations are available on the conference web site at www.flcfarwest.org/meeting This year the Far West Region made 16 awards to it's regional laboratories, in several categories. These included:
Information on this year's award winners is located at www.flcfarwest.org/meeting/FW11Awards.htm In addition to the awards program, the conference highlighted important focus areas for the technology transfer professional. These included: Training
Southern California Universities Unite to Produce Cleantech Businesses The University of Southern California announced today that a partnership led by Caltech, UCLA and USC have been selected to receive a $360,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a national business plan competition for young cleantech entrepreneurs. The winning proposal is one of six awarded regionally as part of a three-year, $2 million program, funded by the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) to develop competitions that inspire students to come up with innovative business plans involving clean-energy technology. Called First Look West (FLoW), the partnership will also include Chapman University, the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego, energy company OnGreen, Inc, and student leaders from campus groups, such as eClubs, Net Impact, Engineers for a Sustainable World and NOBE, the National Organization of Business and Engineering. FLoW builds on First Look LA, a program organized by Caltech, USC, and UCLA that showcases research and innovation to investors and has been successfully nurturing academic entrepreneurship in Southern California for five years. As in First Look LA, the host of the competition will rotate annually among each partner, and this feature, among others, provides the maximum reach among faculty, researchers and students. To help students learn about the entrepreneurial process FLoW will engage the student groups in all aspects of the business plan competition, from creating, managing and participating in the competition to potentially screening and assessing future opportunities. FLoW will oversee the competition's Western Region comprising seven states and two Pacific territories: California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, Idaho, American Samoa and Guam. The regional contests will be completed by May 1, 2012. Regional winners, selected by a panel of judges, will each receive $100,000 from the DOE and a chance to compete for a National Grand Prize in the final competition held at the DOE in Washington, D.C. in early summer 2012. The competition is part of Startup America, the Obama Administration's campaign to inspire and promote entrepreneurship. The purpose of this national initiative is to provide student participants with the skills needed to start new businesses, and transform promising energy technologies into innovative energy products that will create jobs, boost American competitiveness, and strengthen the economy. 2011 FLC Far West / Mid-Continent Regional Meeting Coverage This years FLC Far West / Mid-Continent Regional Meeting will take place August 29-31, 2011 in Monterey CA. This year's theme is Winning the Future with Federal Technologies. Hotel arrangements are being negotiated and will be announced soon. The meeting web site is located at www.flcfarwest.org/meeting Last Year's FLC Far West / Mid-Continent Regional Meeting Coverage Last year's joint meeting of the Far West & Mid-Continent regions took place August 31 - Sept 2, 2010 in Jackson Hole, WY to a near capacity crowd of almost 100 attendees. The rustic and scenic venue of Wyoming's Grand Tetans provided an excellent apmosphere for networking, learning, and sharing ideas and best practices. We had two full days of conference sessions covering a multitude of topics targeted at technology transfer professionals. Speaker presentations are available on our conference site at www.flcmidcontinent.org/meeting. There was a record turnout for our regional awards presentations and banquet held Thursday evening, Sept 2. The Far West region presented 15 awards covering the catagories of 1) Outstanding Technology Development; 2) Outstanding Partnership; and 3) Outstanding Commercialization Success. Cheryl Cejka of PNNL was awarded Far West Laboratory Representative of the Year honors. Award information is available on the meeting site at www.flcmidcontinent.org/meeting/Awards.htm Far West National Labs looking for Potential ARPA-E Research Partners The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has released it's first ever "Recovery Act" Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0000065 (CFDA Number: 81.135) with an opening date for acceptance of concept papers of May 12, 2009 and a closing date June 2, 2009 (8:00p edt). Many of the U.S. National Laboratories are interested in partnering with qualified companies and/or research institutions with expertise to address ARPA-E's FOA mission of to foster research and development (R&D) of transformational energy-related technologies. Transformational technologies are by definition technologies that disrupt the status quo. They are not merely better than current technologies, they are significantly better. Often, a technology is considered transformational when it so outperforms current approaches that it causes an industry to shift its technology base to the new technology. The Nation needs transformational energy-related technologies to overcome the threats posed by climate change and energy security, arising from its reliance on traditional uses of fossil fuels and the dominant use of oil in transportation. For more information on ARPA-E and their Funding Opportunity Announcement, please visit their web site at arpa-e.energy.gov/keydocs.html.
For information about National Laboratories in the FLC Far West Region please call the Far West Support Office at 360-582-9106 or send email to info@flc-fw.org
This type of system is under development by a team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and engineers, and has already been tested in laboratory and field experiments.
In their latest advance, the team has conceptually shown that they can almost simultaneously detect four potential threat materials – biological, chemical, explosives and radiological – along with illicit drugs.
Details are available on Livermore's web site at publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2008/NR-08-06-05.html
Berkeley Lab is a DOE national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. Their mission includes working with industry to commercialize Lab inventions. For information on other cutting edge biotechnology and medical technologies from Berkeley Lab, please visit their Technology Transfer web site at www.lbl.gov/tt
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How do you “gas up” a hydrogen car? - Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are developing a system to rapidly produce hydrogen from gasoline in your car. “This brings fuel cell-powered cars one step closer to the mass market,” said Larry Pederson, project leader at PNNL.
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NFESC licenses and helps commercialize its Port Security System - The Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center (NFESC) at Port Hueneme, CA has licensed its Port Security Barrier technology to Harbor Offshore, Inc. (HOI), a Ventura CA based marine contractor. Less than two weeks after signing the licensing agreement, HOI had their first customer, Port Everglades, FL.
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From Used Cooking Oil to Biodiesel Fuel -
More than 100 people attended the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Navy's first mini refinery that converts used restaurant oil into biodiesel fuel. "If successful, mini-refineries could begin popping up on Navy bases across the country to help the military meet tougher smog rules," said Kurt Buehler, project engineer at the Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center (NFESC) in Port Hueneme, CA. Buehler presided over the October 30, 2003 dedication of the biodiesel refinery - the first ever to be located at a U.S. military installation.
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