Sandia showcase puts tech transfer efforts on display
Lab programs assist businesses in moving innovation to market
A new portable scanning device to detect suicide bombs and a process for rapid, mass production of LED lighting on metallic sheets are two of the new technologies Sandia National Laboratories is helping local companies develop.
Those technologies and more were on display Thursday at a technology showcase event at the Sandia Science and Technology Park. High-ranking officials from the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration got a first-hand look at lab programs that assist busi- nesses in moving cutting-edge innovation to market.
“We’re enjoying tremendous interest and support from the DOE in technology transfer,” Marianne Walck, vice president at Sandia in California, told the visiting delegates. “It’s a great success story for Sandia and the labs in New Mexico.”
Sandia is one of five labs nationwide selected to participate in the DOE’s new Small Business Vouchers pilot program, which launched last September. The program includes $20 million in federal funding to help businesses gain access to resources and expertise at DOE labs to develop or improve clean-energy technology.
The DOE announced the first phase of funding on Thursday, awarding about $7 million worth of assistance for 33 companies nationwide. Sandia will work with seven of them to provide assistance on solar, wind and geothermal technologies.
One of those companies is iBeam Materials, a Santa Febased startup that’s developing the new LED technology on display at Thursday’s event. iBeam’s new manufacturing process, the roots of which were developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, will allow the company to produce long strips or sheets of LED lighting, said founder and President Vladimir Matias.
“That will allow us to scale way up the production and packaging of LED lighting, potentially lowering the costs by 10 to 100 times compared to today’s production and packaging methods,” Matias told the Journal.
The new voucher program is modeled, in part, on the New Mexico Small Business Assistance program, which the state Legislature launched in 2000 to bring Sandia and LANL expertise to small firms. Through that program, the labs have to date provided more than 2,300 local firms in all 33 counties with $43.7 million worth of research hours and materials.
R3 Technologies, an Albuquerque company developing the new suicide bomb detection device, is one of the companies benefitting from the SBA program. Sandia has helped R3 expand the capabilities of its device, which is designed to detect bombs that current metal detector technology would normally miss, said R3 President Robby Roberson.
“Sandia helped us improve the source code and the antennae design, which will allow us to scan much faster and detect moving targets at a distance of up to 100 feet,” Roberson told the Journal.
SportsXast, a graduate of the ABQid business accelerator in Albuquerque, also showed its software technology at the event. The company, which is marketing an app to instantaneously capture highlights of sporting events, got its start through a $50,000 grant from LANL’s Venture Acceleration Fund.