Engaging with DOE Labs for Industrial Projects

Steven Lambert & John Rumble

Industrial physicists can leverage leading edge capabilities and the advanced facilities at DOE laboratories by applying for access to those sites. FIAP has heard from many members who would like access to use those facilities but find the approval process slow and overly bureaucratic. FIAP raised such concerns in two recent meetings with the DOE.   

In May a FIAP Past Chair John Rumble made a presentation to the CRENEL commission which is chartered by Congress to review the effectiveness of the DOE labs. It was an ideal opportunity to raise the concerns FIAP had heard, and a means for continuing engagement with CRENEL.

On June 25th, Francis Slakey (APS DC office) and Steven Lambert (Industrial Physics Fellow) met with acting director Jetta Wong of the newly­formed DOE Office of Technology Transitions (OTT). The OTT was founded in February 2015 with the mission of expanding the commercial impact of the DOE’s $10B science budget. The role of OTT is to facilitate commercializing of the research done at DOE labs further enabled by a webpage listing the facilities with capabilities that might be useful to industry. The webpage includes the following statement:  “The DOE National Laboratories maintains cutting­edge experimental and computational capabilities that can provide unique opportunities for partners from the commercial sector to develop and test new technologies.”

Jetta told us that two of her priorities are:
  1. Enlisting industry as early partners when starting programs
  2. Streamlining the application and IP issues for industry projects at DOE facilities

She volunteered these goals at the beginning of our discussion.  FIAP didn’t need to convince her that these issues are important.  Although bureaucracy moves slowly, FIAP hopes to see improvements for engaging with DOE labs. We proposed some options for working with OTT in the future and we’ll report on those as things develop.

Jetta also commented, “No one is going to Capitol Hill saying ‘we want applied programs to have funding’. ” This could be an activity for technology­focused companies that hire many physicists and should benefit from DOE’s investments in applied research. Please contact Francis Slakey, John Rumble, or Steven Lambert if you or others in your company would like to discuss any of these issues.

Steven Lambert (lambert@aps.org)
John Rumble (jumbleusa@earthlink.net)
Francis Slakey (slakey@aps.org)

Opinions expressed represent the views of the individual authors and not the American Physical Society or authors’ employers.