Looking forward, there’s no reason to doubt ORNL will keep pushing valuable new technologies into the economy. The lab is committed to promoting high-tech industry, and its partners are equally committed.
“It’s not about the money that we get in royalties; it’s about the impact that we can have,” explained Jim Roberto, ORNL’s associate laboratory director for science and technology partnerships. “Every decade there have been billion-dollar impacts, and there’s no reason you wouldn’t expect that to continue.”
Here are a few possible breakout companies:
Compact, lightweight arena lighting
Oak Ridge-based LED North America produces the SuperSport 2.0 arena light, which it bills as the smallest, lightest and most technologically advanced arena sport lighting in existence.
The company is able to get such a bright light into such a small package by using graphite foam technology from ORNL, freeing lights from bulky, traditional aluminum heat sinks.
LED North America has installed SuperSport lighting in the University of Tennessee’s Thompson-Boling Arena.
Handheld mass spectrometer
Boston-based 908 Devices has introduced the first genuinely handheld high-pressure mass spectrometer.
Conventional mass spectrometry is usually limited to centralized laboratories because of the size and fragility of the equipment and the complexity of operating it. The company’s M908 device allows first responders and others to immediately detect and identify trace levels of explosives and other chemicals.
The device uses breakthroughs developed by the company’s science founder, Michael Ramsey, when he was at ORNL and, later, at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
Text mining to catch bad guys
The Piranha text-mining tool was developed by researchers at ORNL, who worked with Oak Ridge-based Pro2Serve to commercialize it and create a Pro2Serve subsidiary called Global Security Information Analysts.
The software can look at mountains of text documents and identify relationships between them. It has a wide range of applications, from protecting national security to uncovering health care fraud and identifying child predators.
Piranha, which won an R&D 100 Award, was developed through DOE's Work for Others program.
Retinal scans on the go
Hubble Telemedical—recently acquired by Skaneateles Falls, N.Y.-based Welch Allyn—uses technology developed at ORNL and the University of Tennessee to enable retinal screenings in a wide variety of locations.
With retinal imaging, a specialized camera photographs deep within a person’s eye to detect conditions ranging from diabetes-related disease to some types of cancer. With the TRIAD Network, patients and care providers no longer need to be in the same location.
Coatings reject water
Oklahoma-based Dry Surface Coatings uses an ORNL-developed waterproofing technology to create additives for use in paints, coatings and other materials.
The company’s founders adopted the superhydrophobic technology through experience with the effect of extreme environmental conditions on energy producers.
The additives protect equipment from water, ice and corrosion.
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