Technology Transfer staff from Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory attended the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, in Las Vegas, Jan. 8–12. Jennifer Caldwell, director of technology transfer; Eugene Cochran, technology commercialization group lead; and Karen Dunlap, Partnerships communications coordinator, represented ORNL at the event.
More than 130,000 people visited Las Vegas for the show, which featured 4,000 exhibitors. Watch CES’ wrap-up video.
From the DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions, or OTT, booth in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, ORNL’s CES events included:
- Susan Hubbard, deputy for science and technology at ORNL, and Vanessa Chan, director of OTT and chief commercialization officer at DOE, discussed a range of topics in a fireside chat. From ORNL’s ecosystem focus areas to OTT’s Pathways to Liftoff reports, the pair provided a broad view of how the national laboratory system supports the nation’s technology companies, from startups to industry leaders.
- Researcher Veda Galigekere, from ORNL’s Electric Drives Research group, presented on his work in wireless power transfer. ORNL’s novel polyphase wireless power transfer technology aims to enable efficient, compact and controlled high-power wireless recharging from 50 kilowatts to more than 600 kilowatts, offering a solution to several recharging needs for electrified transportation.
- Innovation Crossroads alumnus Don DeRosa of Eonix and fellow Rajan Kumar of Ateios Systems pitched their companies’ technologies as part of a mini-showcase of DOE’s Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program.
- Safire Group’s John Lee, co-founder and chief executive officer, and Nader Shokair, director of engineering, demonstrated their company’s technology in a Boston Dynamics’ Spot dog, which proved very popular with CES attendees. The company’s core technology, Safe Impact Resistant Electrolyte, or SAFIRE, was invented by ORNL scientist Gabriel Veith and was licensed to Safire Technology Group in 2022.
- In separate events hosted by Extreme Tech Challenge, Innovation Crossroads’ participant company EarthEn competed in the Deep Tech Climate Innovations Challenge pitch competition and the finals announcement. Among eight finalists, EarthEn’s Karthi Chakaravarty took home the top prize.
Watch Instagram highlights from the ORNL Partnerships account.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
