Five researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently completed an eight-week pilot commercialization coaching program as part of Safari, a program funded by DOE's Office of Technology Transitions, or OTT, Practices to Accelerate the Commercialization of Technologies, or PACT.
PACT promotes the transition of research developed at DOE national laboratories to the marketplace to promote United States competitiveness and national security. At ORNL, the Safari program is led by Susan Ochs, ORNL engagements program manager.
"The coaching program provides a critical first step to prepare our researchers to take advantage of DOE programs such as Energy I-Corps and to compete for funding from the Technology Commercialization Fund," said Jennifer Caldwell, director of technology transfer at ORNL. "It's important for researchers to be able to effectively explain their technologies in non-technical terms to entrepreneurs and business owners. This coaching program gave them a lot of practice and the professional feedback needed to gain confidence in presenting to business leaders."
The coaching program is led by Angelique Adams, chief executive officer of Angelique Adams Media Solutions. Prior to her career as a leadership coach and media entrepreneur, Adams had a 20-year career in metals and mining.
"Having spent years leading teams of scientists and engineers, I know the challenges of communicating research to business audiences very well," Adams said. "Over the years, I developed strategies to overcome the challenges that worked well for my teams, and I was excited to share what I've learned."
At an event hosted by the ORNL Technology Transfer Office on July 10, the researchers pitched their technologies to laboratory staff and leaders, as well as East Tennessee entrepreneurial ecosystem leaders such as Jim Biggs, executive director of the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center; Rob Coleman, director of entrepreneurship and new ventures at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Kusum Rathore, executive director and vice president of the multi-campus office at the University of Tennessee Research Foundation; and Lilly Tench, director of the Spark Innovation Center at the University of Tennessee Research Park.
"The ability to present advanced research and technology in a way that can be understood by a general audience and applied to business opportunities is a crucial part of bringing important research out of the lab and into the world," Tench said.
The technologies and their inventors include:
- Carbon dioxide removal from seawater - Nick Gregorich, postdoctoral research associate in the Chemical Sciences Division
- Membrane contactor-based CO2 capture using green solvent- Syed Islam, staff scientist in the Chemical Sciences Division
- Deploying CO2-based products - Michelle Kidder, distinguished scientist in the Manufacturing Science Division and the ORNL program manager for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management
- A potent and selective inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 through covalent reactivity - Brian Sanders, associate staff scientist in the Biosciences Division
- Innovative thermal energy storage solutions for heat pumps: Revolutionizing building efficiency with advanced phase change materials - Tugba Turnaoglu, associate staff scientist in the Buildings and Transportation Science Division. Turnaoglu was unable to attend the final presentation.
Islam and Gregorich will participate in cohort 19 of the OTT Energy I-Corps program in September.
"The questions asked by business leaders are very different from those at a conference presentation," Islam said. "Safari gave us the practice needed to help tune our brains to a different audience, which helps to develop our own thinking processes."
Gregorich said, "It forced me to think about my project from a bigger perspective than how I think about in the lab."
"The Safari program gives researchers the tools to expand the reach and impact of their research. They can go from impacting our understanding of the world's most pressing problems - already huge contributions to society - to impacting the implementation of solutions," Adams said.
Adams is the author of the career guide series "You're More Than a Diversity Hire," and the creator of online courses and coaching programs for scientists and engineers. She received her bachelor's in chemical engineering and her master's and doctoral degrees in fuel science from Pennsylvania State University. She holds an executive master's in business administration degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
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.
