Big Ideas Lab - Tech Transfer

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Today we’ll explore how technologies developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory make their way from the Lab into industry — impacting lives every day, in ways that might surprise you. We���ll explore how scientific breakthroughs like high-peak-power laser peening, 3D metal printing, and more spotlight LLNL’s Innovation and Partnerships Office - and how this vital connection between groundbreaking research and industry creates far-reaching impact through technology transfer and entrepreneurship.-- Big Ideas Lab is a Mission.org original series. Executive Produced by Lacey Peace and Levi Hanusch.Sound Design, Music Edit and Mix by Daniel Brunelle. Story Editing by Daniel Brunelle. Audio Engineering and Editing by Matthew Powell. Narrated by Matthew Powell. Video Production by Levi Hanusch. Guests featured in this episode (in order of appearance): Matthew Garrett - LLNL Director of the Innovation and Partnerships officeJames DeMuth - CEO, Co-Inventor and Co-Founder, Seurat TechnologiesBrought to you in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

In 1989, United Airlines Flight 232, carrying 296 people from Denver to Chicago, experienced a catastrophic failure that would forever change aviation safety. A microscopic crack in a titanium fan disc, an invisible weakness caused by metal fatigue, grew silently over time. As the disk spun at high speeds, the crack expanded until it finally reached its breaking point. The disk fractured violently, sending shrapnel through the plane's hydraulic lines, draining the hydraulic fluid.

Critical flight controls were useless. And at 37,000 feet, the aircraft's tail-mounted engine exploded. With remarkable skill, the crew used only differential engine thrust to steer the damaged jet towards Sioux City, Iowa. After 45 tense minutes, they managed to bring the plane down, saving 184 lives. Despite their heroic efforts, 112 lives were lost. The tragedy exposed a fatal flaw in aviation safety. Microscopic weaknesses in materials that could remain hidden until it is too late. The aviation industry needed a solution. Something that could strengthen vital components and prevent such failures before they occurred.

That solution came from a public-private partnership between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Curtis Wright's Metal Improvement Company. Together, this partnership developed a new high-peak power commercial manufacturing application for a technique called laser peening, a process that can strengthen metal components at the microscopic level, preventing cracks before they form. Over the past 20 plus years, countless jet engine fan blades have been reinforced as a result of this technology, making air travel safer for millions.

This was made possible because of the lab's Innovation and Partnerships Office, or IPO, a critical link between groundbreaking research and industries looking for innovative solutions. High peak power laser peening is just one example of how this office brings pioneering science beyond the lab to solve global challenges. Today we'll explore the journey from innovation to partnership to impact. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is opening its doors to a new wave of talent. If you're driven by curiosity and a desire to solve complex challenges, the lab has a job opening for you. Currently there are 139 open positions.

These include opportunities in science, engineering, business, administration, and the skilled trades. From enhancing national security to pioneering new energy sources and advancing scientific frontiers, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is where you can make your mark on the world. Today's open roles include Lead Power Grid Engineer, Laser Modeling Physicist, Postdoctoral Researcher, OCEC Program Leader, and Chief Data Architect. But the list doesn't end there. Explore

all available positions at LLNL.gov forward slash careers. Each opportunity comes with a comprehensive benefits package tailored to your lifestyle and future. Join a workplace that champions professional growth, fosters collaboration, inspires innovation, and drives the pursuit of excellence. If you are ready to contribute to work that matters, visit LLNL.gov forward slash careers to explore all the current job listings. That's LLNL.gov forward slash careers. Your expertise could very well be the highlight of our next podcast interview.

Don't wait. Welcome to The Big Ideas Lab, your weekly exploration inside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Hear untold stories, meet boundary pushing pioneers, and get unparalleled access inside the gates. From national security challenges to computing revolutions, discover the innovations that are shaping tomorrow, today. Our role is what's called the technology transformation at the lab, and that encompasses a number of activities which essentially facilitate the capturing of innovations and facilitating

partnerships with outside entities to allow that innovation go from the laboratory to a company or outside entities such that it can be then either produced or commercially make an impact on the United States economy. That was Matthew Garrett. He is the director of the Innovation and Partnerships Office at Lawrence Livermore, and he's describing the role of IPO and its technology transfer function. How do we commercialize and take technologies from the lab, engage with the private sector and transition them so that they can make impact outside the lab? There's a lot of challenges and a lot of technologies that are emerging out of the lab that could make a real impact and we're trying to facilitate that to happen.

IPO protects intellectual property by securing patents for the lab's innovations, safeguarding scientists' work while making these technologies accessible to external partners. The way these partnerships transpire can differ based on the tech transfer mechanisms at play, which can range from a company licensing lab-owned technology to partnering to access the lab's unique facilities for testing or technology maturation, to a multi-party research collaboration project. Whether the partnership is with a startup, large enterprise, university, other national lab or a government agency, Tech Transfer aims to support national security and U.S.

economic competitiveness. And while the ways in which outside organizations partner with the lab are diverse, impact is always the goal. We work with our scientists and engineers to essentially capture ideas through intellectual property. And that could be in the forms of a patent, or if it's software or a design of an idea, we capture it through a copyright. And we essentially capture those working with our legal department and folks and are able to then work with companies to create those partnerships that allow us to transfer that technology where they can actually take the idea and make a product out of it.

One of the most impactful examples of tech transfer over the decades at Lawrence Livermore is a technology known as Micro Power Impulse Radar, or MIR. MIR is a high resolution radar technology that uses ultra wideband pulses to detect objects with incredible speed and precision while using very little power. In the mid-1990s, this technology became a life-saving tool in disaster zones and revolutionized

GPS and defense systems. But it didn't start out that way. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore needed to measure events happening in billionths of a second during fusion experiments on the Nova Laser, one of the most powerful lasers of its time. Traditional radar systems weren't fast, precise or small enough to capture events occurring that quickly. This is how micropower impulse radar was born. MIR's compact size, low cost, and low power requirements revolutionized radar.

It brought this advanced technology to places where it simply wasn't possible before. Traditional radar systems were bulky, expensive, and power hungry, limited to military or large scale industrial use. But MIR made high resolution radar affordable and portable, and this versatility allowed for life-saving applications. In disaster response, MIR can detect the faintest heartbeat or breath, guiding search and rescue teams to survivors trapped under rubble. In cars, it powers collision avoidance systems. It also boosts GPS accuracy and strengthens defense systems by precisely measuring distances and detecting

objects in complex environments. Lawrence Livermore's IPO and MIR's entrepreneurly-minded inventor, Thomas McEwen, a Lawrence Livermore scientist at the time, worked together to facilitate the partnerships responsible for its many applications beyond the lab. Ultimately, MIR was commercialized by 42 different companies. You have something, you have an idea, or you have an innovation. How do you get it to reality? How do we teach scientists and engineers the thought process and the mindset of being an entrepreneur? It comes down to a certain type of person in the end. Somebody that can see at low Earth orbit, way up in the sky of a large ecosystem or a problem

or some sort of thing of how it impacts society, but also can get down to the details of how something works at the fundamental levels. As part of its tech transfer mission, IPO is also dedicated to helping scientists think like entrepreneurs. There's this piece where you want to talk to someone that may not have the scientific or engineering expertise of a particular subject matter area that you want to try to persuade or convince to work with you or to even invest in your idea. So how do you go about doing that?

And so we have had this National Laboratory Entrepreneurship Academy going for the last decade now, which teaches people the language and the skills of how to think entrepreneurially. And that could be, how do you communicate what we call the value proposition of your idea? Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory invites you to join a diverse team of professionals.

The lab is currently hiring for a lead power grid engineer, a laser modeling physicist, postdoctoral researcher, an OCEC program leader, a chief data architect, and 139 other positions for scientists, engineers, IT experts, administrative and business professionals, welders, and more. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, your contributions are not just jobs. They're a chance to make an impact, from strengthening U.S. security to leading the charge in revolutionary energy solutions and expanding the boundaries of scientific knowledge. The lab values collaboration, innovation, and excellence, offering a supportive workspace

and comprehensive benefits to ensure your well-being and secure your future. Seize the opportunity to help solve something monumental. Dive into the wide variety of job openings at llnl.gov forward slash careers. This is your chance to join a team dedicated to a mission that matters. That's llnl.gov forward slash careers. Your expertise might just be the spotlight in our next podcast interview.

Don't delay. Another historical success story is chromosome painting, a new horizon in biotechnology in the mid-1980s. Chromosome painting allows researchers to tag individual chromosomes with fluorescent dyes to study genetic material. Like MIR, it's been one of Lawrence Livermore's most successful tech transfer stories highlighting the wide range of industries impacted by this office. Before chromosome painting, scientists struggled to study chromosomes in detail.

Traditional staining methods made it hard to tell individual chromosomes apart or to spot tiny genetic changes. This limited their ability to detect abnormalities or diagnose genetic diseases accurately. With chromosome painting, scientists were able to use fluorescent dyes to color code each chromosome, see them clearly under a microscope, and tell them apart instantly. Then they could detect even the smallest abnormalities, like pieces of chromosomes breaking off and reattaching incorrectly, which are often linked to cancer. This new level of detail also made it possible to compare chromosomes across species, helping researchers understand evolutionary relationships, and in medicine it transformed genetic diagnosis, making it faster and more accurate.

Once again, Lawrence Livermore's scientists, this time Joe Gray and Don Pinkle, and IPO, recognized how valuable chromosome painting could be for genetic research and medicine. They worked with researchers worldwide to broaden its use for cancer research and the study of genetic damage, ultimately commercializing it with Vysis, a subsidiary of Abbott Pharmaceuticals, and becoming a key enabling technology in the genetic revolution. Where there's a challenge of major national interest, we have the tools and the folks to think about it, solve it, come up with a pathway to success. And then our job at IPO is to facilitate that and engage with companies so that they can

then run with it on the outside. IPO helps channel the culture of innovation at Lawrence Livermore to bridge scientific discoveries with real-world applications. And it's paid off. Tech transfer has a long history of success at Lawrence Livermore, and each success is a testament to the lab's commitment to driving progress forward. A more recent notable success story is the work of former lab scientist turned entrepreneur James DeMuth, who along with several co-inventors at Lawrence Livermore's

National Ignition Facility, or NIF, helped the lab understand the fundamental barrier that previously prevented additive manufacturing from being scaled. One of the big issues we found was how do you make a chamber that can withstand the brutal environment of the fusion reactions, not melt, crack, or die through whatever process that's happening in there. We actually found an alloy that gave us incredibly high temperature fatigue properties, met all of our requirements,

and we found that while you couldn't weld it or cast it, you could 3D print it. 3D printing can do all these crazy geometries, all these very intricate cooling channels and so forth, but it's gonna take 200 years to use 3D printing to make one of these things, and I'm not gonna live that long. So we need a faster way of doing things.

So we architected a system to figure out how to do that long. So we need a faster way of doing things. So we architected a system to fair how to do that in seven days. As time went on and innovation continued, James saw the market potential in this research, eventually co-founding Surat Technologies, which specializes in high volume 3D metal printing. Surat then licensed Lawrence Livermore's additive manufacturing technology as a partner and secured significant investment as a startup. James DeMuth's journey from scientist to entrepreneur highlights the impact that Lawrence Livermore's support can have for researchers taking bold steps into the business world. The lab was able to provide effectively a safety net, an entrepreneurial leave of absence.

It made it a lot more palatable for myself, my family to do this. The lab helped and the IPO helped really make an environment where I felt I could go out on a limb and do something risky that otherwise might have been more challenging to do. That was a huge enabler to make this technology be able to be birthed, so to speak.

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is an area where the lab's technology transfer program has made a significant impact. As covered in our full episode of additive manufacturing, Lawrence Livermore researchers developed techniques to build complex metal components layer by layer, innovations that have shaped industries like aerospace, defense, and energy. James' vision for faster, more efficient 3D printing stemmed from a clear challenge. While traditional 3D printing could produce intricate geometries and complex cooling channels, the process was painfully slow. Today, Surat is tackling complex manufacturing

and thermal management challenges in industries like aerospace, automotive, and electronics. We're changing the world of manufacturing. How do we reinvent how we do things such that we can do them faster, more effectively, shorten supply chains, give freedom of design, and ultimately democratize manufacturing in a green and sustainable way? James' journey is one example of how tech transfer can distribute the benefits of groundbreaking research

by empowering scientists to turn their innovations into thriving companies that shape entire industries. The next chapter of Lawrence Livermore's Tech Transfer Success Stories is already taking shape with breakthroughs on the horizon in areas like fusion energy, AI-driven biotechnology, and quantum computing. I'm excited for what's next. That's another part of being in this particular role.

You get to have a front seat as to what's next. With all the things that we're working on in AI, machine learning, life sciences, manufacturing, I'm excited for what the future holds and some of the things we're working on. My experience was exciting. Everything I felt like I came into contact with was just opening new doors and seeing new things and

Helping put the pieces together in different ways. What's that next thing, right? There was so much that's either being discovered or on the cusp of discovery It's just was at the forefront of all this really really cool stuff I had a blast there with each each new partnership and patent, the Innovation and Partnerships Office continues to connect brilliant minds with industry leaders, driving innovation forward and ensuring the US remains a global leader in science and technology. It's all about impact and I use that word all the time with my team is that we are trying to create impact. It's not about the numbers a lot of times. It's all about impact. And I use that word all the time with my team, is that we are trying to create impact.

It's not about the numbers a lot of times. It's not about volume. It's about individual narratives of stories of technologies where you can connect our activities to something that people see and touch every day. That is priceless. You can't put a dollar amount on that. And that's the power of technology transfer. Turning groundbreaking science into innovations that shape our world. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is opening its doors to a new wave of talent. Whether you're a scientist, an IT professional, a welder, an administrative or business professional,

or an engineer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has an opportunity for you. From enhancing national security to pioneering new energy sources and advancing scientific frontiers, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is where you can make your mark on the world. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's culture is rooted in collaboration, innovation and the pursuit of excellence. We offer a work environment that supports your professional growth and a benefits package that looks after your well-being and future. Are you ready to contribute to work that matters? Visit LLNL.gov forward slash careers to explore current job openings

and learn more about the application process. Don't miss the chance to be a part of a mission-driven team working on projects that make the impossible possible. Visit LLNL.gov forward slash careers now to view the current job listings. Remember that's LLNL.gov forward slash careers. Your expertise could be the highlight of our next podcast interview. Don't wait. Explore the possibilities today. Thank you for tuning in to Big Ideas Lab. If you loved what you heard, please let us know by leaving a rating and review. And if you haven't already, don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app

to keep up with our latest episode. Thanks for listening.