Oak Ridge National Lab Goes Nano
There’s no doubt the people at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) understand the importance of its research to the marketplace. Jeffrey Wadsworth, the outgoing director of ORNL, honed in on this point in his keynote remarks at the Nano Nexus 2007 conference taking place April 2-4 at ORNL. (Photo: Manu Bhardwaj, iBridge Network Team, and Jeremy Stipkala, at Nano Nexus.)
Wadsworth, who’s ending a four-year term here to take an executive position with Battelle, focused on the lab’s integrated research in nano, bio, and supercomputing. And he emphasized how he and his team are adamant about working to move ORNL’s advances into industry and among entrepreneurs. Over the last five years, ORNL has spun out 74 companies. In addition, roughly $80 million in venture funding has been invested in technology companies in the Oak Ridge/Knoxville region.
The centerpiece of all of this activity is the lab’s work in nano. As a result of the federal government’s commitment over the last several years to fuel research in nano, ORNL has become one of the leading centers for research in this space. And it recently opened its Center for Nanophase Materials Science, which operates as a so-called “national user facility.” That is, the center allows researchers from all over to apply to be selected as users of the facility.
Meanwhile, here at Nano Nexus 2007, fifteen universities are competing today in a graduate student business competition focused on nanotechnology. The six finalists were just announced an hour ago, and they are: Vanderbilt, two teams from Georgia Tech, Louisiana Tech, University of Texas, and Florida State. The overall winner, which pockets a $25,000 prize, will be announced this afternoon.