One hundred and nine Los Alamos employees and 76 Laboratory associates were honored. In addition, some Laboratory employees and non-Laboratory personnel received Distinguished Patent, Copyright and Licensing awards and Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
"These distinguished award winners represent the 'best of the best,'" said Laboratory Director John Browne, who helped present some of the awards along with Lyons, CIT Program Office Director Charryl Berger and Bill Eklund of Los Alamos' Business Patent Law Office.
"They represent what it really means to go the extra mile to help the Laboratory and their Northern New Mexico neighbors, and they serve as an inspiration to other Laboratory employees to do the same," Browne added.
The Distinguished Patent Award honors patent recipients whose technologies exhibit outstanding innovation based on technical advancement, benefit of the invention to the Laboratory's mission and adaptability of the invention to public uses. Maxwell Sandford, Theodore Handel and Jonathan Bradley of Los Alamos' Weapons Design Technologies Group received the award for their patent called compression embedding, used for algorithms that modify data. Sandford, Handel and Bradley shared the $2,000 prize.
Tom Terwilliger of Los Alamos' Structural Biology Group won the first-time Distinguished Copyright Award, which honors the author of disclosed copyrighted materials that are deemed extraordinary based on their potential commercial applications, programmatic impact and potential to enhance the reputation of the University of California and the Laboratory. Terwilliger won for his creation of SOLVE Version 1.0, a software that creates three-dimensional images of protein molecules. These pictures help firms in the biotechnology and health care fields design new drugs and engineer new enzymes for commercial use. SOLVE has been licensed to more than 155 government agencies, contractors, educational and nonprofit institutions, and four companies for commercial purposes. In recognition of his achievement, Terwilliger received a plaque.
The Distinguished Licensing Award honors the innovator(s) who have actively and effectively used the Laboratory's licensing program to license their technologies over the years. The recipient is selected based on the number of technologies licensed; the number of licenses issued per technology; the individual's promotion of his or her technologies; and the extent to which the individual actively engages in the licensing process, among other criteria.
This year's winner was Duncan MacArthur of Los Alamos' Advanced Nuclear Technology Group. MacArthur has successfully licensed seven technologies: a Long-range Alpha Particle Detector, Alternating Current Long-range Alpha Particle Detector, Single and Double-grid Long-range Alpha Detector, Radon Detector, Fan-less Long-range Alpha Detector, Background Canceling Surface Alpha Detector and Event Counting Alpha Detector. MacArthur also received a plaque in recognition of his achievement.
Robert Stellingwerf of Los Alamos' Hydrodynamic Methods Group, former Los Alamos employees Stephen Coggeshall, John Davies and Camilo Gomez, and Bruce Hansen won the Entrepreneur of the Year Award, also a first-time award, given to those who have successfully started and managed a Northern New Mexico business or contributed significantly to its development. Nominees may be current or former Laboratory employees or someone who received a license for a Laboratory technology.
They received the award for starting up the Center for Adaptive Systems Applications, an advanced analytical solutions company that applies emerging technologies such as adaptive modeling and genetic algorithms to perform multiple tasks, including credit card account performance prediction; scheduling for large processing centers; financial data flows fraud detection; and pattern extraction from signals and images.
Stellingwerf and his colleagues were chosen based on factors such as entrepreneurial risk taking; personal commitment; creative thinking and ingenuity; and high integrity. The recipients also were seen as role models in encouraging others to engage in entrepreneurial activities that contribute to the Northern New Mexico economy. They shared the $2,750 prize.
The event also included a poster display featuring some of the Laboratory technologies that successfully were licensed last fiscal year, and formally kicks off another year of licensing, copyrighting and patenting activities at Los Alamos and serves as an incentive to increase such activities. Los Alamos generated about $750,000 in royalty income in fiscal year 1998. Los Alamos also received 53 patents during this period, and currently has more than 70 active licenses. Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Washington Group International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.
