Lab Scientists Get Over $1 Million in Licensing Royalties

On Feb. 11, along with Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Management Department staff, Interim Lab Director Paul Alivisatos honored Berkeley Lab researchers for having their scientific inventions successfully commercialized.  He further expressed appreciation for the technology transfer process, noting that success in this area is a way for the Lab to contribute to economic growth and use scientific discovery to contribute to the public good. He encouraged researchers to share with their colleagues the benefits of transferring technology to the marketplace, recalling that his receiving funds to undertake collaborative research with industry helped him fund research early in his career at the Lab.

In FY08, 119 scientists and authors were awarded an inventors share for their inventions and software licensed to industry and for book publications. The average distribution was $9,367, while the largest check was more than $86,000. Total licensing income for the year was approximately $3.2 million. Over $1.1 million of this went to inventors, a 15% increase over last year. The remaining $2 million in licensing income will go to the Lab, primarily for research and development.

Berkeley Labs technologies are licensed to companies across a variety of industries that range widely in size, from Fortune 500 companies in the pharmaceutical, biotech, electronics, and energy industries, to small start-ups in nanotech, software, and health. For example, Berkeley HeartLab, Inc., a start-up that provides cardiovascular disease risk analyses and management, has been generating royalties for more than a decade.  The technology developed by a group of researchers in the Life Sciences Division’s Cholesterol Research Center, is a novel method for measuring lipoprotein subspecies that have important clinical implications for cardiovascular disease. Berkeley HeartLab was acquired by Celera in October 2007 for almost $200 million and it currently employs more than 300 people in Burlingame and Alameda.

Berkeley Lab’s photodiode technology licensed to Digirad Corporation represents multi-Divisional Lab research. Steve Holland, the inventor, is a researcher in Engineering, matrixed to the Physics Division. However, Life Sciences Division researcher, Bill Moses actively promoted the application of this technology in the nuclear medicine field. The invention is now used in a portable gamma camera for cardiac imaging, creating a series of compact, patient-friendly imagers with exclusive solid-state detectors.

Energy and environment technologies make up a large percentage of the licenses generating royalty income. Berkeley Lab’s fume hood is designed to reduce energy consumption to 25% of the current fume hood systems on the market. The new low-flow method enabling the use of small HVAC systems is licensed to Esco Micro Pte Ltd. On Feb. 4, Esco announced the introduction of a new product using the Berkeley Lab technology, the Frontier Acelaä fume hood. Each Frontier Acelaä fume hood is expected to provide energy savings of up to $5,735 annually.

The type of licenses that generated income include exclusive and non-exclusive licenses, copyrighted software, and published books. Go here to see a list of start-up companies based on Berkeley Lab technologies. The following is a list of technologies licensed by the Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Management Department that generated royalty income for Berkeley Lab researchers.

• Phenix software for automated macromolecular crystallography
• Geo-Hydrophysical modeling software
• Low NOx burners for industrial use
• Nano-enabled photovoltaics technology
• Robotics for nanovolume protein crystallography
• Ion mobility analysis technology for cardiovascular disease indicators
• Cost effective removal of mercury from coal-fired power plant emissions
• Human mammary epithelial cell lines for cancer research
• Energy saving architectural glass (electrochromic or “smart” glass)
• Multi-band semiconductors for high-efficiency solar cells
• Energy Plus, energy simulation software for building design
• Technology for solid state gamma camera for nuclear medicine
• Cathodic arc plasma technology for computer hard discs
• Cell senescence research reagents
• High performance hybrid magnet for protein separation
• Gas-filled Panels for building insulation and shipping containers
• GEM and GSharp software packages for modeling magnetotelluric and gravity data
• Highly sensitive room temperature semiconductor radiation detectors
• Membrane derivatized colloids
• Energy efficient fume hood
• High resolution monochrometers and spectrometers
• High performance, energy-efficient table lamp
• Transgenic mice models for sickle-cell disease
• Analog Transient Waveform Digitizer for analog storage
• Nano-tech enabled screening of proteins, nucleic acids, and other biological molecules
• Therapeutics for cardiovascular disease
• Exploratory search engine and relationship network technology
• Visual Servoing Optical Microscopy for biological applications
• Application of glycomics (study of the information content of sugars) to drug discover and development
• Nanoscale materials and components for powering fuel cells
• Structural proteomics (the process of generating protein structures from genetic information) for drug discovery
• Quantum dot fluorescent probes for biological systems, such as living cells
• Aerosol-based duct-sealing system
• Advanced blood lipoprotein testing for diagnosis and treatment of heart disease
• Portable low-power water disinfection units
• High-throughput materials discovery through combinatorial chemistry
• Evanescent microwave probe
• Field-emitting, thick-film materials containing carbon nanotubes for use in flat-panel displays
• Software for oil and gas exploration
• Books authored by Berkeley Lab researchers

Researchers receiving royalty checks:

Adams, Paul D.		Lee, Eleanor S.
Afonine, Pavel V.		Lee, Luke P.
Alivisatos, Paul		Li, Liang-shi
Andres, Andre		Liu, Gang L.
Arasteh, Dariush K.		Liu, Haitao
Baksh, Michael M.		Liu, Shou-heng
Balsara, Nitash		Liu, Zhao-rong
Bell, Geoffrey C.		Luke, Paul N.
Benner, William H.		Macgill, Robert  A.
Bertozzi, Carolyn R.		Mahal, Lara K.
Bielicki, John K.		Manna, Liberato
Bissell, Mina J.		Milliron, Delia
Blanche, Patricia J.		Modera, Mark P.
Brennan, Thomas		Moriarty, Nigel W.
Briceno, Gabriel		Myers, Cornelia A.
Bruchez, Marcel		Nam, Jwa-Min
Buhl, Walter F.		Narla, Mohandas
Callahan, Daniel E.		Natarajan, Pradeep
Carrié, Francois (Remi) J.		Newman, Gregory A.
Chang, Shih-Ger (Ted)		Nordmeyer, Robert A.
Chen, Fanqing F.		Olshavsky, Michael A.
Cheng, Robert K.		Orr, Joseph R.
Cohen, Marvin L.		Page, Erik
Colvin, Vicki L.		Parvin, Bahram
Commer, Michael		Paszty, Chris
Cornell, Earl W.		Peacocke, Monica
Curtil, Dimitri		Peng, Xiaogang
Dickerhoff, Darryl J.		Podowski, Raf
Dimri, Goberdhan P.		Pollard, Martin J.
Dittmer, Janke J.		Richardson, Thomas J.
Doughty, Christine		Robinson, Richard D.
Duewer, Fred W.		Rockenberger, Joerg
Eitouni, Hany B.		Rubin, Edward M.
Elkin, Christopher J.		Sadtler, Bryce F.
Ellman, Jonathan A.		Santarsiero, Bernard D.
Erdem, Ahmet E.		Sauter, Nicholas K.
Feustel, Helmut E.		Scher, Erik C.
Franks, Kasian		Schlamp, Michael C.
Fromer, Neil A.		Schultz, Peter G.
Gadgil, Ashok J.		Selkowitz, Stephen E.
Gao, Chen		Siminovitch, Michael J.
Gauna, Kevin		Singh, Mohit
Goldstein, Avery N.		Stampfer, Martha R.
Gomez, Enrique D.		Stevens, Raymond
Griffith, Brent T.		Sun, Xiaodong (Ted)
Grosse-Kunstleve, Ralf W.		Tsang, Chin-Fu
Groves, John (Jay) T.		Walukiewicz, Wladyslaw
Gur, Ilan		Wang, Duo
Hale, Frank V.		Wang, Kai-An
Holland, Stephen E.		Wei, Tao
Hoversten, Gary M. (Michael)		Weier, Ulli
Huang, Y Joe		Weiss, Shimon
Hughes, Steven M.		Winkelmann, Frederick C.
Humphries, David E.		Wong, Karen
Husbands, Parry		Wu, Junqiao
Huynh, Wendy U.		Xiang, Xiao-Dong
Jaklevic, Joseph M.		Yan, Naiqiang
Jaros, Michal		Yang, Haitao
Jin, Jian		Yarema, Kevin J.
Johansson, Jan		Yegian, Derek
Jones, Arthur L.		Yu, Kin Man
Kinoshita, Kim		Zettl, Alex K.
Kleinfelder, Stuart		Zwart, Petrus
Koike, Masato
Kolbe, William F.