Cutting-edge technology products developed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory received eight of the 2013 R&D 100 Awards on Monday.
The prestigious awards aim to recognize the top 100 technology innovations that have useful applications in academia, industry and other fields. The eight awards received this year are a record high for the Berkeley lab and are the most presented to any organization this year. Berkeley lab has received a total of 70 R&D 100 awards since the award’s establishment in 1963.
“We at the lab have been working very hard in the past few years to increase our technology transfer from basic research to industry,” said Horst Simon, deputy lab director. “The high number of awards is a strong indication that these efforts have turned out to be very successful.”
The winning projects awarded to the lab spanned many fields of study, including energy technology, imaging and materials science.
On-Demand Secure Circuits and Advance Reservation System is a software service developed by Chin Guok and a group of collaborators, and universities and research sites are using it to gain fast access to critical data.
OSCARS allows users to dynamically set up a connection to guarantee that data reach their destination.
“When we first tried to do this manually, it could take as long as several months, many phone calls and lots of email between people at different networks to create such a connection,” Guok said. “Using OSCARS, a person can set this up today in about five minutes.”
Gao Liu led a team of scientists from the lab in creating the Conductive Polymer Binder, a plastic glue that keeps electrode materials together in rechargeable batteries and increases storage capacity by 30 percent. According to Liu, the most challenging aspect of the project was coordinating a team of people from interdisciplinary backgrounds to effectively use everyone’s expertise. Car and consumer technology companies are already working with the team to bring the technology to commercial industries.
Delia Milliron, a scientist at the Berkeley lab, and her team invented the Universal Smart Window Coating, a window coating that allows users to have more control over the amount of heat and light coming from the sun. In contrast to existing technologies, the coating can block thermal heat while still allowing natural light. According to Guillermo Garcia, a member of the team, the goals of the invention are to reduce energy consumption and add comfort.
Another noteworthy project was the Bacteriophage Power Generator, which generates electricity by using innocuous viruses that convert mechanical energy.
Other award-winning projects include a chemical screening system used to accurately establish the composition of thousands of samples, an imaging tool for investigating matters at a nanoscopic scale, an MRI machine and a fuel cell.
Contact Grace Wu at [email protected]