business backgrounder | economy
Tech Transfer
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory aims to get more research out of the lab and into the marketplace.
Kim Eckart
Rosemarie Truman, the new director of innovation impact at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, has a background of helping turn ideas and technologies into businesses.
The opportunities were obvious, yet overlooked.
Inventions from the National Cancer Institute— an amalgam of time, effort and taxpayer money— were sitting on the proverbial shelf, waiting to be brought to market.
So, Rosemarie Truman came up with a way to turn those ideas and technologies into businesses: She and the company she founded, the Center for Advancing Innovation, created the Breast Cancer Start-Up Challenge in partnership with the National Cancer Institute, a contest among teams of college students and their industry mentors. It proved so successful, she launched other startup challenges with other federal agencies.
Now, Truman, a former executive with IBM and other Fortune 500 companies, brings her initiative and approach to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory( PNNL), where in September she was named director of innovation impact.
“ I love to help businesses grow, and grow profoundly,” Truman says.“ This is what I’ ve always wanted to do, and this is just the
“ I love to help businesses grow, and grow profoundly.”
— Rosemarie Truman, director of innovation impact, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
next evolution. I’ m kind of religious about it: God put you on this Earth to use your talents, and if you don’ t do that, you’ re not doing what you’ re supposed to do.”
Truman has her own term for what she does:“ platform-ize” potential businesses. Having helped dozens of other inventions go from concept to company at a glance through start-up challenges in biotechnology, health care and space technology, Truman sees her next platform in the varied sciences of PNNL.
In a previous role, Rosemarie Truman founded and was CEO of the Center for Advancing Innovation. Its mission was to get inventions from the National Cancer Institute off the shelf and into the marketplace. The center created the Breast Cancer Start-Up Challenge, a contest that led to the start of 33 companies.
Truman looks to bring that same thinking to her new role at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. tech transfer
Headquartered in Richland, PNNL is one of 17 U. S. Department of Energy labs nationwide. The labs represent research and development centers for“ basic science,” environmental science, energy and national security.
In recent years, the Department of Energy has increased its focus on moving the technologies it develops in the lab out and into the marketplace to further its mission of science in the public interest, says Malin Young, PNNL’ s deputy director for science and technology.
The inventions coming out of the labs are“ underappreciated treasures” that can use a pro like Truman to get them exposure.
“ Rosemarie has a passion for tech transfer, a wealth of experience and boundless energy to make things happen that are transformational,” Young says.“ I’ d
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