Industrial Affiliates Feature Technology Transfer
Certain areas of science (Fermilab' s basic research, for instance) have traditionally received governmental support simply because, like certain areas of our cultural life (the arts, for instance), their long-term benefit was and is recognized as being good for the society.
Times change, economics change, and the layman's traditional question, "But what is basic research doing for me now?" has, to a degree, become the funding agency's question as well. Fermilab's Office of Research and Technology Applications (ORTA) was established to help provide some answers to that question.
Headed since its inception by Dick Carrigan, the primary mission of the ORTA is to track applicable results of the R&D done by Fermilab's physicists and engineers and, as stated by Fermilab Director Leon Lederman in his introductory remarks to the 1986 Fermilab Industrial Affiliates (IA) meeting, "improve communications between academic and industrial research."
The Fermilab Industrial Affiliates are private-sector companies who receive regular mailings of Fermilab technical bulletins, attend periodic seminars conducted by Fermilab staff, and (the centerpiece of the Affiliates' year-round activities) participate in a two-day meeting of the minds among the Affiliates and a series of speakers whose reports on their activities represent the cutting edge of physics and physics-related research.
The Director's opening remarks to this year's meeting (the sixth to date) reiterated a point he made at the Annual Users Meeting. "Fermilab is a national laboratory, but in every sense it really is the off-campus facility for some 70 universities in the United States 56 [of which] are formally organized in a consortium called the Universities Research Association [which] manages the Laboratory under contract with the Department of Energy. We really are a central location where you can see some of the work, at least in our field, carried out at most of the major research universities in the United States."
The Director went on to discuss the thrust of IA meetings which have focused on the SSC as an example of large, pure research in need of industrial participation ('84); practical applications of speculative physics ('85); and, this year, the "less exotic" topic of the roundtable discussion: "Science, Economics, and Public Policy."
In reviewing topics presented, and insights gained, from the previous IA meetings, the Director noted that, while expectations prior to the first IA meeting ('81) were that Fermilab would transfer new technology to industry which would then immediately find ways to apply those new ideas in the marketplace, it was soon evident that the process of technology transfer itself was one which needed attention.
Fermilab Associate Director Dick Lundy welcomed the Affiliates, and then Peter Limon of the SSC Central Design Group presented the current status of the SSC; Fermilab Deputy Director Phil Livdahl gave a detailed report on Fermilab' s work on a prototype proton accelerator for medical treatment for Loma Linda Hospital in Southern California (the date of the IA meeting happened to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the first use, at Harvard, of an accelerator for medical applications); and Dick Carrigan enumerated some of the many technologies available at Fermilab and described the interface between the Laboratory and the IA.
The moderator for this year's roundtable was Dr. David Morrison, president of IITRI. Panelists were Mr. Norman Metzger of the National Academy of Science; Dr. George Pake, Group Vic€ President for Corporate Research at Xerox and a member of the SSC Board of Overseers; Dr. Alan Schriesheim, director of Argonne; and Mr. J. Edward Steinmueller of Stanford. (Note: A report on the roundtable wll appear in the July Fermilab Report; a complete transcript will be available in the coming months from the ORTA.)
Following the day's session, Dr. Pake returned to the podium as this year's after-dinner speaker and delved into the subjects of the worth of basic research, and technology transfer within the corporate structure. Noting that "all of us [in industry] are dependent on the output of research labs" Dr. Pake covered such topics as the objectives of corporate basic research (from the "search for new technological concepts of commercial value" to research which "builds a fundamental base of knowledge"); how Xerox selects areas for research investment (evaluation of the "ripeness of the field for research exploration… Is the magnitude of the investment within available resources?... Is there adequate hope that research can be transferred downstream?"); and the criteria for, and methods used in, the transfer of technology from a Xerox research group to a Xerox product marketing group.
Dr. Pake pointed out that Xerox's long-standing experience with basic research has led to "new products, new departments created by new products, and research that is shared with other corporations who can utilize new technologies Xerox develops but can't use." He predicted an on-going "national pay-off from high-energy physics research," and cited the SSC as an example of a national research policy which "for the near- and long-term benefit opt[s] for the broadest and deepest knowledge man can obtain. Nothing is more pragmatic than technological leadership."
Friday's session began with a look at SSC instrumentation needs presented by Murdock Gilchriese of Cornell, followed by Fermilab's Marv Johnson who described advances in large-scale electronic systems for particle physics. Randal Ruchti, from Notre Dame, described the video image intensifier system used by a group including Alan Baumbaugh and Kelly Knickerbocker of the Fermilab Research Division to study Halley's comet. Tom Nash of Fermilab' s Advanced Computer Program Group, and Donald Weingarten of IBM brought the Affiliates up to date on the use of supercomputers in particle physics. Chris Hill of Fermilab's Theoretical Physics Department spoke on new developments in particle theory, and Leon Lederman closed the meeting with word of the new Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. The Affiliates were also given informational tours of the Advanced Computer Program, and Industrial Buildings housing SSC magnet development work.
In his remarks the Director stated opening the meeting, the three questions which Fermilab research attempts to answer: What are the fundamental objects of matter? What are the fundamental forces of matter? How does the Universe work? On the way to those profound answers, research facilities like Fermilab face an unending series of challenges, not the least of which is a return on investment to the society which supports the search. Industrial Affiliates meetings, and transfer of Fermilab-developed technologies, represent an innovative attempt to answer the challenge.