Sandia scientists joined other DOE national laboratories to showcase their bioscience research and capabilities before investors, industry representatives and university partners at the Innovation XLab: Biomanufacturing Summit at the California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, Jan. 28-29. The two-day summit, hosted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was designed to help bridge the gap between research and commercialization.

Senior Manager Mary Monson, who specializes in technology partnerships and business development, was on hand to visit with conference attendees in the exhibit hall and discuss opportunities to collaborate with Sandia.

“The Innovation XLab summit provided us with an important opportunity to exchange insights and ideas with potential collaborative research partners,” Mary said. “Sandia has a robust intellectual property portfolio in the biosciences, and XLab gave us a chance to put Sandia’s facilities, technologies and expertise on full display.”

Anup Singh, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear defense and energy technologies director, added that familiarizing industry participants with the broad spectrum of Sandia’s research capabilities is the first step to creating important new partnerships.

“Sandia is doing groundbreaking work in synthetic biology, biofuels, algae, biosecurity, agriculture and biomass deconstruction,” Anup said. “Transitioning these scientific discoveries and technologies developed at Sandia to the marketplace accelerates innovation.”

Biological solutions

Sandia’s dynamic biological research capability addresses important national security challenges. Research in two strategic areas — biomass conversion and biodefense — provides biological solutions to critical challenges in energy, environment and homeland security.

The conference agenda covered numerous topics, including ethics, profitability, automation and artificial intelligence, as well as the future roles of biomanufacturing and synthetic biology in food production and agriculture, biofuels and transportation, bio-based materials and therapeutics.

The event was the fifth in the DOE’s Innovation XLab series. Past events have covered a variety of topics, including energy storage, grid modernization, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence.

 

See also: First-ever Innovation XLab takes energy storage research, technology to investor community