Bay Area labs win awards for new technologies

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jul 6, 2007 | by Betsy MasonSTAFF

Bay Area labs won nine prestigious R&D awards this year for new technologies with commercial potential, including an underground bomb detector and a fast, portable device that can diagnose a potentially fatal lung condition.

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory added five more awards this year to bring the lab's total to 118 since 1978.

"These technologies highlight the laboratory's long-standing tradition of using multidisciplinary teams to solve important national problems," said Cherry Murray, deputy director for science and technology at Livermore Lab.

The research and development awards, sometimes called the "Oscars of Invention" are given by the trade journal R&D Magazine for the world's top 100 industrial innovations each year.

Livermore Lab won seven awards last year, tying its record and grabbing more awards than any other institution in the country. This year, Oakridge National Laboratory topped the list withsix awards. It also boasts the highest total with 134 of the coveted honors.

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory picked up three awards this year, one short of last year, bringing the lab's total to 44.

Berkeley Lab's awards include one for a more sensitive MRI that uses laser detection and eliminates the need for a very large, expensive magnet, making the technology much less costly and far more accessible.

The lab also was recognized for its design of a new underground bomb detector that can determine the size and shape of buried unexploded ordnance within seconds using a single measurement. Previous detectors needed several measurements and could not measure size and shape in real time.

The lab also won for a new injector for gas turbine engines.

Mechanical engineer Robert Cheng of Berkeley helped design the injector that could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Existing engine designs could be retrofit with the injector, unlike other clean-flame technologies that require major engine redesigns.

"The whole point of this invention is that we can actually just plug it in," Cheng said. "It will be hugely less expensive than the alternative."

Cheng and his colleagues have funding from the Department of Energy to adapt the technology to coal-fired power plants. He believes the same idea could work for liquid gas turbines such as jet engines.

Sandia/California National Laboratories in Livermore won an award for a fiber amplifier that would allow the development of compact, efficient, high-powered laser sources for use in manufacturing, remote sensing and another applications.

Livermore Lab's awards include a diagnostic device that can detect a potentially fatal condition known as pneumothorax, where air is trapped between the lung and the chest wall. Pneumothorax can cause death within minutes by collapsing the lung. The new device is portable, battery powered and fast.

Other award-winning technologies include a retinal imaging instrument, optics that can manipulate and fine tune high-powered laser beams, a radiation detector that can scan 100 meters at a time and works at speeds up to 25 miles per hour, and software that speeds up supercomputer simulations.

The awards will be presented on Oct. 18 in Chicago.