The Energy Department infuses entrepreneurs in its national labs

A fresh round of thinkers has arrived at four of the Energy Department’s national laboratories. They’re known as lab-embedded entrepreneurs, and there are 33 of them. Now in its 10th year, it’s become what the Energy Department calls a cornerstone in its clean energy strategy. Undersecretary of Energy for Science and Innovation, Geri Richmond, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to provide an update.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin: Tell us about this program, lab embedded entrepreneurs. So that sounds like people with multiple skills. They are scientists at some point and also entrepreneurs. Tell us more.

Geri Richmond: Well, it’s a great program, and the whole point is to be able to get these young, early career, or even midcareer, to some extent too, scientists to go from the lab to actually putting their work into starting a company, and they in the technical areas, and in particular, because of the Department of Energy were interested in areas having to do with climate change and more energy efficiency and so forth. And so it actually started at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Cyclotron Road, and it was bringing in applicants to come in and work with lots of times from universities. Should they work with the laboratory experts in this area, and they get to use the phenomenal facilities of the lab, and they can then go through a process where they get chosen to actually spend some time at the labs with funding to take their ideas to reality.

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Tom Temin: And these are people that are in working now in industry, or could they be academics, or could they be even graduate students?

Geri Richmond: Anything. There’s bright people everywhere. So, they can be working in a university, but they can also be working in a company. They can be a postdoc. It could be a graduate student working in various areas, and the range of people makes it also exciting too.

Tom Temin: And each year you choose a cohort, these are competitively chosen, absolutely, absolutely. And how long are they at the National Laboratory?

Geri Richmond: Well, they get two years, and it allows them to again work with the scientists at the National Labs, and then also be connected with companies so that once they have their ideas and they get them started, then the whole idea is to get them into the network of companies that might want to buy them off or help them support them going forward, with the company that they want to start.

Tom Temin: And the topic of clean energy or cleaner energy is really 1,000 topics in many ways. What are some of the top areas that you’re looking to get more entrepreneurship and push back out to bolster up industry?

Geri Richmond: Well, there’s a lot of them. So, you know, with the climate crisis, we at the Department of Energy started a new initiative called Earthshots. And the Earthshots, there are eight areas that we’re particularly focused on, and these require not only the fundamental research, but they also need to be taken through the applied areas, and then hopefully to be deployed and commercialized. And so the areas that we work on, I’ll just give some examples, are certainly it’s the batteries area, offshore wind, improving manufacturing efficiency, decarbonization processes, taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but also helping companies have a better carbon footprint, solar, quantum, quantum computing, AI, I mean, it goes on energy stores, the grid, and even you wouldn’t think for DOE, but it really has. We have projects in food and health and water, and especially the nexus between water and energy.

Tom Temin: Sure, it all kind of relates. What about, just as an aside, a detailed question, the idea of hydrogen? There are some hydrogen engines, you know, in a few cars, which I know strikes me personally, is way more promising than electric.

Geri Richmond: Well, the way we’ve been looking at it, certainly in cars, but we’ve been looking at it also is really for buses, more for larger vehicles, transport vehicles. And so, a lot of the work is certainly for automobiles, but even more so also for airplanes to be more long haul. And hydrogen is the big buzz molecule these days.

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Tom Temin: All right, we don’t want a bunch of little Hindenburg running around up and down 95. We’re speaking with Dr. Jerry Richmond. She’s undersecretary of energy for science and innovation, and by the way, which are the labs that are hosting the lab-embedded folks?

Geri Richmond: So that would be Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. That would be Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago. That’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, of course, in Berkeley, California.

Tom Temin: And over the 10 years of the program, any particular highlights you like to point to of what has come out of it?

Geri Richmond: Well, I think Tom, you know, I can do some bragging points. Please do over 200 fellows. They have started 153 new businesses. They’ve created over 2,000 jobs. And what blows my mind is that they secured over $2.7 billion in follow up funding. And also, you know, how we measure success is to if there’s either been bought off or within 10 years, they have especially started their company, and 97% we consider have had startup success. So that’s a that’s a pretty good rate, I think. But I think it also is a reflection of not only how creative and the bright ideas that they have, but also their ability to work with folks in the laboratory and use the facilities at no cost to them while also getting financial support, health care and so forth for those two years so and tying them company. So, I think it provides this support structure that’s hard to come up with in other ways.

Tom Temin: And you mentioned Argonne another detailed question. You didn’t say nuclear specifically in the list of areas you’re exploring, but that’s a big part of the greener future too, isn’t it?

Geri Richmond: It is. Absolutely it is. It is. And so that certainly is one of the in my portfolio. I oversee the Nuclear Energy Office, which is the applied offices, and we have several laboratories that have either a history in nuclear or actually have nuclear work going on. That would certainly be Oak Ridge and Argonne and Idaho National Laboratory also so. And in both of those two, Argonne and Oak Ridge, that’s always can be a component of what’s chosen. And when they’re chosen, they can have great ideas. But we really want to make sure that they also tie in with the mission of DOE, and that certainly the nuclear certainly part of our mission.

Tom Temin: And how do they interact? Once they are within the lab. They must love the access to the supercomputing facilities that the Energy Department has. I imagine that’s a big draw. But then there are people already there. How does that work? How do they work in?

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Geri Richmond: Well, that’s a good question. And certainly, the super computers are out there, especially with AI because, you know, you can start out with a billion ideas of molecules to make and using the AI at our laboratories, you can hone that down to the 51 that would work best, and then you can work on it. So that’s a big deal because you’re not, you know, got a lot of hand stuff going on. As a chemist, I know how tedious I could say many of these are. But, you know, in addition to the computing, especially at, for example, at Brookhaven and Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, they have these light sources, right? They have these X-ray light sources that are enormous, right? They’re the size of football fields or football stadiums and they produce the kind of light you can’t get anywhere else. They produce the X-ray light that allows you to get the structure of everything from the COVID protein to whatever new material you have. And so, they can use that the beam lines that are there, that are staff. And then the X-rays, of course, are critical for understanding where you’re going molecularly. And then they can also tie in with many of our, what we call our nanoscience centers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It’s called the molecular foundry, and you can talk to people about how to more efficiently make or if the idea you have has been made before, like in batteries or anything having to do with carbon capture materials or membranes. So, the labs are unique in that they work in teams, and so you can embed yourself in a team and just be part of that. And I think that’s what’s unique about this entrepreneurship at the laboratories because you’ve already got families you can join, whether it be the light source family or the nanoscience center laboratories. And even now, we have new the Office of Science has new frontier energy research centers which are particularly focused on climate issues.

Tom Temin: And it sounds like the line between basic research and applied research isn’t really a bright line, but more of a fading one into the other. Would that be fair to say?

Geri Richmond: I love that. I love that because I know I give talks around a lot, and I keep saying that basic and applied is in the eye of the beholder with regards to what you’re doing because even as I know from doing my research myself for all these years, you have an idea. Many scientists want to have an impact with their work, and the impact can be just the discovery, but for some of us, it’s also been how you can take it to the next step, to help people, to help the world, whatever it is. And so I do believe that it’s a fine line between the two, and I really don’t like us to be categorizing them this way because in this day and age, when there’s so many new generation scientists that really want their science to have an impact, if we start putting them in pigeonholes of calling them basic science researchers versus Clyde that they won’t feel like they can stretch across that boundary.

Tom Temin: And a final question, when will we have a 1,000-kilowatt hour car battery that weighs 25 pounds?

Geri Richmond: We’re working on it. Man, we’re working on it.

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