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Increasing national security requirements and a significant change in the workforce demanded that Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories shift the way they do business after more than 50 years.
Both labs traditionally had recruited from top universities’ graduate programs and once people joined, they spent their career on the East Avenue facilities in Livermore. For some, they found the work so interesting that after they retired, they volunteered to continue their research.
By the 2000s, that had shifted and the best and brightest were seeking opportunities in private industry as well as the national labs. That led to the realization that collaboration between the labs, industry and academia was going to be required. Lawrence Livermore Director Kim Budil expects one-third of her workforce to be new within five years, while Sandia’s Stephanie Beasly said she almost feels like an old-timer having worked there for 12 years.
Thus, the Livermore Valley Open Campus came into being. The labs sought U.S. Department of Energy approval in 2009 that was granted in 2010 with the first initiative being the High Performance Computing Innovation Center.
Lawrence Livermore has operated some of the world’s most powerful computers for decades because they are critical to the modeling necessary to maintain the nuclear stockpile. That modeling capability can be used for other purposes such as Cardoid, developed with IBM, which replicates the electrical system of the human heart, allowing diagnosis and treatment of arrhythmias.
That time was notable for two other events: the formation of the Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group to tap into the business community to help drive public policy across the valleys and establishing the i-GATE incubator in Livermore to enhance the innovation environment here. Both Sandia and Lawrence were founding partners.
Sandia executive vice president Andrew McIlroy drove the open campus from his side, saying it was time to move the “guards, guns and gates back.” Sandia has a history of doing so since its non-classified combustion research facility opened in 1990. He’s said that any car in Sandia’s parking lot is better because of the combustion facility.
The center has been part of Sandia’s effort to support and enhance the use of hydrogen as fuel instead of oil products. Its teams developed the safety protocols for fueling stations and mapped out where they needed to be across the state. Working with Cummins, it designed a diesel engine entirely by computer, saving about 10% of development time and expense. It’s now powering more than 200,000 Ram trucks.
One huge advantage of the open campus coupled with the University of California’s rehabilitated Livermore Collaboration Center is no clearances are required to meet with foreign nationals.
Given the many immigrants that lead companies in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, there had been “friction” trying to meet together. Often, the best solution was a coffee shop offsite. For instance, the president of Ford Motors was a German citizen so meeting outside the gates was easy compared with a process that can take weeks for a security clearance to meet in the secured area.
The UC center also is offering an entrepreneurial class for employees that 60 take advantage of each summer. The week-long course takes them into the unfamiliar world of startups and dealing with venture capitalist investors.
Michelle Gonzalez from Sandia explained the thrust is for Sandia to lean into a culture of innovation and take meaningful and actionable steps to create a culture that is energizing and inspiring and allows people to pursue purpose-driven work. She recalled the famous quote from business guru Max Dupree that culture eats strategy for breakfast. She also said that employees who attend often gain a broader perspective on potential uses for their technology.
What’s ahead for Sandia is a new high-powered computing center as well as a sitewide effort to achieve net-zero carbon status. Sandia’s national security mission expanded after 9/11 and it launched bio-detection and bio-energy and now cybersecurity programs. When the COVID crisis exploded into 2021, Sandians tapped into their antibody library to see what might be useful.
Sandia is the largest of the national labs and is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.
One commercialized Sandia innovation is the lab-on-a-disk SpinDX technology that enables real-time monitoring of male fertility. It also has applications in emerging countries where blood can be tested remotely and results sent to a medical professional. Sandstone Diagnostics has commercialized the male testing kit.
Another Sandian, Dr. Joseph Pratt, launched a company based in Alameda to build zero-emission vessels using hydrogen and batteries. In May, it launched the Sea Change, a 75-passenger ferry on the San Francisco Bay. Hydrogen fuel cells also can be used with the ubiquitous forklifts found in every warehouse and expanding in the growing logistics industry. When hydrogen burns, what’s left is water.
After the successful launch of the open campus, Lawrence Livermore built its Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory that opened in 2020. More than 20 company and academic partnerships have utilized that facility. One of them was Vector Atomics that developed new technology to offer the most precise location measurements available in place of GPS that potentially is at-risk in a conflict.
The military was the first backer and work demonstrated both the precision of the location and its ability to stand up to harsh conditions. It’s progressed, thanks to government contracts, to standing alone as an employee-owned company with no debt. Now headquartered in Pleasanton, the firm is debt free and working on atomic clocks and communication.
Another win for the lab was utilizing a laser and specialized metal pellets in precise 3-D manufacturing in partnership with G.E. Seurat, headed by former lab researcher James DeMuth, licensed technology developed for the target chamber of the National Ignition Facility.
Using the 3-dimensional extrusion head, it can manufacture spare parts instead of stocking a huge inventory. They worked together for two years. Seurat attracted a significant investment from chip manufacturer Nvidia because of the potential to use the technology to cool their chips more efficiently.
Lawrence Livermore has what amounts to a business development team headed by Matt Garrett. It’s charged with knowing technology and capabilities the lab has, whether inside the gates or in the open campus and then networking with potential industry partners.
“You have to be present and ready to communicate and engage,” Garrett said in an interview from a conference in Dallas. “That’s when these casual conversations and relationships that you build over time can lead to opportunities for our researchers.”
Chris Spadaccini, who manages the manufacturing lab, said an overriding goal is to “spin in and spin out” technology from industry and use it to enhance lab capabilities and then spin it out into the private sector.
The lab’s bio researchers have combined the high-speed computer with biologics in partnership with Bridge Bio to discover a molecule taken orally that has the potential to significantly slow or inhibit the growth of cancer. One major goal of biologic research is to shorten the time it takes to get drugs through the FDA approval process and into the market.
The lab reopened its updated Discovery Center in 2023 that is open to the public. It received more than 3,700 visitors and 74 school groups. That same year, more than 620 events or meetings were held on the open campus. That included 1,540 guest passes with 18% going to non-citizens. The numbers through six months of 2024 have trended up.
With the overall success of the open campus and lots of available land on the Lawrence side, the natural questions are about what’s next. One interesting possibility would be a facility to bridge companies between a successful prototype at the manufacturing lab and the process of manufacturing thousands of them.
One striking commonality among the six leaders interviewed for this story was how many other places these key managers had worked. They seemed well-equipped for their current roles.
For instance, Chris Leno, who oversees the infrastructure side of the Lawrence open campus, has moved 17 times since 2000 that included stints at Sandia Albuquerque and in the private sector operating a franchise business with his husband that they sold when he headed out West.
He said Lawrence is in the process of designing two new buildings: the potential bridge facility and an integrative bio-resilience facility. No decision has been made on what to pursue — that’s up to senior management, the National Nuclear Security Administration that directly oversees the nuclear weapons complex and eventually Congress for a specific funding allocation depending upon the cost of the building.
What’s clear after almost 15 years is that the open campus has met the goal of increasing collaboration and is ready to build on it.
Hertz Foundation bolsters Innovation Tri-Valley
Local collaboration grew deep this spring when the Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group and the John and Fannie Hertz Foundation established a formal partnership.
The organizations both benefited from the leadership of retired Lawrence Livermore nuclear physicist Jay Davis who served as an associate director and other roles in his long career. Davis was president of the Hertz Foundation and was a founding ITV board member.
The Hertz Foundation has benefited more than 1,280 science and technology people through its fellowship program over its 60-year history. Lab Director Kim Budil is a Hertz fellow.
The foundation has invested throughout its history in skilled post-graduate students with an interest in national security. It’s broadened its mission as the national security challenges have grown more complex.
The partnership will highlight Hertz’s role in the Tri-Valley’s innovation economy that ITV strives to consistently improve.
