Dr. Drucker, who has lab-wide responsibility for technology transfer at Argonne National Laboratory, argues that transferring rights in discoveries made through tax supported research to private entities can contribute to public welfare in many ways

Drucker, Harvey

English

University of New Hampshire

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)
Volume 5
Number 2 Symposium on the Human Genome Project Article 7
March 1994
Technology Transfer: A View from the Trenches
Harvey Drucker
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/risk
Part of the Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Genetic Structures
Commons, Intellectual Property Law Commons, Other Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
Commons, Other Genetics and Genomics Commons, and the Policy Design, Analysis, and
Evaluation Commons
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Hampshire – School of Law at University of New Hampshire Scholars'
Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002) by an authorized editor of University of New
Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact ellen.phillips@law.unh.edu.
Repository Citation
Harvey Drucker, Technology Transfer: A View from the Trenches, 5 RISK 143 (1994).
Technology Transfer:
A View from the Trenches
Harvey Drucker*
Introduction
Argonne and I, for various reasons, are generally interested in
technology transfer and specifically interested in the development of
commercial technology from basic and applied research in biology and
medicine. One of my responsibilities accounts for my generic interest. I
have lab-wide responsibility for technology transfer, that is, the
conversion of discoveries made through tax-supported research into
commercial products or services that benefit the general public.
Technology transfer has been recognized by our primary research
sponsor, the Department of Energy (DOE); by Congress, and
increasingly, by industry as a key element in U.S. efforts to improve its
technological competitiveness.
More specifically, as Associate Director of the lab, the Argonne
Center for Mechanistic Biology falls within my purview. We have a very
active group developing methods for genomic sequencing based on
DNA hybridization. We will be running what I consider the principal
user facility for structural biology in the U.S. sometime in 19961 and
are in the process of developing a computational biology group that we
hope will provide the software and hardware for converting biological
data into simple chemical and medical technology.
Anyone who reads the newspaper or looks at television has to be
aware that the nation is in economic trouble. Politicians, from the
President to County Commissioners, either wring their hands or claim
* Dr. Drucker is Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environmental
Science and Technology at Argonne National Laboratory. He received his B.S. and
Ph.D., both in biology, from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
1 The Structural Biology Center at the Advanced Photon Source.
5 Risk Health, Safety & Environment 143 [Spring 1994]
victory based upon tenths of percent changes in employment; gross
national product or balance of payments. Joblessness makes good copy
when there isn't a beached whale or a middling quality murder to
report. Still, these headlines reflect an underlying weakness in the U.S.
economy.
Loss of Market Dominance
It started a decade ago when we lost market dominance in what
were then called the basic industries such as steel and automobiles.
First, we lost in the international markets. Then, we lost at home. Next,
we fell behind in high-tech markets such as consumer electronics and
computers.
Underlying this was a destructive cycle: Weakened financial
positions led to lower investment in research and development (R&D)
and led to further loss of market; that led to further financial weakness.
This cycle was aggravated by a decade of takeover sharks threatening
leveraged buy outs; corporations taking poison pills and a corporate
focus foreshortened down to the next quarterly dividend. Add to this a
work force no longer at the forefront in literacy and mathematics,
coupled with basic industrial technologies that require less hands but
greater training. Throw in non-uniform occupational and environmental
regulation, and you have the makings of a very bad brew.
Last year, it was reported that U.S. spending for R&D has started
to fall for the first time since the 1970's while foreign rivals have
increased research investments.2 For example, Japan is said to equal
or surpass the U.S. as the world's top patron of industrial R&D. 3 It is
also worth noting that Japan's R&D budget overwhelmingly addresses
civilian research, causing an even greater disparity in terms of potential
market impact for their dollars versus ours.
2 National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators (1992). This report
indicates that annual national expenditures for R&D fell from $154.3 billion in 1989
to $151.6 billion in 1990. Preliminary analysis was also found to indicate that 1991
and 1992 totals might be down even further.
3 Competitiveness Policy Council.
Drucker: A View from the Trenches 145
Reasons for Loss of Competitiveness
From my reading, I conclude that there are many reasons for our
loss of competitive position. For example, the target of heavy criticism,
is our traditionally poor integration of publicly- and privately-funded
R&D; we look especially deficient compared to the Japanese, where
integration is part of the political and economic culture.
Also, we have lacked close collaboration between research
universities, national laboratories, research hospitals and corporations.
However, historically, we haven't needed it: For most of the modern
era, our publicly-funded R&D centers were the acknowledged world
champions in basic research. Our corporations were acknowledged
world champions in industrial applications. The traditional theory
seemed to work, i.e., that discoveries would be made in the public
sector and trickle down through an intellectual gravity flow to industry
and the public.
This may still be true in medical R&D, but we unfortunately held
on to that theory long after losses in world markets indicated that it
wasn't working well enough. Meanwhile, decades of separation between
corporations, universities and federal labs had erected psychological and
legal barriers.
Psychological Barriers
Three distinct species of elitism worked against collaboration
between corporations, universities and federal labs. First, most
industrial research organizations were permeated with the suspicion that
inventions that did not come from the in-house organization probably
were of questionable value. Second, many universities let traditional
concern for academic freedom interfere with the role they could play in
industrial support, research hospitals tended to limit collaboration with
their related universities, and national laboratories were slow to give up
their self image as free-standing centers of scientific and technological
expertise. Federally-funded researchers tended to put new technologies
on the shelf for customers to pick and choose - rather than to consider
commercial applications of their inventions and pursue potential
customers.
5 Risk Health, Safety & Environment 143 [Spring 1994]
Legal Barriers
One set of legal barriers to collaboration seems to be our apparently
unique antitrust laws and attitudes. These blocked research
collaboration of many kinds and made corporate research and legal
executives chary of involvement with one-another or with publicly-
funded R&D. Extending well beyond antitrust, we seem to have had,
at least for civilian purposes, a distinctly adversarial relationship between
government and industry. Thus, we have had no creatures like
Mitsubishi Shoji, trading companies that could cross technological lines
easily and bring semiconductors to watches or ceramics to scissors.
Somewhat related was the apparently logical prohibition against the
federal government granting to one company exclusive rights to
discovery that had been paid for by everyone's tax money.
4
Congress, federal administrators and others had a mortal fear of
government technology making someone rich. What if, perish the
thought, this resulted in a Xerox or a Polaroid?
If we give invention to everyone, it lowers the chance that anyone
will gain undue advantage from tax money or that anyone will become
disgustingly wealthy. The flaw in this logic was revealed when it
became apparent that few if any companies would invest the money
needed to convert a scientific discovery into a market-ready product
without some kind of reasonable opportunity to recoup their risk
capital. 5 The result was that discoveries belonging to everyone, often
ended up being exploited by no one.
4 For an overview of the situation, see, e.g., Robert Van Ravenswaay,
Government Patents and the Public Interest, 19 Idea 331 (1978). [Ed.]
5 See, e.g., Ronald E. Barks, Accessing and Licensing Federal Technology,
Licensing Law and Business Report, May-June, 1992, at 76, "[F]or every $1 of
research, a company spends $10 to develop the product and another $100 to take it to
market." [Ed.]
Drucker. A View from the Trenches 147
The Times They Are A-Changin'
We seem to be entering an era where industrial delivery of research
conceived in government labs is a blessed event - especially if it creates
jobs for Americans - even if it should provide a few minor country
estates. As discussed by Lawrence Rudolph elsewhere in this issue,
agencies like the DOE, spurred by several Congresses and Presidents,
have done a U-turn in dealing with proprietary rights. Corporations can
now protect resources invested to develop a discovery made at a
national laboratory.
One of the newest and best mechanisms to accomplish this is a
cooperative R&D agreement (CRADA). Under a CRADA agreement,
Argonne and a corporation make an (usually co-equal) investment in an
approved project, and the company retains proprietary rights.
Currently, Argonne has signed 30 CRADAs and is negotiating over 40
more.
6
For example, Argonne fostered the organization of the Midwest
Plant Biotechnology Consortium with sixteen midwestern universities
and 35 agri-business corporations. We originally called a meeting of
this group at which industrial representatives specified major problems
that could be solved with scientific research. The universities and
Argonne chose problems they believed they had the capability to solve.
A series of partnerships were formed, and grants were awarded based
upon relevance to application and technical excellence. Since 1988, we
have averaged about $4 million per year to fund such research, and, in
1992, a new activity involving bulk chemical production through
biotechnology was funded at about the same level.
Another example that could have trust-busters rolling over in their
graves is our current Battery Research Program. The bulk of that DOE
research funding will go to a collaboration with the Big Three auto
makers called the United States Advanced Battery Consortium or
USABC. Industry will match funds with the national laboratories and
associated institutions to develop better batteries, better vehicles and,
6 Including ones with Baxter Health Care (blood), Notre Dame (bugs to eat
contamination in soil), Caterpillar (inspection of ceramic-coated engine parts), Allied
Signal (ceramic erosion in engines and petrochemical pumps).
5 Risk: Health, Safety & Environment 143 [Spring 1994]
especially, concepts designed to take autos out of the environmental
equation.
Recently, General Motors (GM) on its own had a "garage sale" at
which national labs were invited to offer their good ideas for sale
through displays, literature and personal representatives. GM research
teams engaged in intensive "shopping" at this pioneering bazaar.
Argonne has also chartered the Argonne-University of Chicago
Development Corporation, or ARCH, to foster commercialization of
scientific discoveries made at the university or within the laboratory. It
negotiates with corporations to license inventions and patents, set up
joint ventures or establish new companies.
Another traditional area of cooperation between Argonne and non-
Argonne researchers has been through our "user facilities," giant
research machines too expensive to duplicate at campuses and industrial
parks. Such facilities are open to use by researchers from other national
labs, industry, hospitals or universities.
Currently, Argonne is building what we believe will be the most
effective user facility that the nation has ever constructed. More than
300 scientists and engineers will perform as many as 100 different
experiments simultaneously on the machine. It is a $456 million
accelerator called the Advanced Photon Source (APS). The APS will
generate the world's most brilliant X-rays for materials research. These
X-ray beams, 10,000 times brighter than those of existing X-ray
sources, will reveal the atomic and molecular structure of materials to
improve America's competitiveness in areas such as steels, medicine,
semi-conductors, polymers, pharmaceuticals and catalysts.
The APS has attracted more industry participation in its planning
stages than any basic research facility previously built in the U.S. One
demonstration of its value is creation by thirteen pharmaceutical
companies of a consortium to build and operate their own beam lines.
A further indicator of APS's value to industry is that both Japan and
Europe are rushing to set up their own version.
Drude. A View from the Trenches 149
Conclusions
What might all of this mean for those interested in the human
genome and/or development of commercial technologies from
genomic research?
On the positive side, we now have contractual instruments and
technology transfer models that, with a little work, should be adaptable
to new private sector ventures in biology. They are being used;
companies are receiving exclusive rights to intellectual property, and
federal labs, their technical staffs and sponsors are seeking to make
deals.
On the other side, we have a growing federal technology transfer
bureaucracy, as office upon office gets involved in issues such as
conflicts of interest, foreign preferences and profit dissemination. If
anything can destroy technology transfer, especially to small businesses
with finite legal budgets, this is it. Also, federal labs now have no un-
earmarked pots of money for codevelopment of technologies. Each
piece of work that departs from what was originally proposed requires
separate dispensation - stalling or stopping good ideas while agencies
wait for the next fiscal year or until Congress considers budgets.
Moreover, federal technology transfer policies and practices are not
uniform. Different federal laboratories and their scientists accept or
reject particular cooperative projects based upon their histories,
interpretations of law and perceptions of their sponsor's, e.g., the
DOE's, attitude.
Finally, enabling legislation and pioneering mechanisms for
technology transfer are insufficient, themselves, to overcome major
barriers to collaboration. A major barrier is cultural differences among
parties to these partnerships. To collaborate effectively, personnel in
each institution must get to know the strengths and peculiarities of
other institutions. A university researcher who disdains concern with
market response is bound to have trouble working with an industrial
partner, and a corporate researcher with no tolerance for federal
bureaucracy has a hard row to hoe in working with a national lab.
Likewise, an Argonne researcher unaware of university sensitivity to
5 Risk Health, Safety & Environment 143 [Spring 1994]
150
dominance by large federal institutions probably is going to strike out
in dealing with R&D partners from those institutions.
Overall - especially where research is far ahead of development, as
with the human genome project - things are nevertheless looking
good. I and other federal technology transfer personnel invite people
from corporations to visit Argonne, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and our
other brethren, where they just might find something interesting.


Technology Transfer: A View from the Trenches

UNH Scholars' Repository

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)Volume 5Number 2 Symposium on the Human Genome Project Article 7March 1994Technology Transfer: A View from the TrenchesHarvey DruckerFollow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/riskPart of the Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Genetic StructuresCommons, Intellectual Property Law Commons, Other Biomedical Engineering and BioengineeringCommons, Other Genetics and Genomics Commons, and the Policy Design, Analysis, andEvaluation CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Hampshire – School of Law at University of New Hampshire Scholars'Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002) by an authorized editor of University of NewHampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact ellen.phillips@law.unh.edu.Repository CitationHarvey Drucker, Technology Transfer: A View from the Trenches, 5 RISK 143 (1994).Technology Transfer:A View from the TrenchesHarvey Drucker*IntroductionArgonne and I, for various reasons, are generally interested intechnology transfer and specifically interested in the development ofcommercial technology from basic and applied research in biology andmedicine. One of my responsibilities accounts for my generic interest. Ihave lab-wide responsibility for technology transfer, that is, theconversion of discoveries made through tax-supported research intocommercial products or services that benefit the general public.Technology transfer has been recognized by our primary researchsponsor, the Department of Energy (DOE); by Congress, andincreasingly, by industry as a key element in U.S. efforts to improve itstechnological competitiveness.More specifically, as Associate Director of the lab, the ArgonneCenter for Mechanistic Biology falls within my purview. We have a veryactive group developing methods for genomic sequencing based onDNA hybridization. We will be running what I consider the principaluser facility for structural biology in the U.S. sometime in 19961 andare in the process of developing a computational biology group that wehope will provide the software and hardware for converting biologicaldata into simple chemical and medical technology.Anyone who reads the newspaper or looks at television has to beaware that the nation is in economic trouble. Politicians, from thePresident to County Commissioners, either wring their hands or claim* Dr. Drucker is Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and EnvironmentalScience and Technology at Argonne National Laboratory. He received his B.S. andPh.D., both in biology, from the University of Illinois at Chicago.1 The Structural Biology Center at the Advanced Photon Source.5 Risk Health, Safety & Environment 143 [Spring 1994]victory based upon tenths of percent changes in employment; grossnational product or balance of payments. Joblessness makes good copywhen there isn't a beached whale or a middling quality murder toreport. Still, these headlines reflect an underlying weakness in the U.S.economy.Loss of Market DominanceIt started a decade ago when we lost market dominance in whatwere then called the basic industries such as steel and automobiles.First, we lost in the international markets. Then, we lost at home. Next,we fell behind in high-tech markets such as consumer electronics andcomputers.Underlying this was a destructive cycle: Weakened financialpositions led to lower investment in research and development (R&D)and led to further loss of market; that led to further financial weakness.This cycle was aggravated by a decade of takeover sharks threateningleveraged buy outs; corporations taking poison pills and a corporatefocus foreshortened down to the next quarterly dividend. Add to this awork force no longer at the forefront in literacy and mathematics,coupled with basic industrial technologies that require less hands butgreater training. Throw in non-uniform occupational and environmentalregulation, and you have the makings of a very bad brew.Last year, it was reported that U.S. spending for R&D has startedto fall for the first time since the 1970's while foreign rivals haveincreased research investments.2 For example, Japan is said to equalor surpass the U.S. as the world's top patron of industrial R&D. 3 It isalso worth noting that Japan's R&D budget overwhelmingly addressescivilian research, causing an even greater disparity in terms of potentialmarket impact for their dollars versus ours.2 National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators (1992). This reportindicates that annual national expenditures for R&D fell from $154.3 billion in 1989to $151.6 billion in 1990. Preliminary analysis was also found to indicate that 1991and 1992 totals might be down even further.3 Competitiveness Policy Council.Drucker: A View from the Trenches 145Reasons for Loss of CompetitivenessFrom my reading, I conclude that there are many reasons for ourloss of competitive position. For example, the target of heavy criticism,is our traditionally poor integration of publicly- and privately-fundedR&D; we look especially deficient compared to the Japanese, whereintegration is part of the political and economic culture.Also, we have lacked close collaboration between researchuniversities, national laboratories, research hospitals and corporations.However, historically, we haven't needed it: For most of the modernera, our publicly-funded R&D centers were the acknowledged worldchampions in basic research. Our corporations were acknowledgedworld champions in industrial applications. The traditional theoryseemed to work, i.e., that discoveries would be made in the publicsector and trickle down through an intellectual gravity flow to industryand the public.This may still be true in medical R&D, but we unfortunately heldon to that theory long after losses in world markets indicated that itwasn't working well enough. Meanwhile, decades of separation betweencorporations, universities and federal labs had erected psychological andlegal barriers.Psychological BarriersThree distinct species of elitism worked against collaborationbetween corporations, universities and federal labs. First, mostindustrial research organizations were permeated with the suspicion thatinventions that did not come from the in-house organization probablywere of questionable value. Second, many universities let traditionalconcern for academic freedom interfere with the role they could play inindustrial support, research hospitals tended to limit collaboration withtheir related universities, and national laboratories were slow to give uptheir self image as free-standing centers of scientific and technologicalexpertise. Federally-funded researchers tended to put new technologieson the shelf for customers to pick and choose - rather than to considercommercial applications of their inventions and pursue potentialcustomers.5 Risk Health, Safety & Environment 143 [Spring 1994]Legal BarriersOne set of legal barriers to collaboration seems to be our apparentlyunique antitrust laws and attitudes. These blocked researchcollaboration of many kinds and made corporate research and legalexecutives chary of involvement with one-another or with publicly-funded R&D. Extending well beyond antitrust, we seem to have had,at least for civilian purposes, a distinctly adversarial relationship betweengovernment and industry. Thus, we have had no creatures likeMitsubishi Shoji, trading companies that could cross technological lineseasily and bring semiconductors to watches or ceramics to scissors.Somewhat related was the apparently logical prohibition against thefederal government granting to one company exclusive rights todiscovery that had been paid for by everyone's tax money. 4Congress, federal administrators and others had a mortal fear ofgovernment technology making someone rich. What if, perish thethought, this resulted in a Xerox or a Polaroid?If we give invention to everyone, it lowers the chance that anyonewill gain undue advantage from tax money or that anyone will becomedisgustingly wealthy. The flaw in this logic was revealed when itbecame apparent that few if any companies would invest the moneyneeded to convert a scientific discovery into a market-ready productwithout some kind of reasonable opportunity to recoup their riskcapital. 5 The result was that discoveries belonging to everyone, oftenended up being exploited by no one.4 For an overview of the situation, see, e.g., Robert Van Ravenswaay,Government Patents and the Public Interest, 19 Idea 331 (1978). [Ed.]5 See, e.g., Ronald E. Barks, Accessing and Licensing Federal Technology,Licensing Law and Business Report, May-June, 1992, at 76, "[F]or every $1 ofresearch, a company spends $10 to develop the product and another $100 to take it tomarket." [Ed.]Drucker. A View from the Trenches 147The Times They Are A-Changin'We seem to be entering an era where industrial delivery of researchconceived in government labs is a blessed event - especially if it createsjobs for Americans - even if it should provide a few minor countryestates. As discussed by Lawrence Rudolph elsewhere in this issue,agencies like the DOE, spurred by several Congresses and Presidents,have done a U-turn in dealing with proprietary rights. Corporations cannow protect resources invested to develop a discovery made at anational laboratory.One of the newest and best mechanisms to accomplish this is acooperative R&D agreement (CRADA). Under a CRADA agreement,Argonne and a corporation make an (usually co-equal) investment in anapproved project, and the company retains proprietary rights.Currently, Argonne has signed 30 CRADAs and is negotiating over 40more.6For example, Argonne fostered the organization of the MidwestPlant Biotechnology Consortium with sixteen midwestern universitiesand 35 agri-business corporations. We originally called a meeting ofthis group at which industrial representatives specified major problemsthat could be solved with scientific research. The universities andArgonne chose problems they believed they had the capability to solve.A series of partnerships were formed, and grants were awarded basedupon relevance to application and technical excellence. Since 1988, wehave averaged about $4 million per year to fund such research, and, in1992, a new activity involving bulk chemical production throughbiotechnology was funded at about the same level.Another example that could have trust-busters rolling over in theirgraves is our current Battery Research Program. The bulk of that DOEresearch funding will go to a collaboration with the Big Three automakers called the United States Advanced Battery Consortium orUSABC. Industry will match funds with the national laboratories andassociated institutions to develop better batteries, better vehicles and,6 Including ones with Baxter Health Care (blood), Notre Dame (bugs to eatcontamination in soil), Caterpillar (inspection of ceramic-coated engine parts), AlliedSignal (ceramic erosion in engines and petrochemical pumps).5 Risk: Health, Safety & Environment 143 [Spring 1994]especially, concepts designed to take autos out of the environmentalequation.Recently, General Motors (GM) on its own had a "garage sale" atwhich national labs were invited to offer their good ideas for salethrough displays, literature and personal representatives. GM researchteams engaged in intensive "shopping" at this pioneering bazaar.Argonne has also chartered the Argonne-University of ChicagoDevelopment Corporation, or ARCH, to foster commercialization ofscientific discoveries made at the university or within the laboratory. Itnegotiates with corporations to license inventions and patents, set upjoint ventures or establish new companies.Another traditional area of cooperation between Argonne and non-Argonne researchers has been through our "user facilities," giantresearch machines too expensive to duplicate at campuses and industrialparks. Such facilities are open to use by researchers from other nationallabs, industry, hospitals or universities.Currently, Argonne is building what we believe will be the mosteffective user facility that the nation has ever constructed. More than300 scientists and engineers will perform as many as 100 differentexperiments simultaneously on the machine. It is a $456 millionaccelerator called the Advanced Photon Source (APS). The APS willgenerate the world's most brilliant X-rays for materials research. TheseX-ray beams, 10,000 times brighter than those of existing X-raysources, will reveal the atomic and molecular structure of materials toimprove America's competitiveness in areas such as steels, medicine,semi-conductors, polymers, pharmaceuticals and catalysts.The APS has attracted more industry participation in its planningstages than any basic research facility previously built in the U.S. Onedemonstration of its value is creation by thirteen pharmaceuticalcompanies of a consortium to build and operate their own beam lines.A further indicator of APS's value to industry is that both Japan andEurope are rushing to set up their own version.Drude. A View from the Trenches 149ConclusionsWhat might all of this mean for those interested in the humangenome and/or development of commercial technologies fromgenomic research?On the positive side, we now have contractual instruments andtechnology transfer models that, with a little work, should be adaptableto new private sector ventures in biology. They are being used;companies are receiving exclusive rights to intellectual property, andfederal labs, their technical staffs and sponsors are seeking to makedeals.On the other side, we have a growing federal technology transferbureaucracy, as office upon office gets involved in issues such asconflicts of interest, foreign preferences and profit dissemination. Ifanything can destroy technology transfer, especially to small businesseswith finite legal budgets, this is it. Also, federal labs now have no un-earmarked pots of money for codevelopment of technologies. Eachpiece of work that departs from what was originally proposed requiresseparate dispensation - stalling or stopping good ideas while agencieswait for the next fiscal year or until Congress considers budgets.Moreover, federal technology transfer policies and practices are notuniform. Different federal laboratories and their scientists accept orreject particular cooperative projects based upon their histories,interpretations of law and perceptions of their sponsor's, e.g., theDOE's, attitude.Finally, enabling legislation and pioneering mechanisms fortechnology transfer are insufficient, themselves, to overcome majorbarriers to collaboration. A major barrier is cultural differences amongparties to these partnerships. To collaborate effectively, personnel ineach institution must get to know the strengths and peculiarities ofother institutions. A university researcher who disdains concern withmarket response is bound to have trouble working with an industrialpartner, and a corporate researcher with no tolerance for federalbureaucracy has a hard row to hoe in working with a national lab.Likewise, an Argonne researcher unaware of university sensitivity to5 Risk Health, Safety & Environment 143 [Spring 1994]150dominance by large federal institutions probably is going to strike outin dealing with R&D partners from those institutions.Overall - especially where research is far ahead of development, aswith the human genome project - things are nevertheless lookinggood. I and other federal technology transfer personnel invite peoplefrom corporations to visit Argonne, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and ourother brethren, where they just might find something interesting.

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