LABCOM FOCUS

ETDL's SBIR programs pay off

High performance millimeter wave switches use new and improved ferrite materials developed by Electromagnetic Sciences, Inc., under an ETDL SBIR program. This effort has now been transitioned into a cooperative R&D agreement under the Technology Transfer Act of 1986.

Army Electronics Technology and Devices Laboratory (ETDL), LABCOM, Ft. Monmouth, NJ, and is responsible for the Laboratory's technology transfer and Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs. His previous professional experience has primarily been in research and development activities concerned with mm-wave transmission lines, antennas and control devices at ETDL. Stern is a member of the IEEE and has authored and co-authored numerous technical papers on ferrite devices, dielectric waveguides and inertialess scanning antennas and holds more than 30 patents. He is also a member of Eta Kappa Nu.

Mr. WALGREN. Thank you very much. We appreciate that testimony and we'll come back for a little discussion in a minute. We probably should have put Dr. Brewen on directly after Dr. Princen, since both of you come from northern Illinois, but welcome, Dr. Brewen. We appreciate your being here. Please proceed.

Dr. BREWEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you and your committee and to discuss the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986 and particularly the impact it has had and the opportunities it has presented for the formation of a consortium I'm going to describe this morning.

The Biotechnology Research and Development Corporation, which I will refer to hereafter as BRDC, if you don't mind the use of the acronym, is a consortium of seven prominent U.S. corporations with major research and business interests in the biotechnology arena. These companies, very briefly, are the American Cyanamid Company, Amoco Technology Corporation, the Dow Chemical Corporation, ECOGEN Inc., the Hewlett-Packard Company, International Minerals & Chemical Corporation and the Agricultural Research and Development Corporation.

BRDC represents a unique first-of-its-kind organization in the sense that it is the first time that the Federal and a State Government and the private sector have entered into a cooperative research and development endeavor that is mutually funded in terms of supporting dollars for funding of research.

This endeavor was made possible only by the passage of the Federal Technology Transfer Act. This legislation provided the necessary legal direction to finalize a four-year effort to form BRDC. It allows Federal laboratories and the private sector to enter into cooperative research agreements and encourages commercialization through-and I emphasize the word "exclusive"-licensing arrangements for the technologies generated under these agreements. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Commerce view BRDC as a model program combining the scientific research talents of Federal and State university laboratories with private sector development capabilities.

The BRDC member companies who have both competitive and diverse market interests, join forces in this consortium because they are convinced they can achieve substantial gain by leveraging the research investment in very basic and exploratory research projects.

To address the broad issues of the member companies, BRDC will support basic research that offers flexibility for broad application. In other words, research directed at discovering and inventing new advanced biotechnology production methods and other opportunities. I think the best way to represent what we are engaged in is to read to you our formal mission statement for research.

"BRDC," and I quote now, "is a consortium dedicated to, one, improving the United States technical competitiveness by capitalizing on scientific discoveries made in the Agricultural Research Service Laboratories and universities in the State of Illinois; two, enhancing the competitive and productive research center in the participating ARS laboratories and universities; three, providing the basis for interactive dialogue between the participating research organizations and member companies; four, providing the technology base

for shareholder companies to improve their opportunities to manufacture and introduce new biotechnology-related products into the marketplace; and five, assisting in the transfer of this technology base to the member companies.

"The highly diverse nature of the markets addressed by the shareholder companies indicates that the research be generic and basic in order to provide the flexibility for broad application.

"BRDC will initially focus its research activities on developing advanced biotechnology methodology. The emphasis will be placed on discovering-and? developing core technologies in four areas, which are enumerated as, one, new and more efficient transformation and expression systems in both lower and higher organisms, with an emphasis placed on agronomically important plants; two biosensors, three biocatalysis; and four methodologies for developing separations of fermentation products.

"BRDC will actively seek research that is on the cutting edge of the areas of interest and identify brand new and promising ideas to fund. BRDC will do this by encouraging researchers to submit their ideas in all areas of biotechnology. These submissions will be judged on their creativity and perceived opportunity for providing 'breakthrough' concepts. For example, areas of interest to us in the near future are delivery technology and the elucidation of the mechanisms of ligand and cell receptor recognition and binding.

"BRDC will endeavor to identify and support innovative research projects throughout the ARS laboratory network in accordance with the ARS/BRDC Master Research and Development Agreement. As BRDC involves ARS laboratories in other States, it will actively encourage those States and their State institutions to emulate the State of Illinois and become active participants in the program.'

Now, the question may be asked, where do we receive our funds? BRDC has been committed $20 million of funding over the next five years. These funds come from the USDA, through the Agricultural Research Service, the State of Illinois and annual contributions from our member companies.

It is our intent to support research principally at the University of Illinois and other public universities in the State of Illinois and at the Northern Regional Research Center in Peoria, Illinois. But we will involve other Agricultural Research Service laboratories and public and private universities in the State of Illinois.

As of this time, we have entered into research and development agreements with two Federal agencies and two public universities in the Illinois State system. These are very broad research agreements. The Federal agencies are the Agricultural Research Service and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST. The two universities are the University of Illinois, Champaign/ Urbana and Northern Illinois University in De Kalb, Illinois. We are currently negotiating a broad research and development agreement with Southern Illinois University and we have entered into preliminary discussions with Northwestern University and with the Argonne National Laboratory, which is part of the Department of Energy National Laboratory system.

At this moment, we are either actively funding or committed to fund beginning July 1 of this calendar year, 29 research projects,

totaling nearly $3.5 million per year. All of these projects fall within the four broad areas of interest previously identified and involve each of the above-mentioned institutions with the exception of Northwestern University.

We are funding research not only at the Northern Regional Research Center, but also at the Western Regional Research Center and at the Eastern Regional Research Center.

These research projects are selected by a Scientific Advisory Board, which is composed of representatives from each of our member companies, the Agricultural Research Service and the University of Illinois.

The Scientific Advisory Board judges proposals primarily on technical merit and member company interests, emphasizing innovativeness and the potential as breakthrough concepts. In fact, we have established what I refer to as a seed money fund, which is unique. This fund is to support feasibility studies that would not normally be supported by most Federal granting agencies, because the concept is to support-novel new ideas that require preliminary data for the demonstration of proof of concept. People do not have to come to us with existing data saying, it will work. We say, give us your ideas; we'll support a year's worth of research and if they work, then we'll enter into a major agreement.

It is my personal opinion that the Federal Technology Transfer Act has opened the door to substantially stronger Federal laboratory, academic and private sector cooperation and collaboration. This opinion is based on our experience in our first year of operation. We have found that many of the "pseudo barriers" of intellectual discourse and technical exchange between these three distinct scientific cultural groups have been eliminated by the mere fact that it is now possible for them to work together as a team, striving for a common goal.

Many of our industrial scientists see this as an opportunity to involve themselves in the high-risk basic research that they would not undertake in their own organization; while the academic and Federal scientists now have the opportunity to involve themselves in the commercial development of their basic research successes. We do this by putting work teams, work groups together on a semiannual basis where all scientists discuss their research results, even though they are all under separate agreements.

With that, I conclude my comments and thank you. [The prepared statement of Dr. Brewen follows:]