For Industry: Research Opportunities

Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP)

THE IPP PROGRAM: Partnership opportunities with scientists from the former Soviet Union defense establishment are now available to Berkeley Lab researchers and a U.S. industrial partner. The DOE funds the work at the Lab and in the former Soviet Union. The industrial partner must make an in-kind contribution equal to the DOE funding. Projects are up to 2 years and $1M with $700,000 going to the former Soviet Union.

THE IPP PROGRAM:

Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991, the United States has been working with the emergent Newly Independent States (NIS) to control nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In 1994, as part of this effort, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) established the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) program. While other DOE programs seek to secure nuclear weapons and materials, IPP focuses on the personnel and resources within the NIS that must convert from weapons work to the industrial sector. It seeks to identify and develop nonmilitary projects for former defense technologies, and create jobs for former weapons scientists and engineers within these projects. The principle means to this end is through connections with US industrial partners. IPP not only strives to channel the technological capabilities within the NIS population into peaceful uses, but also to make NIS lab technology commercially profitable for both the US and the NIS. This, in turn, helps the NIS become stable members of the global economy. IPP involves participation by 10 DOE Laboratories, one DOE Plant, the DOE Headquarters and regional offices, and more than 90 U.S. companies. Participants within this program are conducting nearly 300 collaborations with over 200 NIS Institutes in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

As one of the participating DOE laboratories, the Berkeley Lab is using its connections to the US technology sector and to NIS Institutes as well as its capabilities in accelerators, materials science, biotechnology and energy science to craft and manage relationship building with the NIS. Lab scientists who have connections to the NIS scientific enterprise and to the US industrial sector initiate proposals for joint work that are funded by the DOE. The program presently emphasizes the following research: accelerators, biotechnology, energy, environment, manufacturing, materials, sensors, instrumentation, or waste management. The Thrust 2 projects are cost-shared partnerships. The IPP Program funds the LBNL and NIS institute research while the industry partner is self supporting. Thus, a laboratory and its industrial partners can explore scientific and technical approaches that use the considerable expertise of the NIS research enterprise. Such work leverages the resources of all partners, since each frequently has unique and complementary facilities and expertise. The industrial partner also joins USIC (the United States Industrial Consortium) who will support their commercialization in the NIS.

PROJECT SIZE, SCOPE, AND LEGAL INSTRUMENTS

The legal instruments used are CRADAs (USIC Cooperative Research and Development Agreements) for the US industrial partner and a subcontract to LBNL for the NIS partner institute. For Thrust 2 projects, DOE/LBNL typically provides about $400K per year for two years to fund the Lab and NIS side of the partnership. The $400k/year is typically split 70% to 30% between the NIS and lab investigators. Note that a typical salary of a scientist in the NIS is $400-600/month, so this money buys 10 times the effort in the NIS as it does here. PI’s should keep this in mind as they develop the program. Industry partners must at least match the DOE's contribution with in-kind funds. In all cases no dollars pass to industry from the IPP Program. At Berkeley Lab through from FY94 –FY01, the IPP program has funded 11 Thrust 2 projects with a combined research budget of $8 million.
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SOME OF OUR PARTNERS AND PI’s at LBNL to contact

• Ian Brown, Interfacial Thin Film Coatings, Phygen & Institute of High Current Electronics, Tomsk
• Don Tilley, MSD, Immobilized Homogeneous Catalysts, Dupont & Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, Moscow
• Tamas Torok, LSD, Screening of Botanical and Fungal Species Collected within the Territory of NIS for Pharmaceutical and Agrochemical Activities with American Cyanamid/American Home Products & International Institute of Cell Biology, Kiev, Ukraine and Microbially Derived Agricultural Crop Protection Products with VECTOR, Novosibirsk and Dupont
• William Chu, AFRD, Development of Neutronics Computational Tools for Medicine & Industry, General Atomics and VNIIEF and IPPE
• Eugene Haller, MSD, Isotopically Pure Silicon for Improved Microelectronics, with Isonics and Krasnyarsk Electrochemical Plant

DOE OFFICE; OTHER LABS

Federal funding for this partnership program comes through Doe’s Office of Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NN-40).

In addition to Berkeley Lab, the nine other multipurpose DOE Labs participate. For FY01 the overall IPP budget was $24.5M. The amount for FY02 is uncertain, but ranges from $24.5M to $40M.

Proposals can be submitted on a rolling basis. FOR MORE INFORMATION,

Contact Glen Dahlbacka in Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department:

Glen Dahlbacka
IPP Program Manager
Berkeley Lab, Mail Stop 4-230
1 Cyclotron Road
Berkeley, CA 94720
Phone: (510) 486-5358
Fax: 510-495-2979
Email: GHDahlbacka@lbl.gov