The Distinguished Service Award also known as the Laboratory Representative of Year Award goes to Eric Payne of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for improving technology transfer through novel methods.

Payne created a way to group similar technologies into bundles as a means of raising the marketability of the intellectual property. This makes intellectual property more marketable by presenting it as a complete package under one license while the individual labs retain ownership.

Payne’s tool has the capacity to leverage intellectual property across the entire national laboratory system because it aligns with standard best practices of technology transfer at a national laboratory.

Payne created a searchable database of published patent applications and issued patents from DOE labs using both keywords and International Patent Classification (IPC) codes. Payne’s tool has the capacity to leverage intellectual property across the entire national laboratory system because it aligns with standard best practices of technology transfer at a national laboratory.