For 20 years, Belinda Snyder led the way in developing and implementing a variety of innovative and successful technology transfer methods that also stimulated collaboration, fostered community involvement, and helped small businesses succeed not only in New Mexico, but across the United States.

As a program manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), she worked tirelessly to ensure that LANL technologies, technical expertise, and technical assistance always found their way to other government agencies, academia and, of course, industry.

Snyder was also a strong advocate of the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer’s (FLC) efforts to increase the awareness and availability of FLC technology and technical assistance resources to the benefit of state and local governments. As chair of the FLC’s State and Local Government (S&LG) Committee, she established long-term collaborations and partnerships with key national organizations, all of which were focused on promoting innovation, high-technology economic growth, and technology-based economic development. These partnerships included the State Science and Technology Institute, the Association of University Research Parks, the National Business Incubation Association, the International Economic Development Council, and the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds.

To further promote FLC S&LG Committee activities, Snyder oversaw the development of a “success story” publication that highlighted significant examples of where the technology transfer efforts of the federal laboratories benefited economic development and other initiatives for local and state governments. Another resource developed under Snyder’s leadership was an interactive state-map website that highlighted examples of federal laboratory technology transfer from across the United States, along with pertinent federal research and development funding and other key statistics. This resource has proven to be particularly useful to policymakers and legislators.

Most recently, Snyder implemented several key economic development pilot projects focused on identifying various state economic development entities in each state within a given FLC region. One such project documents the network of Midwestern federal laboratories and different types of technology-based economic-development (TBED) entities. The FLC’s Midwest Region commissioned the Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC) to collect data on entities that either have facilitated or are interested in facilitating the transfer and commercialization of technologies developed at federal laboratories.

As chair of the FLC’s State and Local Government (S&LG) Committee, she established long-term collaborations and partnerships with key national organizations, all of which were focused on promoting innovation, high-technology economic growth, and technology-based economic development.

Collected in the database were data on nearly 250 TBED entities with a presence in the Midwest. The IBRC research team also conducted more than 50 interviews with TBED staff to gather information and recommendations on how to strengthen the relationships between federal laboratories and TBED entities pursuant to expanding the commercialization of technologies developed in federal labs.