ARMY AL&T
be used by warfighters and first responders alike to detect potential biological agent exposure. Generation II is a big improve- ment over the original 2008 version, TACBIO Generation I. First field tested in 2014, it reduced sample results time from 60 seconds to five seconds, reduced the weight from 3 pounds to 1 pound, and reduced the cost from $10,000 to $2,000. But never content to rest on their laurels, the team kept working on further refine- ments and greater technical sophistication, particularly greater miniaturization.
Tis ongoing research prepared the team to meet a very specific U.S. Coast Guard need. Te Coast Guard wanted a minia- turized version of the TACBIO that can be clipped onto a uniform while on deck. To meet this requirement, Goad and Kilper
had to find a private sector research partner to help complete the device’s refinements and scale it up for commercial production.
Scientists at Applied Research Associates (ARA), an employee-owned scientific research and engineering company with an office in Littleton, Colorado, were aware of the technology and eager to partner with Goad and Kilper’s team to create a wear- able version of TACBIO for the Coast Guard. Goad put T2’s Matt Jones in touch with the company’s corporate counsel and together they established a CRADA. DEVCOM CBC and ARA collaborated on and produced the now-patented Wear- able Biological Warfare Agent Detector, which is in use by the Coast Guard and receiving interest in licensing for larger- scale manufacturing. “Applied Research
Associates proved itself to be a full part- ner in the two-year effort to miniaturize the TACBIO to meet the Coast Guard’s requirements,” said Goad. “By leveraging each other’s talents, we arrived at a proto- type far faster than either partner could have working alone.”
CONCLUSION In each of these cases, scientists at DEVCOM CBC saw the importance of meeting a real warfighter need and understood that partnering with the right company in the private sector would get the job done—going from applied research all the way to a fielded device. Each of these cases demonstrates that keeping the warfighter better protected in the field is a team endeavor.
PARTNER WITH THE PRIVATE SECTOR— IT’S THE LAW
The effort to make federal laboratories a resource for the private sector formally began with passage of the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act in 1980. This law required federal laboratories to set aside a percentage of the laboratory budget specifically for technology transfer activities. This was followed by the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986, which established the Federal Laboratory Consortium, a U.S.-based network of federal laboratories. The consortium has an established forum dedicated to finding ways to transfer technology developed by its members to the private sector. The act also established cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) to negotiate licenses for patented inventions developed at the laboratory. In 1992, Congress passed the Small Business Research and Development Enhancement Act, creating mechanisms for small businesses to enter into joint ventures with federal laboratories. In 2015, DOD stood up the Defense Innovation Unit, whose mission was to make contracting with DOD easier
for small businesses
developing leading-edge technology. This was in response to a growing Silicon Valley-Pentagon divide that defense planners saw as damaging to national security in the face of China’s ability to adopt new commercial technologies with much greater agility.
“The efforts of our researchers and the center’s Technology Transfer team have really paid off for everyone,” said DEVCOM CBC Director Michael Bailey. “Tese partnerships not only shorten the time between a good idea and a new tech- nology in the hands of warfighters, they also invigorate the economy and expand the nation’s chemical-biological defense industrial base.”
For mor e informat ion, go
https://www.cbc.devcom.army.mil.
BRIAN B. FEENEY, PH.D., is a public affairs specialist at DEVCOM CBC, where he writes news and feature stories on the science and engineering achievements of the center’s researchers. He has written for the center since 2014. He holds a Ph.D. in risk communication from Temple University, an M.A. in communications from Cornell University, and a B.A. in history from Colorado College.
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