By Suzanne Bohan, Contra Costa Times

At a Livermore community college on Monday, Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, detailed a bill he's introducing today that would establish a technology transfer center at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia/California national laboratories. Such a center would help ease the transfer of research from the national labs to the private sector.

"Major scientific breakthroughs occur every year at the Livermore labs, and it's important that we harness these advances to strengthen our economy, create jobs and improve our way of life," Garamendi said.
If passed, the bill would authorize the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the national laboratories, to create a technology transfer center for the two Livermore labs, as well as any other national laboratory. This center would be critical for the establishment of the Livermore Valley Open Campus, an initiative launched in 2009 to enable laboratory scientists working on civilian research to collaborate under the same roof with their counterparts in industry and academia.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu praised the open campus initiative as a way to get the most value from research conducted at the high-security national laboratories, which increasingly involves nonclassified research on energy advances, climate science and other endeavors as the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile shrinks.

A spokesman with Garamendi's Washington, D.C., office said it was too soon to know when the bill might reach the floor in the House of Representatives for a vote. He said the congressman would start the legislative process by exploring opportunities for advancing the bill through the House Armed Services Committee, to which he was recently appointed.