UCAR Foundation To Launch Technology Transfer Company

TERRADAILY

industry drives our society making it cleaner is just commonsense

Boulder - Jul 29, 2003
A new company to guide atmospheric research from the laboratory to the commercial market will open for business in August. Located in Boulder, Peak Weather Resources Inc. will rely on initial seed funding from the UCAR Foundation but will operate independently from it.

To help promote UCAR's mission to serve the research community, Peak Weather will adapt technical knowledge from the organization's research labs at NCAR and UOP for use by the commercial and public sectors.

The company will provide marketing expertise; develop installation, operation, and maintenance procedures; maintain a data center; and more. These services will be especially helpful to programs at NCAR that produce commercially marketable research in exchange for continued sponsor funding.

"NCAR is a technology and know-how engine, and often the research technology it produces has wide-ranging commercial applications," says Russ Peterman, president of Peak Weather. "It will be up to the UCAR Foundation and Peak Weather to assist in finding and nurturing these commercial applications."

Although Peak Weather may create joint ventures that the UCAR Foundation can spin off as independent companies, Peak Weather itself will remain a permanent, for-profit arm of the Foundation, offering a number of technologies.

The company's target clients include the private sector, government entities such as the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and international markets. It may also assist UCAR member universities with their own commercialization efforts.

Peterman points out that society's attitudes toward research investment have shifted in recent years. The public expects innovations from federally funded labs to be shared with the entire community. Some federal agencies that sponsor research at NCAR encourage technology transfer through commercialization before funding certain research projects.

Legislation passed by Congress in the 1980s promotes business relationships between for-profit firms and university and government research facilities. Technology transfer through commercialization not only fulfills social goals, Peterman says, but also brings revenue to the research process itself.

Peak Weather's initial board of directors includes Peterman, formerly a senior manager in NCAR's Research Applications Program (RAP); Brant Foote, director of RAP; Jeff Reaves, vice president of the UCAR Foundation; and Don Veal, former president of the University of Wyoming and a founder of Particle Measurement Systems in Boulder. Peterman expects the company to hire a small technical and support staff in the first year of operations.

Peterman is a former president of Vaisala Meteorological Systems Inc., whose parent company, Vaisala Oyj, is one of the largest meteorological instrument companies worldwide. Previously he was a principal scientist and vice president at Radian International, where he managed a component business in wind profiling radar systems.

EARLY EARTH

Earth's Birth Date Turned Back: Formed Earlier Than Believed
by William Cromie for Harvard Gazette

Boston - Jul 21, 2003
Our planet is 50 to 90 million years older than previously thought, according to new evidence found in meteorites. Mixtures of radioactive elements, which tick away like clocks, show that most of Earth had formed only 10 million years after the sun was born as a star, which took place about 4,567 million years ago. Previous measurements indicated an Earth birth of 60 million to 100 million years after the sun's nuclear fires began to burn.

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