Improving Quality of Life with NASA Technology

THE INNOVATION:

Streamlining the process of setting up partnerships between U.S. companies and NASA researchers, so they can work to leverage each other's research and make it easier to develop new technologies which benefit people's quality of life.

Phil Herlth
Senior Technology Partnerships Manager
Space Act Agreements

NASA/Ames Technology Partnerships Division

EXCERPTS:

• We set up partnerships between companies in the U.S. and NASA researchers, so they can work to leverage each other's research and make it easier to develop new technologies. [In this way] we transfer NASA technologies to industry.
• When we do that, it creates jobs, creates new companies and benefits the U.S. economy.
• There's a beneft to the economy, and that's great.  But the even more exciting thing is that there are benefits to the quality of life for Americans.... All kinds of things.  It's really pretty cool!
• There is a probe that was developed here ... neuronetwork software... to go to Mars  ... characterize soils in Mars.... this could be applied to looking at potential tumors .. or any kind of tissue...So we patented the technology and we license it to a company called BioLuminate. Bioluminate makes a [smart] probe that can go into [the tissue] and [provide immediate cancer diagnosis] with 99% accuracy... with a simple needle biopsy .... [This is] one of potentially many applications for measuring and characterizing tissue.
• The companies we work with run at lightspeed, while Goverment can be a slow, plodding creature.  So wer'e always trying to streamline things so that things can happen faster.
• Advice: You need to step back and look at the big picture... how important it is.   When you step back and look at the big picture, this is always a motivator to me.