Leader Garden-Helping firms Cultivate and Grow their Leaders

College blows off steam to help power campus | csmonitor.com.

A really interesting article about a large-scale Geothermal system that is being constructed in conjunction with research from Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

My hat is off to Ball State for this innovative and forward-looking plan!

Battelle and Affiliated National Labs Win 24 R&D 100 Awards.

Battelle runs a number of national laboratories in the US and Oak Ridge National lab won  six of the 24 awards, second only to Lawrence Livermore National Lab based in California.

You can learn more about the specific awards by clicking on the link above.

Congratulations to Battelle and the labs for their great work!

This video talks about some specific projectsat Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, TN that will take place as a result of Stimulus money.

The ETEBA organization would be a good one to join if you want to establish a longer-term presence for your business in the area.  You can learn more about them at www.eteba.org

Oak Ridge Supercomputers Provide First Simulation of Abrupt Climate Change – insciences.

I found this article while scanning this morning and I find it interesting to see the varied applications that can be found to utilize this massive computing power located in Oak Ridge.

I will continue to monitor this technology and keep you aware of further developments that arise involving this computing system and other activities at ORNL.

There are many  good things going on in Tennessee, and Chattanooga seems to be one of the hubs with the most activity.  I was particularly intrigued to see that Burns & Roe will be placing an office in that city in the very near future.  Headquartered in Oradell, NJ, here is a description of the firm from their own website:

Burns and Roe is a comprehensive engineering, procurement, construction, operations and maintenance company providing services to private and governmental clients worldwide. The firm’s professional services extend from project inception to operations and maintenance.

Burns and Roe does a substantial amount of work in the power industry, and that is a good fit with what our state has cooking in the solar area as well as the presence we have enjoyed for years from TVA and Oak Ridge.

Welcome to Tennessee, Burns and Roe!  We are glad you are here.

I am sending this to you on Wednesday evening from my room in Oak Ridge, TN.  For those of you who are students of history, you will connect Oak Ridge with the Manhattan Project-rightly so.  Oak Ridge now is so much more than that…

I am here for the Tennessee Valley Corridor Summit, hosted by Congressman Zach Wamp (also a candidate for Governor of Tennessee).  This is the 14th year for the Summit and it was a pretty interesting event today and the same holds true for tomorrow.

My high point for today, outside of the great networking was the presentation by Futurist/Entrepreneur/CEO KR Sridhar of Bloom Energy.  His firm is working on Fuel Cell technology that holds the long-term promise of allowing many of us to generate our own electricity and to “get off the grid”.  There are short-term initiatives that the firm is pursuing that will put office buildings and apartment complexes on their own generation systems soon.

I encourage you to check out the TVC link above and even to watch the event on Thursday via the streaming video…

Tennessee is a leader in solar technology in the USA, with Wacker and Hemlock Semiconductor both constructing facilities here that will produce polysilicate for solar panels and chip substrate.  The possibilities are endless, especially if we can continue to improve our public education system.

See you at the Summit!

This Monday I will drive to Atlanta for my third consecutive BIO convention.  I also attended in Boston 2 years ago and in San Diego last year.  This event is the largest Life Science event held annually in America, if not in North America.  It will consist of a variety of presentations and a display are with firms and governmental entities from almost every state in this country and most of the countries in the world that you can think of.  It is a business development dream and a great way to meet people in the industry.

I will be part of the Tennessee delegation and I am also a sponsor for our booth, as I have been the past two years.  I find this to be useful to meet people internal to our state as well as those outside the state.  

I encourage you to take a look at the links in this post and to think about the many ways that science, and life science, affect and improve your life.  When you really think about it, the impact is amazing!