Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Partnerships Directorate will host Bridging the Gap, a unique technology commercialization event, April 5–6 at ORNL.

The event will provide investors and entrepreneurs opportunities to learn about promising ORNL technologies available for license and to hear from ORNL licensees seeking growth capital. There will also be opportunities to tour ORNL’s world-class research facilities and network with some of the nation’s best scientific minds.

One of the features of Bridging the Gap will be the inaugural SPARK! event. ORNL has teamed with Technology 2020’s Center for Entrepreneurial Growth (CEG) to establish a new process of discovery to identify and qualify some of the most promising technologies available for commercialization. In late 2010 Partnerships staff provided the CEG team with a list of nearly 100 new inventions. The team narrowed that list to 15 technologies, and then about 30 of the state’s preeminent entrepreneurs and investors were invited to participate in an event in mid-January to further refine that list. The CEG team is now hard at work performing due diligence on a handful of technologies chosen by this distinguished panel, and business plans will be presented as a feature event of the Bridging the Gap conference.

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