Industry and government share the lab bench: CRADAs provide window to new technologies. (Cooperative Research and Development Agreements)

At a time when chemical companies are trimming internal R&D programs, the Clinto n Administration's desire to shift the focus of national laboratories from defense to other applications could provide rich opportunities for tapping into another technolog y source. Producers intent on keeping R&D spending down are eyeing these openings.

Chemical companies should use national labs to increase cooperative opportuni ties, says Louis Hegedus, chairman of the Council for Chemical Research (CCR; Washington) and a v .p. in W.R. Grace's research division. "Government labs help leverage cost and time effectiv eness of chemical research," he says. Now is the time, he adds, to take advantage of labs because more funds are becoming available to companies for research.

TIMES ARE CHANGING. Philip Brodsky, director of corporate research and enviro nmental technology at Monsanto, says that the shift in focus for national labs has provi ded a lot more openness in developing partnerships. Federal labs are being required by law to i nteract with the private sector. In 1989, the National Competitiveness Technology Transfer Act ca rried the proviso that technology transfer should be a mission at all federal labs. "Times are changing," says John Sealock, manager of chemical technology at Pacific Northwest Laboratory, wh ich was established in the 1960s to make plutonium for weapons but which now focuses muc h of its attention on environmental cleanup.

Though labs are pressured to improve their systems and commercialize their te chnologies, companies have been slow to take advantage of these improvements, says Don Jost, CCR's executive director. "It used to take a terrific amount of time to get the fundin g for projects--it was more trouble than it was worth," he says.

Chemical companies are starting to look for federal lab matches, says Lee Riv ers, president of the National Technology Transfer Center (NTTC). While each federal lab has its o wn mission, a lot of their work is comparable to that going on in the private sector. "With a lot of downsizing and decentralization, companies must reach out for help," Rivers says. "The adva ntage to the companies comes because they can bring the technology to the market sooner. The smart companies realize they must be hunters and gatherers."

But with more than 700 federal laboratories that employ more than 100,000 sci entists, there is a lack of awareness of where specific projects are being carried out. To speed thi s process along, NTTC has a toll-free number companies call for referrals to labs that are workin g in their areas of interest. Rivers says it has received 6,500 technical requests--only 178 of them from chemical companies.

Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) are good vehicles fo r collaborative work, says Hegedus. Established in 1986, CRADAs were design ed specifically to promote commercialization of federal technology. Hegedus says that while CCR- member companies have not found a significantly large number of government-owned chemic al technologies, CRADAs have opened the doors to many other opportunities.

In July, for example, water treatment firm Nalco teamed up with Argonne Natio nal Laboratory through a CRADA to improve efficiency of boilers and cooling water systems. The three-year, $1.74-million project will search for ways to reduce or stop the buildup of carb onate compounds or calcites in the systems. Nalco and DOE's Office of Energy Research will each provide $870,000 to fund the project.

Another ongoing initiative is the American Textile Partnership, formed in 199 3 as an umbrella CRADA to allow industry to join with DOE labs to research future technologies. U nder the program, nine DOE labs are working with chemical companies such as DuPont, Ciba, and Hoechst Celanese. Programs such as Computer Aided Fabric Evaluation, a computer inspection program, and Textile Resource Conservation, an environmental research project on waste minimization, have been developing technologies that are then transferred to the industry. Industry contributes half the funding; DOE puts up the other half.

Dow Chemical is also using technology transferred from federal labs to bolst er its R&D program. Its project with Sandia National Laboratory (Albuquerque) is creating a mathematical model of physical properties of plastic foams. The project, which began in early 1993, requires Dow to invest $1.5 million over three years and Sandia to lay out $500,000. "The re is opportunity for growth with CRADAs," says George Shier, Dow's director of external affairs. "[National labs] have technologies of commercial significance. We see growth [of CRADAs] when the re are shared goals and shared statements."

BARRIERS. But some companies are finding barriers to cooperative agreements. Shier says the CRADA U.S. competitiveness clause, which requires most of the technology to be u sed in the U.S., creates problems for companies with large operations overseas. There are a lso problems with funding for agreements with DOE labs. Shier says the DOE budget must be rai sed to fully take advantage of CRADAs.

Sealock says a major problem with technology transfer to the chemical industr y is that "we develop to one step below where industry wants us to be." Labs create the techno logy but do not pilot test it before they license it. Shier adds that some CRADAs are not effect ive because many are simply not created with commercial intent.