PROVIDENCE – Foresight Science & Technology Inc., a firm that specializes in technology commercialization, has won a multi-year contract from the U.S. Department of Energy to help market hundreds of alternative-energy technologies.
The company did not disclose the monetary worth of the contract in a news release announcing the agreement.
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The renewable- and clean-energy technologies were all developed with backing from the federal government as part of the department’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
“All these technologies have gone through rigorous scientific and technical review” by the Energy Department, said Phyl Speser, Foresight’s CEO. All of the technologies are at the proof of concept, prototype or beyond maturity stages of development.
Speser said the technologies represent a wide variety of innovations across numerous categories. “You have technologies for everything from solar, wind, thermal and clean-coal energy to batteries, ultra capacitors and fuel cells to power electronics, smart grid, optical computing and organic light emitting diodes,” or LEDs, he said.
“In other words,” he added, “these technologies are the building blocks of the green economy.”
In an e-mail to Providence Business News, Speser said some of the technologies covered by the contract were developed by local companies, but he did not disclose which ones. The company also ran the University of Rhode Island’s technology-transfer office before its new director was hired last fall.
Under the terms of its contract with the Department of Energy, Foresight will not charge any fees or expenses, including finder’s fees, to investors or companies that license the technologies, Speser said.
Foresight says companies and investors interested in commercializing the technologies should contact the firm at (401) 273-4844 ext. 20 or technology@foresightst.com.
Casey Dorman, a spokesman for Foresight, told PBN the firm’s contract will run for three years if all options are exercised. Although Foresight had a similar contract before, the scope of the new contract is larger, he said.
Foresight also has a separate contract with the Energy Department to assist in the creation of a domestic supply chain for batteries that power electric and hybrid vehicles, according to Dorman.
Foresight has been conducting SBIR commercialization projects for the Energy Department since as far back as the late 1980s, according to Larry James, the Energy Department’s SBIR/STTR program manager.
Foresight Science & Technology Inc. is a technology transfer, commercialization and intellectual-property (IP) management consultancy serving governments, universities and private laboratories and businesses in every stage and size. For more information, visit www.ForesightST.com.
