Other Awards and Honors
2011 Awards
PNNL Receives Two Gordon Battelle Prizes
Last week, Battelle announced 10 recipients of the inaugural Gordon Battelle Prizes for scientific discovery and technology impact-including two from PNNL.
Selected from entries submitted by laboratories where Battelle plays a significant management role, the awards were divided into two categories:
- Scientific advances published within the last three years that have significantly advanced human knowledge in any field of the physical, life, or social sciences
- Technology innovations that are on track, or have high promise, to provide substantial social and/or economic benefit.
In the category of Scientific Discovery, the team led by Dick Smith, Fundamental and Computational Sciences Directorate, and Dr. Steven Schutzer of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) received a prize for their discovery of thousands of new proteins in spinal fluid. Using integrated instrumentation resources at EMSL, the team applied immunoaffinity separation and high sensitivity resolution liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to examine cerebrospinal fluid from healthy normal individuals and make specific comparisons to other subjects.
This research establishes a reference database that may help researchers and clinicians determine the root causes of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other neurological conditions, and could contribute to devising faster, more efficient diagnostic tests and treatments for diseases with neurological and psychiatric features. Other PNNL contributors to this research included Tao Liu, Thomas Angel, Athena Schepmoes, Mary Lipton, and David Camp II, Fundamental & Computational Sciences Directorate, and Samuel Purvine and Kim Hixson, EMSL.
The PNNL/UMDNJ team will donate their $5,000 to support continuing STEM education at Delta High School in Richland.
The Millimeter Wave Technology (MMW) development team, led by Doug McMakin, National Security Directorate, also received a prize in the category of Technology Impact. MMW is a high-resolution radar imaging technology that detects objects made of any type of material-both metallic and non-metallic-which are concealed on the body. Millimeter waves harmlessly penetrate a subject's clothing, reflect off of the body, and send signals back to a transceiver which then cues a computer to reconstruct them into a 3-D holographic image.
Originally commercialized by Battelle start-up Safeview following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the MMW technology became part of L-3 Communications ProVision(TM) line of security scanners when L-3 acquired Safeview in 2006. The scanners were approved by the Transportation Security Administration for airport deployment in 2009. To date, nearly 500 ProVision systems have been sold and installed, making air travel around the world more safe and secure.
McMakin's team will donate their $5,000 award to the Electrical Engineering Program at Washington State University Tri-Cities.
"One of the great strengths of PNNL is our ability to connect science and technology with national needs, and then move it out our doors for practical applications," said Laboratory Director Mike Kluse. "We're very pleased to have received these prizes, and it is all the more gratifying that they will benefit education here in the Tri-Cities." (announced 1/1/2011)