Two laboratories from the Northeast Region have been selected as winners of 2008 FLC awards. The awards, which recognize outstanding technology transfer efforts from laboratories across the country, will be presented in Portland, Oregon, on May 8.

Department of Agriculture - New England Plant, Soil and Water Laboratory

From left to right: Dr. Robert Larkin, Dr. John Halloran, Dr. Tim Griffin, and Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (not pictured: Dr. Sukla Lakshman)

A team from the New England Plant, Soil and Water Laboratory (NEPSWL), located in Orono, Maine, will be presented with an Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer. The NEPSWL team developed the Potato Systems Planner, a decision support tool on compact disk to assist growers in selecting profitable, environmentally sound cropping systems and management practices. Information presented in the Potato Systems Planner helps growers make the most informed cropping system selections and employ the most appropriate management practices that are economically and environmentally sustainable. This translates into higher potato yield and quality, along with substantial economic, environmental, and health and safety benefits associated with less pesticide needed to control diseases that can strike crops.

Since its release in 2005, over 1100 copies of the Potato Systems Planner have been requested by growers, consultants, extension specialists, and scientists who are now using the Planner in 26 states, eight Canadian provinces, and 28 countries. The Potato Systems Planner was selected as one of only 11 "science track" presentations at the World Potato Congress in Idaho and the International Symposium on Farming Systems in Sicily, Italy. The transfer of this technology to customers, stakeholders, and federal laboratory partners is continuing to this day.

Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport

From left to right: Capt. Michael Byman, Donald Aker, Dr. Paul Lefebvre

Captain Michael Byman, Dr. Paul Lefebvre, and Donald Aker of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport will jointly receive the FLC Laboratory Director of the Year award for their strong support of technology transfer. Under the senior leadership of the NUWC team, technology transfer continues to be a major component to the overall science and technology (S&T) thrust at the Rhode Island-based facility.

For instance, the NUWC team made a special effort to reach out to the medical community, realizing that many of the technologies under development may have applications in health care and medical research. As a result, the groundbreaking Digital Image Enhancement (DIE) technology has been successfully transferred and commercialized under a patent license agreement with Advanced Image Enhancement, Inc. Originally used to help sailors identify mines in a cluttered underwater environment, DIE uses mathematical functions called wavelets to help doctors detect tissue anomalies and to interpret digital mammograms. With DIE in place at hospitals and clinics across the nation, doctors will be able to refine and enhance regions of concern within mammography images to improve the detection of cancer in its early stages.

The Northeast Region congratulates the winners on a job well done.