Science Research Laboratory was founded in 1983 with the primary purpose of developing new technologies for government applications and spinning off these technologies as products for the commercial sector. SRL's objective is to preserve our culture of innovation and to license our technology to organizations that have the expertise, assets and history of successfully productizing high technology.

SRL's most recent successful commercialization of a product-an educational interferometer that was developed under an educational NSF SBIR funding-utilized this licensing strategy. The Phase II program demonstrated an ultra-stable-yet simple and inexpensive-interferometer that is suitable for university laboratory experiments. We described several such experiments in a detailed manual developed during Phase II. At the completion of Phase II, we licensed and transferred the technology to TeachSpin, a company that specializes in marketing laboratory-experiment kits to educational institutions. TeachSpin has successfully brought this technology to the market in the form of a $12,500 research-grade interferometry kit, "Modern Interferometry," that is designed specifically for advanced student laboratory instruction (see figure). SRL will benefit from royalties and from the satisfaction of contributing to the education of university students in precision interferometry.

SRL's commercialization strategy has always been to develop technologies under government and SBIR sponsorship and to transfer these technologies out into the private sector, principally by licensing its intellectual property (IP) to corporations that develop and/or improve products based on SRL's unique IP.
SRL has a world-class competence in solid-state pulsed drivers, electron beams, lithographic sources, optical metrology, pulsed-electric-field (PEF) technology and stem-cell-isolation technology. Investment by SBIRs and private developers will continuously advance the leading edge of these technologies. No competition is likely in these areas until SRL's patents expire in 2023. The surrounding patents should protect the core technology for two decades and beyond.

With a business model that is focused on converting technological opportunities into new products, SRL intends to maintain a technical core team of scientists and engineers who will develop its key technologies, while the company spins off the resulting commercial products for economic profit. This approach is consistent with the goals of the SBIR program, which is to fund small firms that are creative and develop innovative technologies, to be commercialized by the company or in collaboration with others. SRL has proposed technology programs to the government when it has found that the government's interest in developing technology coincides with SRL's interest in developing a commercially competitive product. SRL has enjoyed success in this regard by commercializing products in the areas of pulse power semiconductor lithography, optical diagnostics, interferometric instruments and electron beam processing.

The investment made by the SBIR program in SRL has been extremely successful. To date, the total government investment in SRL, through the SBIR system, has been approximately $40 million. In return for this investment, the products that have been sold over that same period of time has yielded well over a billion dollars, and the resulting job creation has been over 1000 employees.

SRL has substantial experience in delivering state-of-the-art electronics, accelerators, X-ray sources and optical systems to various customers. These include:

• An ultrasensitive interferometer delivered to a United States Department of Defense research and development center to measure extremely weak absorption of optical elements.
• An ultrasensitive absorptometer for measuring gaseous near-IR absorption, delivered to a United States Department of Defense research and development center.
• A unique optical-flow diagnostic instrument recently delivered to NASA Lewis Research Laboratory.

SRL's excellent track record in commercializing technology has been recognized by DARPA in a publication entitled "Moving DARPA Technologies into the Marketplace," which highlights SRL's solid-state pulser technology. SRL is committed to bringing commercially viable, innovative technologies to the marketplace.