Suggested Searches

NASA Tech in the World

Season 1Episode 135Mar 13, 2020

Kris Romig, Commercialization Services Lead, shares how NASA technology goes beyond the agency and lives on in commercial industries and academia, and making its way into our daily lives. HWHAP Episode 135.

NASA Tech in the World

NASA Tech in the World

If you’re fascinated by the idea of humans traveling through space and curious about how that all works, you’ve come to the right place.

“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.

On Episode 135, Kris Romig, Commercialization Services Lead, shares how NASA technology goes beyond the agency and lives on in commercial industries and academia, and making its way into our daily lives. This episode was recorded on January 21st, 2020.

Houston, we have a podcast

Transcript

Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 135, “NASA Tech in the World.” I’m Gary Jordan. I’ll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight. We talk a lot about important technologies for human spaceflight on this podcast, everything from propulsion to life support systems to the way that humans are factored into hardware decisions. There’s a lot of thought and time that goes into these technologies and inventions to help meet needs for human spaceflight. But these technologies can often be brought into the American economy for industries and even small companies to use in their own products. And when I say often, I mean it. There’s a whole office called Technology Transfer that makes it all happen. And they publish a book every year with a patch list of ways NASA technology ends up in our lives. So, here, to go over this program and how it all works is Kris Romig, Commercialization Services Lead in the Technology Transfer Office. He has experience with a little thing called rocket propulsion. Very smart guy. So, here we go, how NASA technology ends up in our lives and all over the world with Kris Romig. Enjoy.

[ Music ]

Host: Kris, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.

Kris Romig: Thank you.

Host: Tech transfer, this is an interesting topic because yes, we’re talking about NASA technologies, but the idea here is that you take these NASA technologies and then they go out into the public. I’m very curious on how that all happens.

Kris Romig: Yeah, no, thanks for having me onboard here today to talk about that. It’s a topic that I’m incredibly passionate about. I’ve spent 20 years here at NASA doing a bunch of different things. And it’s something I keep coming back to, is how do we better engage the public, not just from an outreach perspective, but the technologies and innovations that are developed to send humans safely into space. How does that help everyone here on Earth, right? And so, we have a formal process called technology transfer it is a formal program that’s mandated by Congress that every federal agency have. And it was actually part of our founding in the 1958, you know, National Aeronautics and Space Act that, you know, the agency should go off and do the things that we’re going to do for the benefit of everyone. And so, since then, we’ve gotten procedures and policies and programs in place to execute that more efficiently. But the primary purpose of it is to make sure that NASA technologies, whether they’re a hardware, whether it’s software and models, simulations, apps, cool tech in general, is going out into the public domain. And there’s a lot of different ways that we do that, some of them informally, some of them formally. But the point is to try to raise, you know, everybody’s awareness of the agency, and try to get the technology infused into really the commercial sector.

Host: I’m going to lock onto one of the first things you said.

Kris Romig: Yeah.

Host: Which was that this is, this is a very standard practice when it comes to government agencies.

Kris Romig: Yes.

Host: It’s, I guess the idea is it’s not a copyright of the federal government. Is it to enable the growth of the economy so commercial companies can go and do —

Kris Romig: That tends to be the big one is economic development. Right? Industrialization, manufacturing, those types of things. And so, I like to think of it as we are content providers to industry, to academia, to then take our technologies and commercialize them, turning them into products, take those technologies, evolve them even further beyond what we did and do new and innovative and great things. Sometimes that technology comes right back to NASA, because it helps us solve our own problems.

Host: Oh, wow.

Kris Romig: Which is, which is fantastic. And then other times, they just go off and create commercial products that, you know, are for the betterment of everyone.

Host: I like that, solve our own problems. Do you have a good example of that, like something that we’ve sent out, and then they turned it into something else useful, and we said, “oh, maybe we can use that again?”

Kris Romig: Yeah, so the one that comes to mind specifically from Johnson Space Center is our inflatable habitat technology, which was developed in the 90s, and called a TransHab here. So, there were a number of patents around that technology. And we then licensed it to a commercial space company who matured that technology over the last several years and then created an inflatable module that is now currently flying on the International Space Station.

Host: Oh, BEAM.

Kris Romig: Yeah, [Bigelow Expandable Activity Module], BEAM. So, as we start to look at exploration and to the Moon and Mars and beyond, figuring out how to pack more volume into the payload fairings of launch vehicles and reducing mass, inflatable technologies are very compelling to a lot of the architecture studies that we do. So, the fact that there was a commercial company that went out and invested in the technology and improved it from where we had stopped working on it ourselves, and then we were able to partner with them to bring it back, and then there’s a collaboration between we’re providing an asset, the International Space Station, in which the BEAM module can be part of, and so they can continue doing research and demonstrate the feasibility of this technology.

Host: Yeah, the idea is they licensed the idea, but that maturation, that’s really what the value is back to NASA.

Kris Romig: That’s right. Yeah. And there’s a lot of different areas that we’re always looking for companies to do that. Right? So, a lot of times we will look at technology transfer in the context of we will patent a technology and write a license with a company for them to go have access to that patent, to go work on it, mature it as a commercial product. But we typically like to couple that with a partnership agreement as well, so there’s continuation of the development of the technology where our NASA subject matter experts still get to participate in the maturation of those technologies, because we’re investing in them because we’re trying to solve problems for ourselves most frequently. Right? And so, anybody who takes that tech and matures it along a similar path to what we would then go use it for in the future is really just a win win. If they have other customers besides NASA that will buy it from them, that’s fantastic, and we can come back and say, “hey, this is great, you’ve helped us mature technology that we didn’t need to invest all of our resources.”

Host: I am super curious on how this all works. So, let’s go into —

Kris Romig: Sure.

Host: Let’s go into the details of how this is. So, so, let’s, actually, let’s back up to more we talked about the genesis of the program. This is something that is, it is common across many federal agencies.

Kris Romig: All federal agencies, yep.

Host: All federal agencies to have some way to take the technologies, the ideas, and put them out into the world, for economic development, for all of these reasons. Tell me about the tech transfer program, I guess as we see now, what is it, and what are we doing, and what are the different ways and processes on how we’re taking that technology and putting it out?

Kris Romig: Yeah, absolutely. And I will say it’s something that continues to evolve. Right? So, it’s been part of the agency for decades. And so, we’re always trying to make sure that we are staying on top of communication techniques, you know, people are sourcing information from the internet now and apps and social media, something that wasn’t a big deal 10 years ago. So, we’re having to evolve how we’re communicating with industry and academia on what technologies are being developed. But by and large, the process is this. Innovators at NASA, whether they’re developing software, or they’re developing hardware technologies, provide a disclosure to the Technology Transfer Office, basically disclosing or describing the technologies that they’ve invented or worked on. We take that internally. We work with our patent council at the center to determine whether or not that’s possible for getting a patent for the technology. So, things that we consider when we patent technologies, most of the things we don’t patent. It’s probably only about 5, 6 percent of technologies that get reported to the office here at JSC every year actually go forward for a patent application. Some of the reasons are whether or not it’s innovative enough, you know, in searching for prior art, are there technologies that are similar, you know, is it new and novel? For us is the commercial viability. Right? So, we don’t, as an agency, patent technologies for the sake of patenting it. We’re not a profit seeking organization. So, for us, the primary drive for us to patent technology is to provide a commercial value or competitive advantage to a company who would want to come license that technology. So, we’re not trying to make money off of those license deals. We’re doing it specifically, so we have competitive advantage and rationale for a business to come in and say, I want to invest in a license from NASA for this technology, which then allows them to be the sole owner or user of that technology for commercial purposes if it’s an exclusive license. The benefit is then they can have a leg up on competition and get out in the commercial market. If all the technology was just free for anybody who came, there’s some technologies that would never be picked up because it’s too easy for competitors to come in and take up the same technology. So, there’s no competitive advantage. So, those are some of the things that we really look for when we decide whether or not we want to patent a technology.

Host: Yeah, you’re thinking about when you transfer the technology.

Kris Romig: Yes.

Host: How is that going to boost the economy?

Kris Romig: Right.

Host: So, maybe the technology can be implemented just for the benefit of everyone. And maybe that’s the best, maybe that’s the best way to transfer that technology. But, you know, for something like that, where you said expandable habitats, is that one that was a licensed, a patented, licensed?

Kris Romig: Yeah, that was one we patented. And I’ll tell you, it’s evolved where now with the emergence of the commercial space industry where it’s at right now, we’re starting to look at patenting more technologies and different technologies that we would have before because there used to be something where it’s an [Extravehicular Activity] EVA suit glove or something like that, where we’re like, look, you know, we do our own development with these types of things, there’s no commercial, you know, interest in a product like that beyond what we’re using them for — our EVA suits. But now that’s changing. Right? And now we’re looking and we’re going, wow, there may be commercial astronauts, there’s other activities going on in space, so we want to take another look at EVA tools and [Environmental Control and Life Support Systems] ECLSS technologies and things that, you know, 10 years ago we would have said, eh, there’s no commercial interest. Is it novel? Yes. Is it unique? Yes. But we won’t patent it. And so, in those things, when we don’t patent them, the way we transfer that out into the public is usually writing technical papers, conference papers, going out into the community in that way, which engineering assigned staff across the agency do on a regular basis. I think there’s something like 7,000 publications that go out of the agency every year. Right? And we probably will license 100 to 120 technologies a year. Right? So, there’s a big difference. You know? So, regardless of whether there’s a formal license or it’s just a get the tech out into the public domain through a conference paper, or put it out on a website, we promote all of those types of things. My office is really geared towards the mechanization of the licensing and patent process, because that’s the more formal thing. And most of the scientists, engineers and technical staff that are doing the innovations, they want to go out and do the conference papers and the speak, and we certainly want them to go do that.

Host: Yeah, and they can speak to it maybe a little bit better too.

Kris Romig: Oh, absolutely. Right? And so, the other part of it is then software we treat a little bit differently. Software is one where we try to get that out into the public domain as much as possible. We have what’s called a NASA software catalog. So, somebody can go to software.NASA.gov, search for a software that NASA has in that catalog, and I think it’s around 650 different software’s that are in there right now.

Host: Oh, wow.

Kris Romig: And they can fill out a form that gets submitted to NASA, and it’s free. There is no fees associated with it. It’s universities, small businesses, even individuals. Right? Now they’re different categories of how, you know, we have to protect things from [International Traffic in Arms Regulation] ITAR and different perspectives, you know, from the international community.

Host: Sensitivity sort of?

Kris Romig: Right.

Host: Maybe export control.

Kris Romig: If there was a software that was reported to the Tech Transfer Office that was purely for ballistic reentry trajectory analysis, we may not want that software to be widely available to folks who may, you know, wish to use it for, you know, creating intercontinental ballistic missiles. Right?

Host: Naturally.

Kris Romig: Right. But if it’s, you know, some other types of software that sometimes it’s business efficiency software or communication tools and things like that, we want that to be publicly available.

Host: Yeah, yeah. So, if I, if I were to sum up, you know, what your office does, as you’re looking at all of this, these technologies, and you are, it is your job to think of the best ways to get this out into the economy.

Kris Romig: That’s exactly right.

Host: Yeah.

Kris Romig: And, fortunately, you know, we’ve got, you know, 3,000 civil servants here at Johnson Space Center that help do that. Right? Everybody is a representative of technology transfer, as far as I’m concerned. Anytime you’re going out into the community and you’re talking about the technologies and innovations that are going on at NASA, it’s increasing that awareness. Right? Now, a lot of times the general public may not take advantage of those technologies. The awareness is great. Right? But we also want to help university students, you know, take technologies and mature them in their, you know, graduate research, or, you know, small businesses to start up and take that, you know, idea or that technology and go get some funding around it, start a business, and go off and do great things.

Host: So, how do you, how do you reach out to companies and to industries that, and say, by the way, this technology is available to you, here’s how you can access it, and here’s how you browse it, how do you, how do you reach out?

Kris Romig: Yeah, so, that is a number of different ways. A lot of it is we have a group across the Tech Transfer Program in the agency that goes to a lot of industry conferences. So, as we have themes of technology, whether it’s aeronautics or whether it’s optics or sensor technology, propulsion, we will send a group of folks from the Tech Transfer Program from around the agency to go to those conferences. They put a booth up, a lot of information. So, there’s that knowledge exchange and information specifically for the Tech Transfer Program. We have most social media, you know, Facebook and, you know, some of the other social media avenues, Twitter, that were putting things out, putting blasts out when we’re trying to push a particular technology. And then we also publish articles on what’s called the Tech Brief. There used to be a NASA tech brief magazine. But that’s evolved and is no longer associated directly, you know, from the agency perspective. But they used to publish our technology articles. So, we will feed them to that. And it’s an industrial publication. So, it goes out into, I forget how many followers they have, or how many subscribers they have. It’s in the thousands. And so, we’ll put, you know, our various technologies in there. And they have themes every month of different tech that they’re looking for. That’s another way of getting it out.

Host: Very cool.

Kris Romig: Yeah.

Host: So, you specifically, do you have background in engineering or something that helps you to understand these processes? Or maybe, I don’t know, public policy, you know, what’s your background?

Kris Romig: Yeah, so, good question. So, I’ve spent 20 years at the agency. I started out in propulsion. So, my background technically is as an engineer, cryogenic rocket propulsion, you know, development, modeling and analysis types of things. I’ve had the opportunity to spend most of my career here at Johnson Space Center. I spent a year at NASA headquarters in the Chief Engineer’s Office, and just about six years at Goddard Space Flight Center. And that’s really where I got introduced to the Tech Transfer Program myself as I did a rotational assignment in the Tech Transfer Program Office at Goddard Space Flight Center. And I thought, oh, this is great, you know, I love technology, I love innovation, and the ability to then have a program that helps get it out into the world, because over my engineering career, I had worked with a lot of small startup companies and businesses who we needed to build technology for our rocket engines and different things. It was like, wow, this is a great I love the energy, I love how passionate folks were to work with NASA, you know, the agility that they came as a small business, that they could turn things around much more quickly sometimes. And so, I just really got connected and impassioned about that part of it. And, you know, 18 years later, I was able to come back, you know, to Johnson Space Center and take over the Technology Transfer Office here. And so that’s what I’ve been doing for a little over the last year is helping, you know, push JSC technologies out into the world.

Host: Yeah. So, one of the things that I think is most interesting, you talked about these technologies, or these ways, these avenues that you’re communicating out and saying, look what we have available. You’re doing print publications, you’re doing, you’re doing events, you’re doing all of these different things. One of my favorites is something called spinoff. We actually reference it a lot in [Public Affairs Office] PAO. And even when we’re talking about benefits for humanity, because you’re talking about technologies that are in, that are in the world right now, possibly fully matured, or at least partially matured to some, to some reason. I think one of my favorites actually, I remember sitting in the education office when I was a student, it was like my first day, and so my mentor had like a meeting that was going for an hour, so I was just waiting in the lobby. I didn’t even have a desk yet, so I didn’t know where else to sit. So, I was sitting, I was waiting at the desk, and I had the spinoff magazine right in front of me, and I was flipping through it. And one that caught my eye in particular was, it was a trailer. And you may, you may know more about it. But it was a trailer that took technology from a guy who used to work on the modules of the space station, and he took that same technology and those same ideas of how to make something compact, how to make something light, how to make something efficient, and he turned it into like a trailer, like, kind of like an air stream, but its own thing. But, you know, I thought that was fascinating. So, I started researching it. I was like, oh, if I get one, I’ll probably want one that a NASA engineer designed.

Kris Romig: Yeah, yeah. I’m familiar with that story. I don’t have a lot of the technical details or background on it. But I’ve certainly heard that before. And the spinoff publication is a great publication that the agency has been pushing I think since the 1970s is when they started it.

Host: Wow.

Kris Romig: So, it’s been every year we’ve been putting that book out. And, again, that’s another area where we’re continuing to evolve that. How do people digest information, and, you know, does the standard publication the right way of doing it, or print publication, but it’s a, it’s a great one, because there are those success stories basically is all the technologies that have gone out and been licensed, you know, the business world is tough. Right? So, just because NASA provides access to a technology doesn’t mean a business will be successful. There’s a lot that goes into, you know, successful product development that’s beyond NASA’s, you know, ability to help make sure that that happens. Right? But we’re always happy to provide content in the ways of IP, or intellectual property. And so, the spinoff is really that, you know, amalgam of all the success stories from each year of those technologies where folks have gone off and commercially sold a product and are doing wonderful things. You know, one of the ones that comes to mind too is the winglets that we see on commercial aircrafts, when you look out across the wing and there’s that upturned, you know, section at the end, or downturn, those winglets were developed by NASA engineers, you know, gosh, 20, 30 years ago, or even longer ago.

Host: Oh, wow.

Kris Romig: And so that got pushed out into the commercial aircraft market, because it makes them more fuel efficient. Right?

Host: Yeah, they’re on all the aircraft now. [Laughter]

Kris Romig: Yeah.

Host: Right.

Kris Romig: So, there’s a lot of NASA technologies and innovations that are buried in our culture, in the things that we use every day, and we don’t realize it. And that’s the way we like it. Right? We’re not trying to take credit for all of that work. We want the commercial entities that are, you know, getting access to this technology and commercializing it to get all of the credit for the work that they did, because we don’t typically create commercial products. Right? So, we will create the innovation and the intellectual property. And a lot of times our subject matter experts will help along the way as there’s a need. But, yeah, there’s some really great tech that’s been pushed out into the world. And another good example is the solar refrigerator was another technology that was developed here at Johnson Space Center 20 plus years ago right where we decided to patent that technology. It was picked up by a commercial company. And they’ve been successfully selling solar refrigerators around the world as a means of improving transportation, of medical, you know, vaccines, or, you know, transplant organs, these types of things. So, you have access to power in a refrigerated box because it’s solar, so you don’t have to worry about plugging it in all the time. Same with developing countries, where they may not have a reliable power grid, you know, that you can plug your refrigerator in, a lot of us here in the United States don’t think about the fact that you can plug your refrigerator in and put food in it. You don’t have to worry about losing power. Your food’s going to be good the next day.

Host: Yeah.

Kris Romig: And that’s not true everywhere in the world. So, having a portable refrigerator device that is powered by the Sun essentially, you know, gives people food security, it gives them the opportunity to have access to a longer supply of food for their household that they wouldn’t otherwise have. And it’s independent of having industrial power grid that they can go plug into.

Host: Wow.

Kris Romig: And that was an invention that came here out of Johnson Space Center.

Host: Unbelievable. That’s, — I’m trying to wrap my head around it, because I know one of the few things I know about refrigerators is it’s one of those things in the household that consumes the greatest amount of energy.

Kris Romig: Right.

Host: So, making it energy efficient so that it runs entirely on solar, that’s complicated.

Kris Romig: Yeah, it’s a complicated technology. And, again, it’s those types of things, as we’re trying to figure out how do we keep astronauts safe on the space station, how do we keep them comfortable, you know, those very technologies, you know, we worry about efficiency, we’re worried about power, we’re worried about the mass and size of things. Right? Because we have to launch them into space. And so those very things often will go into the technologies and products that are developed here on Earth, because we’re already solving a lot of the hard parts of it. Right? We have to be innovative to continue to push the boundaries of human spaceflight.

Host: Let’s go into the details of what it takes to go from NASA technology to something that is now being licensed to a commercial company. Say someone comes to you with what they think is a novel idea, and they say, “hey, I’d like to get this patented”?

Kris Romig: Yeah, so, it’s one of those things where if it’s an internal inventor or innovator, they would come to us and say, I’ve been working on this technology, I think it’s patentable. Right? I want to get it patented and get it out into the world. We have that happen frequently. Our inventors are very passionate about what they’re working on. Right? And so, I won’t talk about any specific technologies right now, because those tend to displace the potential for a patent award if it’s in that process.

Host: Defeats the purpose. [Laughter]

Kris Romig: Right, you know, but we do have that. And so, what we’ll do is we’ll take it into the Tech Transfer Office, we’ll evaluate what they’ve given us from a description perspective, we’ll typically sit down with the patent council and review it. There’s usually a lot of back and forth with the inventor, right, getting more information, looking at drawings, going and visiting the lab, really getting as smart as we can about the technology itself. And then on our side, we will do what’s called a prior arch search. So, go out and look to see what other technologies that have already been patented might exist that are very similar. Right? We’re basically looking to see what’s the potential for it actually being awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Right? And so, there’s, — a lot of understanding of patent law and things that would potentially be awarded or not awarded. So, we look for that upfront before we go and invest in those patent applications. And then we’ll do what’s called a commercial assessment or a market assessment of that technology. So, the best that we can, we’ll go do some research, what particular industry might this technology be used in. So, in some cases, it might be communication technology, [Radio-frequency identification] RFID tags and sensors, and reader technology. So, we’ll go look in those particular industries or sectors, see what the state-of-the-art technology is, see who’s buying what, what’s going on from a development perspective. And if we feel that we have a novel approach to solving a problem, that the terrestrial industry has, right, and we’ve done enough research, then sometimes we’ll cold call companies. Are you even interested in this type of technology? If we patented this, would this be something you’d be interested in? Just to try to understand if we’d get some mark attraction on it. We’ll take all of that and then we’ll make a decision. Are we going to move forward with a patent or not? If we do, that patent process can take up to two years until it’s finally awarded. So, there’s some timing and strategy that goes into what gets patented. Some technologies are just overcome every six months, you know, technologies are doubling in certain industries. So, by the time you’d be awarded a patent, it’d be obsolete. Right?

Host: Yeah.

Kris Romig: And so, once a patent’s been awarded, if a company comes in and says, hey, we’re looking for a technology to solve this particular problem, we’ve gone to technology.nasa.gov, we’ve looked and seen that you have a technology that’s available for licensing, we’d like to license that, that usually starts a series of conversations. Okay, what’s the type of business that you have? What do you want to do with the technology? It’s just us trying to go through a bit of an informal vetting process to make sure that if we have a license for this technology to this company, that they have the potential to do something with it. You know? So, there’s sometimes folks that will have a great idea, but they haven’t formed the company yet. Right? Or they don’t have investors, or they don’t have the engineering capacity to turn it into a product. And that’s perfectly fine. We’ll talk to everybody. Right? So, that’s there’s no exclusions there. But how we approach the licensing process may differ depending on who’s coming to talk with us. Right? And so typically we’ll go through some conversations if we feel that it’s worth, you know, that license, that it would be in good hands to go push this technology forward from that private sector company. We’ll sign a license agreement between NASA and that company. There’s three different ways, three different licenses. One’s called an evaluation license. It gives a company access for 12 months to play around with the technology, to work on prototypes, to just kind of get smart about it without a long-term commitment. And they can walk away at any time. If they want to follow on and create a commercial product for sale, they would have what’s called a commercial license. Right? So, that gives them direct access to the patent itself, to then go off and sell a commercial product for the, you know, life of the patent. So, it might be up to 20 years that they could go off and have exclusive rights to that patent technology for their products. And then what we really have been trying to do in the last five or, so years is push the entrepreneurial side, the startup side, so we have a no fee, you know, very low barrier to entry, startup license agreement that a small startup company could come in and say they clearly don’t have a lot of capital upfront. Right? So, it’s a free, nonexclusive license that they can have access to the technology to go commercialize it for up to three years. And after that three-year period of time, there will be some small fees that would be introduced as they get to commercial viability. But what we ask from them is commercialization plans, give us your development plans, and we work with them on that. We just want to make sure that they’re putting that thoughtfulness into how are you going to use this technology to make it a commercial product. We also will frequently work with economic development hubs around the country, you know, or incubator, investor, you know, ecosystems, to provide that intellectual property content to that startup ecosystem. Right? Where somebody else is figuring out the finances, somebody else is figuring out how to bring the right business management and technical team together to start a company, but maybe they don’t have an idea or the technology that they want to go, you know, promote. And so, we can come in and help fill those gaps with a technology from NASA that says, look, here’s 1,000 patents that NASA actively, you know, is pushing right now that is available to, you know, a community to go off and take advantage of. And we will frequently partner with the SBIR program that NASA has. So, a small business innovative research. So, it’s a grant giving program. So, look at companies that can, you know, get NASA grants to mature and develop technologies, and then there are times where they will use a NASA technology, license it, get a NASA grant to mature that technology for a commercial product. And a lot of times, that grant program is to sponsor technologies that NASA would then be a customer of. Right? So, it’s a little more complicated in the mechanics of it. But basically, we’re doing everything we can to engage with small businesses and universities to use our technology, to give or provide grants to folks who need grant money to mature technologies. And then push out into the commercial sector. We want folks to take our technology and commercialize it, is the intent.

Host: And what I’m hearing on the back end for that, for that first part is even considering patents is not a small task. Someone comes to you with that idea, and you’re sitting down and you’re really thinking this through and making sure you have the best understanding of what the market is, what the potential is, before you even pursue this thing, but then when you have it, you really are trying the best ways to get it out into the public, whether it’s a mature business, whether it’s a startup, there’s ways to do that, and really help boost. It’s not just, it’s not just a handout, like here it is, here’s a patent, have fun.

Kris Romig: Right.

Host: You know? It’s development. It’s a process.

Kris Romig: That’s exactly right. And it can be a complicated process if you’re not, you know, intimately involved with it on a regular basis. We have a monthly cycle. So, every month, we will sit down with the patent council at the center. And there’s a board of us, about 10 of us that sit around the table and look through every technology disclosure that’s been provided to you are office and go through this process of determining whether or not it’s worthy of pursuing more, you know, research to file a patent or not. Right? And so, it’s very professional, we make sure that we’re giving every technology and innovation that gets disclosed to us the same time and attention that it deserves. We were frequently going back to the inventors and talking with them for more information. But I like to consider that we are a service-oriented organization. Right? We’re providing a service. Internally, we’re the experts. We understand the nuts and bolts of how the machine works. But if you’re an outside company or university that you want access to NASA technology, you want to understand how to partner with us, we are a good front door to just pick up the phone, contact us, have those conversations, and we can help guide you through that process. If you’re a NASA innovator, right, and you’re saying, “oh, I’ve invented this great thing, but I don’t know what to do with it”, you know, pick up the phone, give us a call, we’ll walk you through that process. You know, the things that we want to be very careful about is sometimes people get very excited about their technologies. Right? And they’ll publish a conference paper and they’ll put all the technical details out into the world. And in a way, that’s wonderful, that’s great, you’re getting it out into the community. However, we’ve had several instances where that’s happened, or there will be somebody took a video and put it on YouTube because they wanted to share this cool technology they developed. And that’s like, well, that starts a clock now that we have to file for a patent in a very short period of time because you’ve now put it out into the public domain. Right? So, now anybody could go file a patent on that technology if they wanted to. Right? So, there’s, there’s some challenges there. And, but again, that’s okay. You know? That’s part of the service that we provide is never to scold folks. It’s never to, you know, it’s like just come talk with us, we’ll do everything we can to make sure that the technologies are being protected appropriately, and that they’re getting out into the world. That is our goal is make sure they get out in the world.

Host: That is true. It is, it is a there’s a lot of, I’m sure, very complicated nuances when it comes to U.S. patent law. And that’s going to be a whole thing. But you’re the ones that are going to guide them through that.

Kris Romig: That’s exactly right. You know? And if we don’t know the answers, we’ll go connect with other experts around the agency that may have experience in a particular area that we haven’t seen before. Software is another really big one. We go through an evaluation process with software. And, again, it’s not to slow things down. It’s not to prevent it from getting out into the public domain. But a lot of times, software or models and simulations get developed on top of third-party software that NASA has bought or licensed a software package for us to use. And then we’ll build this great application on top of it. And then we want to give it out to the world. Well, there’s some legal implications of taking a third party, you know, software that we’ve licensed and then giving it out for free. Right? So, we just check the boxes, go through it and make sure that we’re not, you know, inadvertently breaking any laws, or going to irritate anybody who are partners with us that have said “hey, you know, you’ve bought this software from us, and you’ve just released it out into the world for free, that’s not, you know, a custodian of our relationship.” So, there’s some process to how we do things. But that’s what we’re here to do, is provide that service.

Host: Now, this is a one thing that came to mind is we keep saying, we keep saying world, we’re going out into the world, which I’m sure it definitely does. But there’s probably some limitations, some restrictions when it comes to keeping it within the United States. So, when it comes to transferring technologies, is it limited to just that? Is it just the United States companies?

Kris Romig: The easy answer would be yes. Right? That that is the primary motivation for tech transfer is to stimulate the economy, to help grow U.S. businesses, to help increase the technical capability of the nation. But it’s not the only answer. Right? So, we do, in our software, we’re able to get software if it’s open source, you know, for public release, it can go anywhere in the world. Right? We really don’t try to limit that. Which is, again, why we have to review it, because if there are constraints, like I said about the, you know, ballistic reentry, you know, trajectory software, certainly there are certain parties we want — have, get them to have access to it.

Host: Yea.

Kris Romig: But if a university student doing research in that area, in the United States, wanted access to that software, we could make, you know, that available to them. The hardware technology side of things, it’s twofold. One, we do allow for licensing of NASA developed technology into foreign companies. There is a couple things to consider. One is we only file patents in the United States. So, we’re not filing international patents. So, they may not be protected in other countries as they would be in the United States. Typically, we want those companies to have some U.S. presence, some manufacturing presence, or production capability here in the United States. So, it’s okay that their corporate headquarters is in Sweden. Right? But if they have a capability here in the United States, or they have a branch of that company here in the United States, you know, we can certainly talk about licensing deals there. So, it is possible to do that. I would say a lot of those are kind of case by case. Right? And sometimes it might be less of a pure tech transfer opportunity with a foreign company. And it may be more of a co-development partnership opportunity. Right? So, there’s a lot of nuance sometimes to these relationships versus just a straight licensing deal. That’s why I always recommend just call us, so we can have the conversations of what are you trying to do, what are you interested in, because a lot of times folks will just want to mature technologies for NASA and sell it back because they want to help us go to the Moon. Right? They want to help us solve those problems. Like, fantastic, that’s what we want. Right? We have a lot of complex systems we need to figure out how to design and build.

Host: Help us! [Laughter]

Kris Romig: Right, help us, right? So, we certainly don’t want to artificially turn any of those folks away. So, it’s always worth having a conversation. And then folks from my office, myself directly, can put, you know, some guidance into that conversation. Which direction should we go? Is this a co-development partnership thing? Is this a licensing thing? Is it, oh, you just want software? Yeah, here’s the paperwork, fill this out, we’ll get it to you in a couple of weeks. Right?

Host: Yeah.

Kris Romig: But, yeah, so we’re very much open to those, you know, the global side of things. But there are some caveats. Sometimes there’s some sensitives that we just want to be thoughtful of.

Host: Which makes sense. Yeah, sure. I want to give people a sense of the scale of what we’re talking about. We’re talking about technology transfer. We’ve thrown out a couple of examples of different ways that we’re transferring NASA technology. But I think when people think about NASA, the first thing they think of is spacecraft. They think about propulsion. They think about, you know, where’s that patented light speed technology. You know? So, I want to dive into some of the areas that we have these different technologies, because there’s a lot. If you go to your website, you would kind of categorize it into different industries. You did aeronautics, manufacturing, health, robotics, power and materials, electrical. I started listing them and then I got bored because there are so many.

Kris Romig: Yeah, there’s 15 that we categorize for tech transfer. The Chief Technology Office, chief technologist of the agency also has a set of categories or taxonomies for the different technical domains for the agency. They don’t exactly line up. But we try to align things up for tech transfer and how we engage with the outside world, not just how NASA talks to itself. Right? So, yeah, you hit a lot of it’s, you know, aeronautics, you know, electrical, environmental sciences, health and medical instrumentation, manufacturing. And we categorize them that way for a lot of reasons. One, so we understand what industries to go target with a grouping of technology, so it’s easily bundled. Right? If we’re going to go to a manufacturing conference, then we want all of our out of manufacturing and advanced manufacturing technologies and material science stuff to go there. Right?

Host: Yeah. Not like a life sciences, like very detailed things. “Hey, manufacturing guys, here’s our life sciences. They’re like, I don’t care.”

Kris Romig: That’s exactly right. Yeah. And it gives us an opportunity to take the NASA lingo and jargon and how we communicate with ourselves technically and kind of, I don’t want to say scrub it, but certainly evolve that to be more conversational for the outside world. You know? So, people, when we talk about environments internally, right, we may be talking about the habitable environment on the International Space Station to keep the crew alive.

Host: Oh, yeah.

Kris Romig: But if you go out into the world and you talk about environmental science, it’s a completely different discipline. Right?

Host: Yes.

Kris Romig: And so, there’s some knowledge of having to understand how to translate some of that language and lingo a little bit. So, yeah, if you go to any of the NASA websites, the technology.NASA.gov, or software.NASA.gov, or even spinoff.NASA.gov, there’s you’ll see these categories broken down. You can click on the links and it will have all the technologies or patents under those areas, you know, there. So, if you know you’re only interested in aeronautics, right, you can go and drill down in that particular domain.

Host: So, yeah, what you’re doing is you’re categorizing things based on, because, again, the ultimate goal is they’re going out, they’re going outside of NASA. Maybe they’re going to come back inside. We’ve talked about examples where they’re going to develop and sell it back. But the idea is you want to categorize them into industries, because those are your targets.

Kris Romig: Yeah, typically. And the one that I think we haven’t talked about as a program yet that has come up a number of times is that commercial space side of things. So, we will typically couch things as couch things as aeronautics or aerospace. But the commercial space sector is just a little bit different. Right? And it’s evolving differently. And I think the way we look at our intellectual property as an agency is going to evolve over the next five or ten years so that way we can align with commercial space needs. You know? Some of the challenges there sometimes of starting a space company, it may take five, 10, 15 years before you are selling a product or being, you know, commercially viable.

Host: Oh, yeah.

Kris Romig: And so, we think about return on investments a little bit differently in the commercial sector, as we expect a commercial product out in three to five years. But that doesn’t quite fit for commercial space. So, we’re having to evolve how we’re looking at the technologies and how we’re partnering with those entities. But we’re very willing to do that. And I would say another area that tech transfer does, and this is trying to communicate across the agency, so we literally get thousands of new technology reports across the agency every year, all the different field centers, and we build, you know, we have that stored in this giant repository of technology. We’re really the only ones that have access to it in the Tech Transfer Program. And so, we’re looking at creating publications and websites so that NASA engineers can better communicate with other NASA engineers and scientists the projects that they’re working on. So, we’re not solving the same problems twice. Or, you know, we’re able to collaborate a little bit more effectively. And so, when we see ourselves as this giant repository of technology and intellectual property, we want to share it internally as much as we share it externally.

Host: Yeah, that’s definitely important. Improves efficiency as well too.

Kris Romig: Yep.

Host: For those technology developments. You talked about whenever you’re working with commercial companies, this sort of development, yes, it’s not necessarily a handoff. There’s this relationship. You talked about whenever they’re developing, sometimes having people intimately involved with the development process from NASA.

Kris Romig: That’s right.

Host: Is that — how is that true? How does that work? Do we station them over with the commercial company? What’s the relationship like?

Kris Romig: It depends. I’d say it’s case by case. You know? It depends on what the company is bringing to the table. So, if they are a mature engineering or manufacturing company, they may need less of our help. So, a couple of phone calls once in a while with the inventor is sufficient, because they have a team of technical folks and manufacturing people to go solve the problems that they have. In the case of a small startup or smaller companies, we may get a little bit more integrated with that technical team. Some of it is just dependability on the NASA inventor. Right? So, I don’t have authority to obligate my inventor’s time to go help, you know, make a commercial product. There may be the drive and the passion by the inventors to do that. Right? But then usually there’s a conversation with that person’s management with that technical inventor, our office, and try to figure out, how can we get them access to the resources to pay for some of that person’s time if it’s during work hours, you know, to go participate. There is other things called space act agreements. Right? So, we can have separate partnership agreements with those same companies where the license might be the seed corn. Right? But then that space act agreement can list out a number of different ways that both parties will benefit from the relationship. So, they may go mature a technology that NASA wants to see — that we’d love to see the data. Hey, great, we stopped funding this two years ago. If you’re going to keep maturing it, we’d love to see your results. You know? And in exchange for that, we can, you know, provide you access to some of our special lab space or some of our subject matter experts who develop that technology can be available to help you through things. Typically, we want to get the commercial entity any list of materials that were used, access to prototypes, designs, analysis, that type of stuff can get bundled up and packaged. So, there’s more than just a legal agreement that says you can now use this patent, right, to go mature something. A lot of times that’s not sufficient to go do the engineering and design work you need to do to create a commercial product. So, there will need to be an exchange of other information, you know, design details, analysis models, test results, those types of things. And a lot of that is done, you know, one on one between the inventors and, you know, the technical point of contact, — in the commercial company.

Host: And one of the main things I’m getting out of this, as you’re going through the intricate process of what it takes to actually transfer a NASA technology, is that communication is key, and keeping them, keeping all these companies informed, keeping the NASA community informed that this is a thing, and we can help you with this process. And like that’s, it seems like that’s the majority of your job is just, is walking people through this process of making sure that you’re developing the technologies, that it’s in a good and efficient way, and that people know what’s going on.

Kris Romig: Yeah, absolutely. I would say the top two things, communication and relationships. Right? So, that’s the thing that we push. That’s why I talked about us being a service-oriented organization. We’re a service provider. If we’re doing our jobs, right, the process and mechanization and the back end should be almost invisible to the outside stakeholders or our internal stakeholders. Right? But what they see is a group or a team of folks that are present, willing to help, you know, that we’re answering the phone, we’re responding to the emails, and we’re getting engaged. We do have a small team, so sometimes there’s a lag in comm, simply because we’re off running down a bunch of different rabbit holes simultaneously. So, there’s some things internally that I wish we had just more folks engaged so we can be doing a little better job. But we do the best we can with what we have. And it’s very important for us to, and this is something we’re continuing to evolve here at JSC, is to recognize and acknowledge the inventors and innovators at Johnson Space Center. Right? So, if you get a patent awarded, you’ll get a patent plaque, and part of the JSC honor ceremony and things, which is great. But, you know, that’s, like I said, 5, 6 percent of the disclosures that come to the office. So, it’s not a lot. So, we’re constantly looking for ways of how do we show our appreciation to the innovative community of Johnson Space Center that are submitting disclosures to us, that are picking up the phone and saying, hey, I’ve got this cool idea, I don’t know what to do with it. Right? So, we’re looking for ways to make sure that we’re staying connected and we’re providing that service to them.

Host: Yeah, that’s the key, I think. And I was definitely, it was hitting home when you were talking about a small team. Man, I like, I think that’s something that everybody wishes. Man, if we only had more people, but, yeah, we’re all just trying, we all have multiple hats to try to get the job done.

Kris Romig: It’s the way it goes. And we all understand that. There’s about, you know, eight or nine of us over in tech transfer that are doing a bunch of different things.

Host: Eight or nine doing all this? [Laughter]

Kris Romig: Yeah, well, and at the patent council, there’s about two more. Right? So, that’s inclusive. So, ten. So, say ten folks, ten, 11 folks that are doing this on a regular basis. Yeah, it’s, and it’s a lot. When you talk about hundreds of new disclosures coming in and patent filings and license agreements. But I can say honestly every person that works on my team is passionate about what they do. Right? They’re passionate about seeing that NASA technology get out into the world. And if you’ve got that, then everything else will work itself out. Right? And that’s, and we’re constantly looking for ways to improve our processes, to improve how we’re communicating, and so we’re very open to feedback. Right? I want to know what’s not working for any of our stakeholders, either external to the agency or here at Johnson Space Center. Just tell us. Right? And preferably politely. But tell us, you know, what’s not quite working for you, and we’ll adjust, because we’re here to serve.

Host: When you go out to these conferences, and when you’re communicating about this, this effort, this technology transfer effort, what are some of the big highlights that you like to tout, like when it comes to NASA technology, that’s in everybody’s lives, that’s in, that’s actually, that’s helping the economy develop, what are some of the examples of technologies that you really like to highlight?

Kris Romig: Well, I think I’ve already touched on the ones really that I push from JSC. Right? Which is like the inflatable habitat technology, you know, the solar refrigerator. The winglet one is just one that I happened to remember. I think it was mostly Glenn Research and Langley Research Centers that were doing that technology back in the day. Those tend to be the big ones that we push and promote. There’s a lot going on in RFID right now, water cleanup technologies, as far as NASA’s actively investing in them here at Johnson Space Center. And those are the ones that are getting the most attention. Battery technology developments, those were, you know, if we’re looking at various electric vehicles and batteries, you know, energy storage and batteries, and how do you make them more efficient, how do you make them lightweight, how do you prevent them from catching on fire and blowing up? And we’ve all heard stories about cell phones, you know, that spontaneously combust, and people getting injured. And so, we have —

Host: Yeah, energy stories, huge.

Kris Romig: — Energy stories is huge. Right? And so we have a group here at Johnson Space Center that that’s their sole focus is making sure that the, you know, energy storage systems that are going onto the space station and the spacecraft, you know, for human spaceflight, that those batteries are safe, that they can operate in and around crew members on a regular basis, they can be charged and discharged on a regular, you know, safely. And so those technologies tend to be the ones that we’re pushing a lot. And so that’s the ones that we’ll talk about. Hey, this is where we’re going, these are the problems we’re trying to solve internally. And they just happen to line up with what’s going on, you know, terrestrially here, water cleanup technology is, like I said before, is another big one. Right?

Host: Yeah.

Kris Romig: So, those are the ones that we tend to push. And, you know, one of the advantages that we talk about is, like I said, is we’re not trying to make money off of this technology. Right? That’s never the premise that we’re trying to get out there. So, we’ll frequently talk about just free access to the tech, free access to, you know, licenses, and the software and things like that.

Host: Wow. So, you mentioned this a little bit earlier on. But I wanted to lock onto commercial space. You said in terms of, it seems like you’ve had to kind of adjust the way, even when you’re talking to different groups, how you talk to different groups changes. But the idea of commercial space is going to be almost an entirely new way of conducting business in a sense because of, because of its scale and its relevance to the technologies that we’re building. So, what excites you for that phase of technology transfer? And what are some of the challenges? I mean, it sounds like one of the challenges is timelines is going to be one of the challenges. But what’s coming up? What do we have to look forward to?

Kris Romig: Yeah, so, I mean, the things that excite me about that is a lot of the technologies especially developed here at Johnson Space Center can be challenged to convert to terrestrial commercial markets. Right? Because there’s a big leap between a technology that was developed for the International Space Station that’s supposed to be small, lightweight, you know, safe to operate in space, doesn’t always translate directly to a commercial product here on Earth.

Host: Yeah.

Kris Romig: So, when we start talking about commercial space, now suddenly it’s like, well, this is a one to one transfer of technology. They’re going to want to use it in a very similar application to what we designed it for. Right? So, I think there’s going to be quite a bit of renewed interest in this surge of interest in licensing our technologies. If, my team can, you know, pick the right tech to patent and get out in the right ways over the next five years, I think we’re going to see a lot more interest from the commercial sector to say, yeah, you know, sample like the inflatable habitat technology is being used in the same application with which we originally intended it. Right?

Host: Yeah.

Kris Romig: So, it’s a very easy direct connect. And I think we’ll see a lot more of that, especially coming out of JSC in the future, when we start talking about EVA tools, you know, going back to the Moon, right, what type of tools are we going to use on the lunar surface, what type of habitat technologies, EVA suits, you know, Rover wheels, all these types of things where there’s usually a translation between space application and Earth application, now it will be commercial companies are going to use that same Rover on the lunar surface. But for a commercial purpose. So, they can directly translate to their needs. The challenge is obviously that the timeline, the viability of those companies’ long term as investments come and go, right, aerospace has always been a challenging business environment to get into. And so is that starting to blossom in what we’re calling commercial space, you know, getting access to funds is going to be a big deal, and they’re getting more and more of it. But, again, as we start looking at what companies are we going to license those technologies to, we have got to adjust internally our expectations of a commercial space entity’s ability to commercialize, to raise capital, those types of things. And so, there’s an adjustment that we need to make.

Host: Yeah.

Kris Romig: And our eyes are open. Right? So, we’re making those adjustments incrementally.

Host: That’s exciting. I mean, that’s a whole different way of doing spaceflight, just in general. That’s just a, the fact that that’s a landscape that we have to consider and adjust for just shows kind of how far we’ve come.

Kris Romig: Yeah, it’s a very exciting time to be in tech transfer. Right? Because normally we’re just trying to figure out how to make things usable here. But now to go, well, gosh, we’re going back to the Moon, you know, people want to mine the Moon for oxygen and hydrogen and water and create this lunar economy, and a lot of the technologies that are getting developed at different NASA centers will help in that.

Host: Yeah.

Kris Romig: Right? And so that’s just, it’s compelling. You know?

Host: Yeah, wonderful. What a fascinating landscape. At the very end here, we’re going to throw some of those links you talked about.

Kris Romig: Okay, perfect.

Host: And so, we can promote this and say, hey, here’s where you can go for all of this information. Kris, I really appreciate your time coming on and going through all the details of tech transfer.

Kris Romig: Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate being here.

[ Music ]

Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. Fascinating conversation we had today with Kris Romig about Technology Transfer and all of that great NASA technology that ends up in our lives. If you want to listen to more podcasts about some of the technology that’s in the space world that might end up being in your life, go to nasa.gov/podcast to listen to our podcast and the many others all across NASA of all of the activities that are going on across the agency. Otherwise, you can check out some of the things we talked about specifically on today’s podcast at the many different websites where you can find some of these technologies and software’s and spinoffs at very easily recognizable URLs. Are you ready for this? It’s technology.nasa.gov. That’s one of them. Software.nasa.gov. You get software there. And spinoff.nasa.gov. This is where you can find that book that they publish with all of the different products that come out of some of the NASA technology throughout the agency. If you want to talk to us on social media, we’re on the NASA Johnson Space Center changes of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Use the hashtag #askNASA on your favorite platform to submit an idea for the show. Just make sure to mention it’s for “Houston, We Have a Podcast.” This episode was recorded on January 21st, 2020. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Pat Ryan, Norah Moran, Belinda Pulido, and Jennifer Hernandez. Thanks again to Kris Romig for taking the time to come on the show. Give us a rating and some feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on and tell us how we did. We’ll be back next week.