Sandia research, inventions lead to billions in sales
Apr. 16—In the past two decades, economic activity connected to research at Sandia National Laboratories has led to billions of dollars of spending and thousands of high-paying jobs, according to an economic impact study.
The study looked into the spending, jobs and tax revenue throughout the country that can be traced to cooperative research and development agreements and patent licensing agreements that Sandia entered into with outside companies.
Whenever a scientist at Sandia makes a discovery that leads to a patented invention, Sandia can license the rights of that government-owned patent to, typically, for-profit companies that can make, use or sell the product.
An example of a research and development agreement is Sandia's three-decade-long partnership with Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Earlier this year, Sandia announced that, using Sandia's high-performance computer codes, Goodyear and Sandia had developed a virtual means of testing different parts of tires under various conditions.
The economic analysis found that a little more than 400 agreement contracts and licensing deals between 2000 and 2010 resulted in an estimated $95.9 billion in total economic impact and $53.7 billion in total sales of new products and services through 2020.
Sales of those products in the past two decades have supported an average of more than 20,600 jobs per year — or about 434,000 over a 20-year period — with an average salary of $69,000 per year, according to the study.
That economic output led to nearly $10 billion in local, state and federal taxes.
Sandia is managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration within the Department of Energy. The DOE and other U.S. government agencies are legally required to transfer inventions to the private sector in order to benefit the nation's economy and help ensure national technological competitiveness, according to the study.
The study was done by TechLink with the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder. TechLink is a federally funded technology transfer center at Montana State University.
"Transferring the labs' innovative technologies to the marketplace through (research and development agreements) and patent license agreements is a vital part of Sandia National Laboratories' mission," Mary Monson, Sandia's senior manager of technology partnerships and business development, said in a statement. "We are pleased that the report showed some of the positive impacts of our work with outside partners."
