CMI Team member Idaho National Laboratory story about INL researchers who have won multiple R&D 100 Awards includes some based on CMI research (REE-Metal in 2021, EASE in 2023).
Aaron Wilson leads the INL Chemical Separations group and is a research lead in the Critical Materials Innovation Hub, who says it helps to be in a scientific field committed to solving problems for industry in real time.
“We’re culturally different from a lot of the laboratory...We’re within five years of commercializing," Wilson says. His secret for winning R&D 100 awards is threefold: “Get a good publication, get letters from people who want to license it and then do a one-to-one comparison with an existing technology.”
All three of Wilson’s wins came from using liquids with unusual phase behavior to solve different technical challenges, including wastewater treatment, carbon capture and conversion, and isolating critical minerals as solids.
Link to the full story: Researchers with multiple R&D 100 Awards share their secrets