Continuing a decade of entrepreneurial training and commercializing mission innovation, two teams of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers attended the Department of Energy's (DOE) Energy I-Corps (EIC) Cohort 22 in Colorado this spring.
The EIC is a key initiative of the DOE's Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC). Candice Bila from the Innovation and Partnerships Office (IPO) facilitates the program at LLNL.
Established in 2015, EIC pairs teams of scientists, composed of a principal investigator (PI) and entrepreneurial lead (EL) from a national lab, with industry mentors to train them in moving DOE lab-developed technologies toward commercialization. To date, LLNL has sent 14 teams through nine EIC cohorts.
EIC invites teams of researchers to participate in an immersive, two-month entrepreneurial training program designed to help define technology value propositions and explore viable market pathways. Through an intensive curriculum, researchers learn how to create and refine a business model canvas for their lab-developed technology by defining the value proposition, conducting customer discovery - including at least 75 stakeholder interviews - and exploring viable market pathways for their technologies.
The program begins with an in-person opening week, where each cohort spends five days learning, developing hypotheses and questions to test during the initial customer discovery interviews and refining their value propositions.
"In just one week, participants went from understanding their technology to identifying initial market opportunities; some even pivoted and uncovered entirely new markets," said Candice Bila, LLNL's EIC program manager within IPO. "Experiencing the program firsthand gave me a deeper appreciation for its intensity and valuable insight into how I can better support future teams."
LLNL researchers who participate in the EIC develop a framework for industry engagement that guides future research and fosters a culture of market awareness. LLNL technologies that successfully reach commercialization through maturation and partnerships contribute to national security and strengthen U.S. economic competitiveness.
For EIC's Spring 2026 projects, LLNL secured four total commercialization projects: two Topic 2 selections (contained within the cohort program described above) and two Topic 3 selections. Topic 3 offers funding to teams that have successfully completed Topic 2 and helps them mature LLNL technologies to the next stage of commercialization.
LLNL Cohort 22 teams are detailed below. LLNL Topic 3 projects continuing their commercialization maturation are AMPERE and IgniteAM from Cohort 20.
STILETTO, 3PSI, and CLASPS
Team comprises LLNL PI Ryan Muir and EL Leily Kiani with industry mentor Ben Hopkins.
High-energy and high-peak-power pulsed laser systems are enabling technologies for particle acceleration, nuclear fusion, additive manufacturing, defense and more. Newer laser systems continually push the limits of laser pulse energy and peak power to drive stronger laser matter interactions. The performance bottlenecks of these laser systems can be enhanced by careful manipulation of the laser pulse and laser beam qualities. When used together, CLASPS, a laser beam shaping system, STILETTO, a modified monochromator, and 3PSI, a spectral interferometer (or optical recorder), represent a unique platform set of technologies for spatial phase and polarization shaping, temporal pulse shaping and temporal pulse measurement, respectively. This team is funded by the Office of Science's Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) Program.
DOG-FET
Team comprises LLNL PI Qinghui Shao and EL Clint D. Frye with industry mentor Jacob Leach.
Diamond Optically Gated Field Effect Transistors (DOG-FET) with optimized Gate-All-Around (GAA) structures have been designed and developed as power electronics for fast switching, low jitter and low susceptibility to electromagnetic interference. Unlike conventional GAA transistors, GAA in DOG-FET is defined by an optical aperture on top of the device that allows for arbitrary gate distribution across the entire chip. Combined with their unique memory effect that enables pulsed laser operation, the DOG-FETs are suited for future medium-voltage direct current (MVDC), high-voltage direct current (HVDC) systems and power management for data centers. This team is funded by the Office of Electricity.
The other teams in Cohort 22 include researchers from Ames National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Laboratory of the Rockies, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
- Melissa Lewelling & Candice Bila
