The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory is teaming up with partner laboratories, minority serving institutions (MSIs), and a key industry partner, FedTech, to launch a pilot fellowship program that will connect top entrepreneurial talent within the MSI community with opportunities to commercialize DOE technologies.

As you might expect, NASA has tons of scientists who do a lot of research and development to engineer technology for its space missions. Inevitably, not all of it winds up being used — not because it’s not viable and useful, it just doesn’t. Instead of letting technology potentially sit unused, NASA and other government agencies transfer some tech intellectual properties (IPs) to the public for use in more Earth-bound products. But how does that technology get into the hands of entrepreneurs? One way is through programming where selected teams develop new products using available NASA IPs

When Safire Technology cofounder Mike Grubbs describes the technology of his startup, he turns to an unanticipated source: a cornstarch and water mixture. “Upon an impact, cornstarch and water change from a liquid to a solid instantaneously,” Grubbs told Technical.ly. “What the Safire technology does is the additive that goes into that, liquid electrolyte, for the lithium-ion battery, it has the same effect. On an impact, it instantaneously changes from a liquid to a solid.”