From battery technologies to biofuels innovations, many technology inventions prove of great value to industry. But did you know that Lab-developed software is also highly sought after by some industry sectors? For example, Phenix software, which had its start in the late 1990s in Paul Adams’ lab in the Biosciences Area, solves the 3D structures of macromolecules from X-ray crystallography and electron cryo-microscopy data. Now a multi-institution collaboration, it currently has 35,000 users, including researchers in academia, government, and industry, and more than 70 commercial licensees around the world, including leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
The TOUGH (Transport Of Unsaturated Groundwater and Heat) software program models underground flows of water, vapor, air, and heat. In addition to the many researchers and government agencies that use TOUGH, this type of modelling is essential to industries that rely on below-ground operations, including geothermal energy and oil and gas production. It has been licensed by more than 150 companies, including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Shell, among others – an important tool for industry to improve decision making, optimize production, conduct effective risk assessment and mitigation, and identify efficiency and cost saving measures.
Cybersecurity software is another area where the Lab has had a great impact. Zeek software was first developed at the Lab as an open source security monitoring platform by then-grad student Vern Paxson in the 1990s. Paxson, with new partners Robin Sommer and Seth Hall, co-founded a startup named Corelight in 2013 and continued to develop the software into a commercial-ready product. (They were joined in 2016 by Greg Bell, then the Lab’s director of the Scientific Networking Division and Esnet.) Three years ago, Microsoft announced Zeek’s integration into the Windows operating system, which has a 70-80% market share of the global desktop/PC market.
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