News Release Archive | Awards

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 7, 2003

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) today recognized a family of security assessment tools developed at Sandia National Laboratories with a 2003 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer.

The annual awards recognize successful efforts by federal laboratory employees to transfer government-developed technology to commercial industry. A panel of experts from industry, state and local government, academia, and the federal laboratory system judge the nominations.

Sandia, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory, was a recipient of two of the 22 awards given this year. See “Sandia, LET Inc. recognized by Federal Laboratory Consortium for development of crime-solving tool” for more information about the other winning Sandia project. The awards will be presented this evening in Tucson, Ariz., during the FLC’s annual national meeting.

The award recognizes the lab’s effort to adapt security assessment tools and approaches, traditionally used by Sandia to protect U.S. nuclear assets, to the challenge of preventing terrorists from doing harm to Americans by exploiting security vulnerabilities in U.S. critical infrastructures.

To this end, Sandia developed a family of risk assessment methodologies (RAMs) that can be used by owners and operators of dams (RAM-D), power transmission systems (RAM-T), and water distribution systems (RAM-W) to identify and correct vulnerabilities at their facilities.

Sandia also developed a unique licensing strategy and designed novel “train the trainer” educational courses to make the methodologies available to owners and operators in a timely fashion.

To date Sandia has executed 80 RAM licenses and approximately 75 more are pending.

Numerous government and industry partners collaborated with Sandia on RAM development.

For more information about the risk assessment methodologies, see the links below.

The FLC, organized in 1974 and formally chartered by the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986, promotes and coordinates technology transfer efforts by creating an environment that facilitates the rapid movement of government-developed technologies into the U.S. economy. More than 700 federal labs and centers and their parent agencies are FLC members.

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major research and development responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.

Sandia news release about RAM-D and RAM-T:
http://www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2001/ramdramt.htm

Sandia news release about RAM-W:
http://www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2001/watinfr.htm

FLC media contact: Tom Grayson, 856-667-7727

Sandia media contact: John German, jdgerma@sandia.gov, (505) 844-5199