Technology always captured Karina Edmonds’ imagination. As a child leaving the Dominican Republic headed for the United States, she boarded the plane and asked herself, “how can this big chunk of metal stay in the air?”
So it seems only fitting that she is flying high in the technology transfer world. Edmonds was named the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) first technology transfer coordinator in 2010. The DOE has 17 national labs holding 15,000 patents and patent applications, but only 10 percent of these have been licensed for commercial use. Her job is to move discoveries from the laboratory to the private sector, ensuring that America’s scientific leadership translates into new, high-paying jobs for America’s families.
“Technology transfer is definitely a contact sport,” she said. “It’s about connecting people and innovative technologies with market needs.”
And Edmonds is an expert in the field. As the former director of the Technology Transfer Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), she shepherded complex technology beyond the confines of a laboratory.
“People would be shocked to learn of all the incredible technologies that have had a big market and societal impact,” she said. “In the area of imaging, JPL scientists had to build very small, lightweight, low-cost imagers to look for very faint objects far away in the universe. That same technology is now found in most cell phones with cameras.”
Edmonds’ interest in how things work was fueled by youthful curiosity, supportive teachers, and a school program designed to prepare minority children for careers in the sciences. Inspired by the engineers who gathered like-minded students together in her grade school days, she brought minority engineering students together at URI when she co-founded the University’s Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers.
“We need to keep students engaged in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) activities from an early age. Unfortunately, engineers and scientists are still not portrayed well on television, and as a result the perception is skewed. We are very well-rounded individuals who have an interest in making the world a better place through the pursuit of scientific knowledge.”