The federal official overseeing the U.S. Department of Energy’s efforts to bring research from its labs to market met with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory leaders on his first visit to the Tri-Cities.

DOE chief commercialization officer Anthony Pugliese, along with Chief of Staff Justin Bis, met with leadership from PNNL’s Office of Collaboration and Commercialization to learn about its efforts to move technology from the lab to the private sector, according to a release. Pugliese also shared perspectives and current priorities of DOE’s Office of Technology Commercialization.

“Our team is creating streamlined pathways and processes to fully capture the intellectual property, innovations and inventions developed at the Laboratory and to engage in bringing those inventions to the marketplace for the benefit of U.S. citizens,” said Christina Lomasney, PNNL’s director of commercialization, technology, deployment and outreach, in a statement. “We are excited to work with Anthony and his team in the coming years to continue breaking down barriers in the technology transfer process and to identify market opportunities that align with PNNL capabilities and programs.”

While at PNNL, Pugliese toured the campus and heard from PNNL researchers and inventors about capabilities and programs in artificial intelligence, nuclear energy, grid infrastructure security, airport technologies, and grid energy storage, among others.