Leveraging PARC’s competencies for innovations in cleantech

To better drive its cleantech research portfolio to commercial outcomes, Palo Alto Research Center, Inc., has successfully used several approaches to build market knowledge, reduce development times, and transfer technologies. Learn how PARC has collaborated with visiting technologists, embedded business development experts, and resident early-stage startups to commercialize innovations in solar energy. This talk also will describe PARC’s most recent cleantech investments, including new types of solar heat engines and technologies to use atmospheric CO2 capture to generate liquid fuels.    

Presenter(s)

Dr. Scott Elrod directs PARC's hardware systems research organization, which focuses on inkjet printing, biomedical systems for d rug discovery and clinical diagnosis, and cleantech innovation. A PARC Principal Scientist who holds more than 60 patents, Elrod was responsible for much of an acoustic ink-printing patent portfolio (a novel inkjet technology based on focused ultrasonics), and inventions for PARC spinout LiveWorks, Inc. (later acquired by SMART Technologies). His other contributions include novel input devices for large-area displays and a ubiquitous smart office environment.

Prior to his role at PARC, Elrod directed the Environment, Safety, and Health (ESH) Division at SEMATECH, a consortium of semiconductor manufacturers, and co-wrote a chapter on that industry’s ESH performance for the book, The Handbook of Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology. Elrod received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford, where he built the world’s first low-temperature tunneling microscope.