WWII US Navy Pilot, President George H.W. Bush

Cooperative Research and Development Agreements were the brainchild of a love affair between President George H.W. Bush and The Prime Minister of England, Baroness Margaret Thatcher.  The stimulate economic growth, the US Department of Energy and England’s Harwell Atomic Energy Agency began to spin-off technologies to the private sector through CRADAs.

Baroness Margaret Thatcher.  Prime Minister of England

Thatcher earned the nickname "The Iron Lady" from a Soviet journalist in 1976 for her hardline anti-communist rhetoric.

This is where the CRADA work was conducted, in my lab at the Pittsburgh site of the USDOE National Energy Technology Laboratory:

THE FIRST COOPERATIVE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
AND AN OUTSIDE ORGANIZATION, THE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE AND ENGINEERING

According to Kay Downey, the Technology Transfer Officer for the USDOE Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center, my CRADA with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of Medicine and Engineering was the first CRADA between the USDOE and an outside organization.

Below is the header for the CRADA.  Click here or on the CRADA header below to see the entire CRADA

In 1991, an artificial heart, the Novacor Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD), was in clinical trials in patients at the Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, St. Louis University Hospital, and Stanford Medical Center.  For unknown reasons, the Novacor LVAD was causing micro-clots to be formed then released into the blood stream.  This was causing strokes and fatalities in patients.

Dr. Harvey Borovetz, then Assistant Director of the Artificial Heart Program at Presbyterian Hospital, visited my DOE Particle Flow Research Lab to ask for help in identifying what was causing “thrombogenesis” the formation of clots.  We got to work immediately.

The Novacor LVAD is implanted beside a failing human heart to take over the work of a failing heart until a heart is found for transplant. The bioengineers from the University of Pittsburgh used a Jarvik artificial heart to simulate the conditions of a failing human heart.

Anatomical configuration of the Novacor Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD)

A photo of the Novacor LVAD connected to a Jarvik artificial heart in my lab at the USDOE National Energy Technology Laboratory

Heart Transplant Surgeon Dr. Bob Kormos prepares a Novacor LVAD for implant. 
I took this photo standing five feet away in the Main Operating Theater of Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh.

The research team for the CRADA with the
University of Pittsburgh Schools of Medicine and Engineering

One of the technologies I used for my CRADA work was  my US Patent 5,333,044 “Fluorescent Image Tracking Velocimetry”), an imaging technology to visualize and measure the flow of organic and inorganic particles through power plants and the flow of blood cells in artificial hearts and lungs.  The invention was made possible by my access to nuclear weapons technologies from the US’s and UK’s premier nuclear weapons labs.

The Principal Investigator for CMU Professor of Chemical Engineering Dr. Jennifer Sinclair.  She is now Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Irvine.  In 2023, she was awarded the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE) Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement by a Woman Chemical Engineer. 

In 2019, Professor Sinclair was awarded the AIChE Particle Technology Lifetime Achievement Award.  Particle technology was the subject of our CRADA. Click here or on the image below to see the Final Report for my CRADA with CMU:

Dr. Jennifer Sinclair, Professor of Chemical Engineering at CMU.  Now Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at UC Irvine

In memory of Dr. Gavin Sinclair. He passed away from cancer while Jennifer was pregnant with their daughter, Jeannine

Seeing is believing.  You can see the technology of my US Patent 8,391,552 at work in the video I made: The Science and Beauty of Fluidization.  It is dedicated to one of the pioneers in Kinetic Theory of dense particle flows, Distinguished Professor Jennifer Sinclair, UC Irvine

MY COOPERATIVE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT WITH ELECTROMEDIC

The Principal Investigator for Electromedic was the great Dr. Gary Reeder, MD.  Dr. Reeder was using the Electromedic Autotransfusion “cell saver” system to save blood from patients during heart and lung transplants at the University of Medical Center Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Electromedic is now Medtronic

Click here for more info on the applications of my US Patent 8,391,552, including my work on the world’s first micro-turbine heart pump invented by the great rocket engineer Kenneth Clark Butler. Ken led the team at Aerojet Rocketdyne that developed the main engine for the Saturn V rocket that sent the first three astronauts to the moon: Neil Armstrong, Micheal Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin.