Startup Company Uses Brookhaven National Laboratory's Technology to Compete in "America's Next Top Energy Innovator"

Americans Will Pick the Most Innovative Startup Companies Using Laboratory Inventions to Create New Businesses, Products

January 31, 2012

The following news release is being issued today by the U.S. Department of Energy. SynchroPET, the start-up company described below, has optioned technology for miniaturized PET scanners developed at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. For more information on this technology, see: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=1380, or contact Karen McNulty Walsh, 631 344-8350, kmcnulty@bnl.gov. DOE News Media Contact: (202) 586-4940

WASHINGTON, D.C. — SynchroPET, a startup company, is using Brookhaven National Laboratory's technology to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy's "America's Next Top Energy Innovator Challenge," a competition where Americans vote online for the most innovative and promising startup companies that are using technologies from the Department’s national laboratories to develop new products and businesses. Based on the public vote and an expert review, the top startup companies will be invited to be featured at the premier annual gathering of clean energy investors and innovators around the country, the 2012 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, at the end of February. Voting is available at www.energy.gov/topinnovator.

"Through the America's Next Top Energy Innovator Challenge, we are unleashing startup companies to do what they do best: create new products, new industries, and new jobs," said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "We've challenged America's entrepreneurs and innovators to create new businesses based on discoveries made by our world-leading national laboratories."

Americans can view profiles of the competing startups and vote on which ones could make the greatest contributions to the country's economic and energy future by visiting www.energy.gov/topinnovator. An expert panel will also evaluate the companies and rank them. Voting ends at 8:59 a.m EST on Monday, February 6.

SynchroPET, based in Shoreham, New York, is a start-up biotech firm with the next generation of PET Scanners, which have superior imaging capabilities to what is currently available on the market today. SynchroPET's technology was developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory and it enabled SynchroPET to miniaturize the typical PET Scanner while improving its image. SynchroPET's technology can be paired with an existing MRI machine for a simultaneous image. These advances will accelerate the creation of new pharmaceuticals to treat cancers, and Alzheimer and Parkinson's diseases. SynchroPET currently has four prototypes built, and each have been used by researchers from labs in New York. View a video on the company's technology HERE.

The companies participating in the challenge have signed option agreements allowing them to license valuable, cutting-edge technologies developed and patented by one of the U.S. Department of Energy's 17 national laboratories and the Y-12 National Security Complex. Thirty-six companies in total have signed these option agreements with the national laboratories under a streamlined, simplified application process. Learn more about DOE's America's Next Top Energy Innovator program HERE.

The Energy Department also announced today that it will be extending America's Next Top Energy Innovator through next year, which will continue to make it easier for startups to use inventions and technologies developed at DOE’s national laboratories to create new businesses, new products and new jobs for American workers. The Department will also offer another online competition in 2013.

America's Next Top Energy Innovator is part of the White House Startup America Initiative that celebrates its one year anniversary today. Startup America is a multiagency effort across the Obama Administration to promote high-growth entrepreneurship by expanding access to capital, cutting red tape, and accelerate innovation through agency action.

To learn more about the Obama Administration's Startup America Initiative, the program's one year anniversary and new steps the Obama Administration is taking to support job-creating small businesses, visit HERE.

To learn more about the 2012 ARPA-E Energy Summit, visit http://www.energyinnovationsummit.com/.

2012-11382  |  INT/EXT  |  Newsroom