I have promoted working with industry as an important part of the Laboratory's future for almost a decade. I continue to believe that we must work with industry to ensure that our technology is the best and that it makes an impact in civilian areas. We created pilot programs such as the Superconductivity Pilot Center and the Oil Recovery Partnership to forge new, productive relationships with industry. Partnerships with industry also became more important in the defense sector as defense requirements reshaped the military-industrial complex.
During the past 10 years, the political winds for industrial partnering have blown rather unpredictably. Ten years ago, there was little interest within industry and only a handful of politicians (led by Sens. Domenici and Bingaman) who promoted getting more private-sector benefit from federal research expenditures. In 1989, Congress passed landmark legislation, the National Competitiveness and Technology Transfer Act, to promote partnerships between federal laboratories and U.S. industry, utilizing the concept of a cooperative research and development agreement.
This legislative initiative combined with specific set-aside funds in the Department of Energy/Defense Programs Technology Transfer Initiative (TTI) allowed the Laboratory's industrial interactions to grow to the nearly 200 collaborative agreements we have today, with an annual budget of roughly $50 million supporting our Laboratory staff. During this time, industry obviously developed interest in the Laboratory. In turn, we found industry's problems very challenging and that we can learn a lot from industry. Clearly, the partnership between industry and the DOE laboratories was beginning to flourish.
However, events during the past year, beginning with the Nov. 8, 1994, elections, brought a new focus to industrial interactions. Early in the year, the "new" Congress signaled its concerns that federal support of industry R&D represents a form of "corporate welfare." DOE/Defense Programs directed TTI partnerships to achieve a much closer coupling to its defense mission (in areas such as advanced manufacturing processes) than in the past. The Laboratory, in turn, also emphasized a closer tie of industrial partnerships to our missions. This was a confusing period for our staff, which had embraced the importance of industrial partnerships. It's no surprise then that many of our researchers who worked diligently to develop industrial connections felt disillusioned.
Last week, Sen. Domenici engineered a compromise in Congress that provides $150 million for the TTI program (which includes all three defense labs and some participation by the DOE production plants) in fiscal year 1996. This action will allow us to tailor our industrial program to be sustainable into the future. For partnerships to be sustainable, each partner must benefit.
We will structure the TTI program to benefit DOE Defense Programs, by directly supporting the programs and by underpinning the requisite core technical competencies. Direct program relevance of industrial interactions is much more likely today because defense laboratories will be responsible for the future stewardship of many of the production technologies required in the nuclear weapons program, as well as for the remanufacture of some key components. New initiatives such as ASCI (Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative) and ADaPT (Advanced Design and Production Technologies) will depend critically on industrial partnering. The nuclear weapons production complex of the future must become a model of agile manufacturing. We have a lot to learn from industry in this area. I am convinced that working with industry will enhance the long-term viability of the nuclear weapons program.
At the same time, we must continue to demonstrate that we can have a positive impact on industry. Otherwise, there is no incentive for industrial partners to participate and to share costs. To this end, we must continue to build better bridges to our industrial partners. We just launched the second year of our award-winning Industrial Research Institute Industrial Fellows Program, which allows our staff to join industry for one year to learn its culture and to build such bridges.
Another indication of the Laboratory's potential of impacting industry is our record of R&D 100 awards (for the 100 greatest technical innovations with commercial potential as judged by R&D Magazine). This year our researchers picked up six such awards at the ceremony in Chicago in September, for a total of 44 over the past eight years (far more than any other institution or company in the world). The next round of the R&D 100 competition is starting right now; contact the Industrial Partnership Office (IPO) at 5-9090 for information.
The R&D 100 awards were the product of research spanning a great variety of programs, ranging from Laboratory-Directed R&D to biosciences to defense research. Clearly, the potential for working with industry is not restricted to defense programs and TTI. In fact, in our energy programs we view partnering with industry as a key part of our R&D strategy. We must look more aggressively for industrial connections within all of our programs.
As I have said previously, I view working with industry not as an option but as a business necessity. The nation's R&D enterprise will be strongly networked in the future. Our laboratory must be an integral part of that network. This is especially true in the era of science-based stockpile stewardship in which we must benchmark ourselves against the world's scientific establishment instead of calibrating ourselves against underground nuclear test results. To be the best in science, we will have to work closely with universities. To be the best in technology, we will have to work closely with industry.
Let me encourage all of you to look for opportunities to work with industry. Look for new ways in which you can collaborate with industrial partners on your projects. As Assistant Secretary for DOE Defense Programs Vic Reis said this past Tuesday at Los Alamos, "We ought to look at industrial partnerships as an important tool in our weapons program. In carrying out our program, we should ask -- do we make it, buy it or partner?" Call on our Industrial Partnership Office; it is there to provide support, assistance and coordination.