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Fiscal Year 2021 George F. Linsteadt Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer

The Department of Defense (DoD) Technology Transfer (T2) program recently announced the George F. Linsteadt Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer winner for Fiscal Year 2021. The DoD has selected Dr. James D. Kearns, Technical Transfer Program Manager for the Office of Research and Technology Applications supporting the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) 711th Human Performance Wing (711 HPW/XP), as part of the Plans and Programs Division, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

“Technology transfer is vital to the Department’s mission of developing new technologies and promoting technology commercialization as the U.S. military seeks to maintain its technological advantage,” said Ms. Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. “The George Linsteadt Award recognizes professionals throughout the Department who have performed extraordinary work to transfer technology developed in the defense laboratories in collaboration with partners in the public and private sectors. These individuals go above and beyond their roles to ensure our Nation’s investment in innovative research is transferred from defense laboratories to the American people in real world applications.”

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As a highly respected T2 champion for the Department for over 20 years until his retirement in August 2021, Dr. Kearns focused on 711 HPW/XP’s mission to optimize warfighter capability through a human-centric approach to system development, acquisition and sustainment. Dr. Kearns’ most recent notable series of T2 collaborations with industry relate to technology developed at the AFRL 711 HPW, namely the Battlefield Assisted Trauma Distributed Observation Kit (BATDOK™) software. BATDOK™ is a point-of-injury software tool initially created to improve military battlefield triage efforts by monitoring, collecting, sharing, and documenting health data onsite, using patient vital sign sensors, handheld smart devices and cloud storage. Since March 2018, BATDOK™ has seen 9 licenses transferred from AFRL to industry.

“Technology transfer is vital to the Department’s mission of developing new technologies and promoting technology commercialization as the U.S. military seeks to maintain its technological advantage.”

-Ms. Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering

Dr. Kearns facilitated a Partnership License Agreement (PLA) with Fort Worth, Texas-based Animal Cloud Device Connectivity, Inc. (ACDC) to broaden their fields of use for the BATDOK™ software. ACDC co-founders, Dylan Jones and Chris Matos, first heard of BATDOK™ patent opportunities while students in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation program at Texas Christian University. Jones and Matos contacted Dr. Kearns, who saw the potential in the first non-human application of BATDOK™. Dr. Kearns’ experience in working with the multiple human healthcare companies, from startups to a $30 billion multinational company, gave him the wherewithal to envision an expansion into veterinary medicine. The new company’s early efforts led to a DoD Small Business Innovation Research contract for a military working dog program.

Dr. Kearns’ work on behalf of the 711 HPW fueled other T2 efforts as well, such as his advocacy for ARFL’s Predictive Performance Optimizer (PPO), a software tool to aid performance predictions and optimization of future training regimens/goals. PPO was initially field-tested in a large nurse-training study by the American Heart Association (AHA). In 2020, Dr. Kearns crafted a follow-on Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with AHA to underwrite two hospital studies in preparation of rolling out PPO for CPR training nationally. The adoption of PPO for CPR training is estimated by AHA to save 50,000 lives annually. This is just another example of Dr. Kearns’ ability “to move the needle” and make “very impactful contributions to tech transfer,” according to Joan Wu-Singel, Senior Technology Manager for TechLink, a DoD Partnership Intermediary Agreement partner.

More Information

For more information about DoD T2

Learn more about the George Linsteadt Award and previous winners

Office of the Under Secretary of Defense,
Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E))
3030 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-3030