The Department of Commerce (DOC) has produced a report about how its agencies ran technology transfer activities in fiscal year 2020, including projects related to space weather and air quality.
The “Annual Report on Technology Transfer: Approach, Plans, Fiscal Year 2020 Activities and Achievements” summarizes how the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration handled technology transfers, NIST said Thursday.
For example, NOAA created a technique that uses machine learning to search for space weather content among large amounts of satellite-gathered data. The weather forecasting agency also worked with NASA to study how wildfires across the U.S. affect air quality.
The agencies performed this work under the Fire Influence on Regional and Global Environments and Air Quality or FIREX-AQ program, whose resulting data now supports NOAA’s forecasting models for smoke and air quality.
“This report is integral to understanding and analyzing the tech transfer activities of the agencies, and it provides a great reference point for DOC’s overall role in tech transfer,” said Mojdeh Bahar, associate director for innovation and industry services at NIST.