Sandia National Laboratories yesterday said it has signed a pair of cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) with Northrop Grumman [NOC] and General Electric [GE] that could broadly add to the Labs’ research into combustion, defense, energy, nuclear security and combustion.
The umbrella CRADAs are to enable Sandia and its partners to pursue multiple projects in a variety of categories.
“These are strategic agreements that envision long-term partnerships,” said Brooke Garcia, a Sandia business development specialist who helped negotiate the CRADAs.
Sandia has had a standard CRADA, which covers a specific scope of work, with Northrop Grumman Information Systems since 2007. Sandia also has CRADAs with the company’s Aerospace Systems and Electronic Systems divisions.
“Northrop Grumman is a longtime Sandia partner,” Garcia said.
The new Information Systems CRADA covers a wide range of potential research designed to improve defense systems technologies through collaborative R&D in engineering sciences, modeling and simulation, intelligence systems and infrastructure and nuclear security. The agreement includes evaluating energy and climate factors domestically and abroad. The primary goal of the collaboration is to improve national security.
Under the second CRADA, General Electric Global Research will work with Sandia on energy systems. The GE agreement replaces a decade-old umbrella CRADA that expired last year.
“Rather than extend the old one, we took the opportunity to negotiate an updated agreement that supports current missions as well as mutual goals for future innovation,” Garcia said.
The agreement states that Sandia and GE will “cooperatively engage in analytical studies, research and development of a diverse set of energy-related topics with a goal of accelerating the understanding and development of new energy systems required to transition away from a hydrocarbon-based economy to carbon-neutral energy sources.”
The scope of the partnership takes in a variety of technical categories including combustion; thermal management; aerodynamics; systems engineering, economic and life-cycle analyses; computational simulations; energy storage; sensors and optical diagnostics; fossil energy; renewable energy; nuclear energy; and advanced materials.
The CRADA helps bolster Sandia’s support of Energy Department research and development aimed at moving the United States toward a new energy economy, Garcia said. The Labs’ goal is to ensure a secure and sustainable energy supply, safe and resilient delivery infrastructure and clean and efficient use of energy resources.