Franklin E. Hoke, Jr of the AFRL Information Directorate in Rome, NY was the recipient of the Department of Defense George Linsteadt Technology Transfer Achievement Award at the 19th DoD Technology Transfer Training Workshop held on 21 July in Indianapolis. The award recognizes the DoD technology transfer professional who has performed extraordinary efforts and has produced outstanding results in transferring technology from DoD laboratories to their partners in the public and private sectors. Recipients are also recognized for their leadership and teamwork in sharing their knowledge and skills in technology transfer with other DoD labs and/or other Federal Agencies.
The Directorate’s technology transfer program has achieved remarkable successes and impact on industry and academia. Mr. Hoke’s vision was to accelerate the transfer of defense related technologies into the private and public sectors. Among the several components of his vision was to increase the awareness for: licensing of AFRL developed technologies, facilitating the patent process for AFRL developed technologies, joining technology transfer initiatives and consortia within the local community, providing liaison between private and public sector technology users and the defense developer community, mentoring businesses in how to interact with government technology developers, representing AFRL technological developments at conferences and symposia, arranging for technology specific training, and exploring opportunities to deliver AFRL technologies to commercial system developers.
Over the past two years Mr. Hoke successfully developed and piloted a new, innovative commercialization initiative. The purpose of the program was to allow a broad spectrum of potential startup candidates to harvest the Directorate’s intellectual property portfolio for potential startup activities.
Mr. Hoke’s programs have been recognized both regionally and nationally by the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for the past three years. In 2013 he won the FLC Technology Transfer Regional Coordinators Excellence Award. In 2014 Mr. Hoke’s Directorate won both the FLC STEM Award and the FLC Regional Laboratory Award. Additionally, Mr. Hoke won the National FLC outstanding Technology Transfer professional award for 2015.