News Release

ORNL signs protege agreement with small business

Business Announcement

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Aug. 20, 2003 – A commitment to stimulate and promote small business ventures connected with Department of Energy programs has been affirmed by DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

DOE and UT-Battelle, which manages ORNL for DOE, recently signed an agreement with Information International Associates of Oak Ridge to be a protégé of the laboratory. Under the agreement, DOE and ORNL pledge to work with small businesses in developing opportunities for research and economic partnerships.

Information International Associates' protégé agreement will enable the organization to develop a strategy to identify areas where its expertise can benefit the laboratory and its core mission.

International Associates has aided DOE facilities in Oak Ridge since 1988 in the areas of providing scientific and technical information services, international policy and standards development, libraries and intelligence work. More recently, International Associates has provided information technology and information management services for classified and unclassified environments and advanced information science services.

Yosef Patel, deputy director of DOE's Office of Economic Impact and Diversity, said ORNL is a model for his department's efforts in encouraging DOE facilities to provide opportunities to small businesses.

"As International Associates has become ORNL's third protégé, UT-Battelle is the leader with the most proteges in the DOE program," Patel said during a formal signing agreement ceremony. "This shows ORNL's commitment to stimulate small business and to promote small business across all DOE programs."

Lee Riedinger, ORNL's deputy director for science and technology, stressed UT-Battelle's commitment to this effort.

"UT-Battelle is very serious in its commitment to support small business in response to President Bush's management agenda to stimulate economic development through small businesses," Riedinger said. "The laboratory has had a longstanding relationship with Information International Associates and we are pleased to see the formalization of this special relationship."

Bonnie Carroll, president and founder of Information International Associates, noted she started her professional career more than 30 years ago at ORNL and credits the mentoring she received there for her success in the business world.

Carroll also thanked Marilyn Brown, ORNL's director of energy efficiency and renewable energy, and Frank Harris, associate lab director for life sciences, for their assistance in advancing ORNL's participation in the protégé program.

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ORNL is a multiprogram science and technology laboratory managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.


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