RTI crosses the boundaries of the usual to provide new or improved technology. We develop state-of-the-art solutions to complex problems. In 1999 RTI formed Technology Ventures to focus on commercializing its intellectual property. To aid this endeavor, RTI opened the Office of Commercialization and Intellectual Property to license RTI technology and help form joint ventures and spinoff companies. This year's innovations include work in technology-assisted learning, technology management, improved fuel resources, semiconductors, thermoelectrics, and speech processing technology.

Technology-Assisted Learning
Using customized tools and devices, RTI develops and supports creative interactive instructional materials and systems. In 1999, projects included a military maintenance training system, a training program for asphalt plant operators, a real-time, physiologically accurate, 3-D virtual reality trauma patient simulator for emergency care training, and AvaTALK™
—avatars with emotion used to train employees, such as survey interviewers and bank tellers, in effective communications.

Technology Management
RTI's multidisciplinary technology commercialization team provides technology assessment and consulting for government and corporate clients. RTI has worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for over 25 years to commercialize the agency's research. Over the past 5 years, the group evaluated more than 1,000 NASA technologies, helped NASA develop 55 licensing agreements, and brought 27 products to market. Through its ongoing alliance with the international consulting and accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche, RTI continues to expand its work assessing and commercializing the intellectual property of major corporate clients.

Fuel
A goal of RTI chemical engineers is to develop a more thermally efficient and environmentally friendly process to generate electricity from coal, the single largest indigenous energy resource in the United States. In 1999, they developed a zinc titanate sorbent that can drastically reduce sulfur emissions from advanced coal-fired power plants. The sorbent performed well in tests at Kellogg Brown and Root's pilot-scale desulfurization reactor. In 2000, there will be several other tests of RTI fuel-related technology, including tests at power plants and at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Power Systems Development Facility. RTI and DOE also are developing technologies for cleaning and conditioning high- efficiency gaseous fuel to meet contamination tolerance limits for power generation and chemical production processes. Other RTI researchers are at work on a portable hydrogen generator.

Low-Power Semiconductors
In 1999, RTI demonstrated new circuits that could be used to produce microprocessors with speeds in excess of 100 gigahertz. Other laboratories using RTI's proprietary high-speed transistor technology achieved results suggesting that even greater speeds are possible. The potential of this technology includes significant savings in weight, power, and space, and opportunities for custom packaging throughout the electronics industry. In addition, the processes used to make these devices provide unique methods for achieving integrated circuits significantly different and more efficient than those currently in use.

Thermoelectrics
Based on their increased knowledge of the thermoelectronic properties of superlattices, RTI researchers are developing new technologies for device cooling, power generation, thermal signature reduction, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. In 1999, they demonstrated superlattices with atomic layers only 5 atoms wide and confirmed them by transmission electron microscopy. They published a paper in Applied Physics Letters showing for the first time that these ultra-small superlattices can enhance electronic properties. In Physical Review B they discussed the mechanism for reducing deleterious heat conduction in thermoelectronics through superlattices.

Speech Processing
A multidisciplinary team of scientists, electrical engineers, and clinicians is improving the design and performance of inner-ear implants to restore useful hearing to the deaf. The team includes investigators at RTI and at many collaborating institutions in the United States and Europe. The team's recent advances include development of new speech processing strategies for coordinated stimulation of bilateral implants. Such strategies and implants may enable users to localize sources of sounds and to attend to one talker in environments with multiple talkers or other background noise.