CITY LAB
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Imagine if we could
break down the barriers
CITY LAB
The CITY LAB is essential in breaking down the barriers that confront innovators in three primary areas:
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Commercialization of federally-funded research has been generally disappointing, despite legal and government policy reforms.
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Transitional testing of new products or services in a real-world, legacy environment is almost impossible to achieve due to scale, scope, safety, and regulatory limitations.
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Small firms and innovators are almost completely locked out of federal and private testing and evaluation facilities due to a variety of factors, chief of which is competition hiding as bureaucracy.​
Designed to Break Barriers
While the goal and mission of numerous federal, state and private laboratories is to move intellectual property into the realm of commercialization, those who are engaged in these efforts are frequently buffeted by the prevailing legal, financial and cultural barriers making this process painstakingly slow and inefficient.
The CITY LAB has been designed with these barriers to technology transfer in mind, seeking to improve this process wherever possible while becoming an integral part of it. We seek to be considered by the federal, academic and private sector research communities as an additional option – not a competitive alternative – supportive of their developmental processes, budgets, and research while respecting their independence, confidentiality and the proprietary nature of their research.
With its unmatched scale, the CITY LAB provides and operating, physical infrastructure against which product developers may test and evaluate their next-generation innovations, relieved of the restrictions of limited testing due to regulatory or safety concerns that are prevalent within a research laboratory.
CITY LAB’S RANGE OF
RESEARCH CAPABILITIES
The CITY LAB will permit broad-based testing, in a cross-disciplinary environment. The CITY LAB is a venue where any new product, production technology, operating system, or service can be “embedded” into real-world testing mechanisms for more effective results.
The CITY LAB creates a space where both public and private institutions as well as entrepreneurs can collaborate and address the challenge of converting innovative ideas into commercially viable products. The CITY LAB is an environment for the development of testing and evaluation scenarios at a life-sized scale that address critical deficiencies in the current process of commercialization. The profile for potential CITE customers is diverse, representative of the wide array of research potential embedded this unique, collaborative, and one-of-a-kind facility.
The list of potential user groups for the CITY LAB will address a broad range of testing and evaluation use cases. The following list provides a non-exhaustive representation of the testing and evaluation activities CITE will support:
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Communications Technology (e.g., Advanced wireless: RF propagation testing, spectral efficiency testing, network virtualization, lasers; and supporting appliances and infrastructures)
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Utility and Water Applications (e.g., water purification and treatment, waste disposal, and energy management)
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Transportation and Intelligent Transportation Systems (e.g., autonomous cars, drones, rail and automated public transportation, automated stoplights/signage/signaling, and road-sensing technology)
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The Internet of Things; Smart-Grid Technologies
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Alternative Energy (e.g., geothermal geothermic production, solar deployment methods, wind efficiency, hydro-electric generation, agricultural methods, carbon capture and sequestration; molten salt nuclear)
Potential results of tests performed at the CITY LAB may include: affordable solutions to bring clean water to those lacking potable water supplies, the production of electricity through sustainable methods, the development of power lines that move more electricity with less loss, and an intelligent transportation systems that will make unmanned ground vehicles practical in the commercial sector and launch new communications and security technologies that together will serve as an economic growth engine.