“What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?”
“No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.”

It’s one of the many memorable exchanges from “The Matrix.” But next time, Keanu Reeves should just talk to Christina Lomasney about getting some Modumetal armor—so he truly won’t have to worry about dodging anything.

Lomasney is the co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based nanotech startup Modumetal, which has grand plans to reinvent the metals industry, not just body armor. Three months ago, Modumetal announced it had raised more than $1.5 million from the Alliance of Angels, Second Avenue Partners, and WRF Capital, to advance its development of nanolaminated structures—fundamentally new kinds of metals that are stronger and lighter than steel and can be used to make better armor, structural components, and corrosion- and heat-resistant coatings. The 17-person company has also raised just under $1 million in government contracts and grants.

But first, let’s flash back to 2007. In a formative meeting, Lomasney and her fellow co-founder (and former University of Washington physics labmate) John Whitaker were talking with Dan Rosen, chair of the Alliance of Angels, about the idea behind their company. “They looked like the cat that ate the canary,” Rosen recalls. “My comment was, ‘Do you guys really understand what you have there?’”

In what can be a telling exercise for any entrepreneur, Rosen asked them to write the Wall Street Journal article that would appear the day Modumetal was successful. They wrote two. The first said that all U.S. auto manufacturers had adopted Modumetal to make their cars, increasing their fuel efficiency by 50 percent. The second said the military had announced that new vehicles using Modumetal technology have saved 10,000 lives. “Both were very interesting glimpses of the future,” Rosen notes.

Fast forward to last week when I sat down with Lomasney (see photo, left), a Boeing alum, to discuss where things are going with Modumetal, hear more about its strategy, and get a tour of the facilities. Those ambitious Wall Street Journal milestones haven’t been met yet, but if anything, the vision for the company has grown.

Lomasney is not one to make speculative or unfounded claims. Her one-word summary of Modumetal’s culture is “competent.” Last summer, she said the company was transitioning from military to transportation applications. So when she now says, “We’re the next ArcelorMittal”—the world’s largest steel maker—you sit up and take notice. As she explains, the metals industry has not changed that …Next Page »

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You can tell a lot about a company from its chief executive. They set the tone, the direction, the pace of operations. For a startup, it all starts with the CEO.

A startup’s culture is what sets it apart from its peers. It is the essence of the operation. It directly affects the company’s strategy, hiring practices, and the personality of its products.

Corporate culture is notoriously hard to define and measure, but critically important to whether a business will succeed. So I recently took a small (and highly unscientific) sample of Northwest startups, spanning the fields of business software, Internet, mobile, gaming, video, and materials—and asked the CEOs to talk about their company’s culture. Furthermore, I asked them to boil their culture and philosophy down to one word.

I’ll spare you any psychoanalysis of their answers, but it’s interesting to see how their descriptions reflect both their own personality and the market they’re in:
.

Apptio (Bellevue, WA)
CEO: Sunny Gupta
Culture: “Paranoid”
Comments: Gupta says the Apptio mantra is “glass half-empty.” But he doesn’t mean it in a negative way. He means the company is relentlessly focused on pushing its advantage, improving its weaknesses, and crushing its competition all around—a necessary mindset in the crowded and cutthroat environment of IT cost management and optimization.

Elemental Technologies (Portland, OR)
CEO: Sam Blackman
Culture: “Execution”
Comments: Blackman says he and his co-founders came from a previous company that started out executing well, but then took its eye off the ball and got distracted by things like …Next Page »

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According to an announcement expected this Wednesday, Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners is the lead funder in a $14 million Series B venture round for Boston-based Novomer, which is developing ways to manufacture “green” polymers from renewable materials such as carbon dioxide. The startup, which we profiled in November 2007, was founded in Ithaca, NY, and moved to Boston last fall. Joining the Series B round, which brings the company’s total funding to $21 million, are existing investors Physic Venture Partners, Flagship Venture Partners, and DSM Venturing. OVP managing director Carl Weissman will join Novomer’s board.

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The big news of the week was Microsoft’s sale of Razorfish to Publicis (see directly below), but there were a few other important deals in software, biotech, and energy.

—Microsoft’s online advertising subsidiary, Seattle-based Razorfish, was bought by French marketing firm Publicis for approximately $530 million, as Bob reported. The payment is expected to include cash and Publicis Groupe treasury shares. In addition, Microsoft and Publicis have entered into a five-year strategic alliance whereby Publicis clients can purchase display and search advertising from Microsoft on favorable terms. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) originally acquired Razorfish in its 2007 purchase of aQuantive.

—Bellevue, WA-based Confirma, a medical imaging software firm, has been acquired by Merge Healthcare, a Milwaukee, WI-based health IT provider, for about $22 million, as Eric reported. Merge will incorporate Confirma’s MRI software into its IT offerings for doctors.

—Vancouver, BC-based Tekmira (TSX: TKM) formed a two-year partnership with Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals to develop new particles to deliver RNA-interference drugs to diseased cells deep in the body, as Ryan reported. Financial terms of the deal weren’t given. Alnylam is funding the research effort and has exclusive rights to new discoveries, while Tekmira can use the discoveries for some of its own RNAi treatment programs.

—Seattle-based EnerG2 won $21.3 million in federal stimulus funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a new manufacturing plant in Albany, OR. The University of Washington energy-storage spinout is developing nano-scale materials to make better ultracapacitors for electric and hybrid vehicles and other applications.

—A few more terms of the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, in which Yahoo will use Bing as its search engine and will control ad sales for five years, were spelled out in a filing with the SEC. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) will pay Yahoo $50 million a year for three years to cover transition and implementation costs. It will also hire 400 Yahoo employees, plus another 150 to assist with the transition. Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) can opt out of the deal if it isn’t approved within a year, or if Microsoft and Yahoo’s combined share of the search market dips below an undisclosed percentage.

—Seattle-based Oncothyreon (NASDAQ: ONTY), a developer of cancer drugs, raised $15 million by securing commitments from investors to buy new shares and warrants, as Luke reported. Last week, the company said a small group of lung cancer patients showed long-lasting responses after taking Stimuvax, the immune-boosting vaccine therapy Oncothyreon is co-developing with Germany-based Merck KGaA.

—Seattle-based WatchGuard Technologies, a network security company, acquired Toronto-based BorderWare Technologies, an e-mail and Web security firm, as Eric reported. Financial terms were not given. WatchGuard plans to use BorderWare’s technology to make its security software more comprehensive and competitive.

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Seattle-based EnerG2, an advanced materials startup focused on energy storage, has scored a $21.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a new manufacturing plant in Albany, OR. The funds are part of a total of $2.4 billion in federal stimulus grants announced today to speed up the manufacturing and development of next-generation batteries, energy storage technologies, and electric vehicle components. (Check out the map of all 48 awardees here.)

EnerG2, a University of Washington spinout, is developing novel nano-scale materials to make better ultracapacitors. These are devices that can store and release large amounts of energy much faster than conventional batteries, and with longer lifetimes. Ultracapacitors are typically used in electric and hybrid vehicles, forklifts, and cranes. Their performance depends on the materials used to make their electrodes—and that is where EnerG2 comes in with its unique concoction of synthetic carbon nanomaterials.

The U.S. Department of Energy has great interest in companies like EnerG2 that seek to improve energy storage and efficiency more broadly. That’s partly because as more alternative energy sources come online, they will require technologies that can deal with the natural peaks and valleys of that kind of power generation.

“This is obviously an exciting turn of events for EnerG2,” says Chris Wheaton, the company’s co-founder and chief operating and financial officer. “It’s a great confirmation of the role ultracapacitors can play in the automotive industry, as well as the role that materials science can play in helping the country achieve our energy efficiency goals for the future.”

EnerG2 will work together with Oregon Freeze Dry, one of its manufacturing partners, to build the new plant, which Wheaton says will be the first in the world dedicated to commercial-scale production of high-performance synthetic carbon materials. Wheaton adds that construction is expected to take about 18 months, and the new plant should create 25 to 50 new jobs in Linn County, OR. As for why EnerG2 wants to build the plant in Oregon, he says, “[Oregon Freeze Dry] have both the skills and the land that make it an ideal place to situate this facility. They’re already our partner.”

Better ultracapacitors could potentially have a big impact on electric and hybrid vehicles. EnerG2 co-founder and CEO, Rick Luebbe, told me last fall that ultracapacitors could be used to get 150,000 miles out of a plug-in hybrid car battery. Wheaton says vehicles will use a combination of a battery and an ultracapacitor. The latter is used to accelerate the car and store braking energy, while the battery gives you longer driving range. “The ultracapacitor makes the whole system more efficient,” Wheaton says. “It makes the battery last longer and not need to be as big and expensive.”

EnerG2 is backed by OVP Venture Partners, Firelake Capital, Yaletown Venture Partners, WRF Capital, University of Washington, Washington Technology Center, the Sustainability Investment Fund, Northwest Energy Angels, and the Frontier Angel Fund. Back in October, the company raised $8.5 million led by OVP and Firelake. That funding round was augmented by an additional $2.5 million investment in June, which brought in Vancouver, BC-based Yaletown as a new investor.

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Rarely in Seattle is the power of the sun as remarked upon as in the past week, as temperatures soared into the triple digits. That’s some serious heat, especially for an area proverbial for its rainy, gray skies. Perhaps this makes it a good time to reflect on the fact that Seattle, despite what would seem to be discouraging weather most of the year (like today), hosts a surprising number of solar power startups. LivinGreen Materials is one of these—and one of the youngest—but its solar cell technology, using a variation on dye-sensitized solar cells, has already caught the attention of cleantech investors.

LivinGreen recently reached the semi-finals of the Pacific Northwest division of the Clean Tech Open, competing for a prize of up to a quarter million dollars in the national cleantech business plan contest, although the final results won’t be announced until November. Currently, the company is self-supported but hopes to raise money from angel investors and venture capitalists.

The dye-sensitized crystals (DSC) of LivinGreen are so-called third-generation technology—as opposed to the first-generation solar technology of silicon wafers and second-generation tech like earlier thin-film solar cells. LivinGreen’s solar cells are more efficient and cost-effective than previous technologies, according to LivinGreen CEO Chris Tagge. The dyed crystals are composed of a light-sensitive anode and an electrolyte, which generates electricity from light energy that hits the anode. Originally invented in Europe in the early 90s, there are now several different versions of the technology, which is usually made from very cheap materials like tin and titanium. While conventional silicon-based cells often require their own complex manufacturing process, DSCs can be produced in large amounts for comparatively little. “It’s by far the lowest cost solar technology out there,” Tagge said.

And the sheets of dye-sensitized photovoltaic material are considerably more durable than silicon crystals. So instead of needing to be protected from dust, rain, and other natural hazards, DSCs could actually be incorporated into building materials, and even used in low-light areas like the inside of an office, because the electrochemical reaction is so easily stimulated. It’s theoretically possible to make whole buildings into solar power generators someday, Tagge said.

The genesis of LivinGreen dates back to late 2008, when Tagge read a press release from the University of Washington about the work of professor Guozhong Cao and his research into …Next Page »

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[This post originally appeared on OVP Venture Partners' blog---Eds.]

Many observers, myself included, consider the 1990s the decade of the computer scientist. Work in digital bits and bytes not only generated significant wealth, it raised the standard of living for hundreds of millions of people around the world. However, as we close out the first decade of this century, I believe that materials and molecules have already supplanted bits and bytes as the powerful agents for the next round of prosperity and growth. This is the decade of the materials scientist.

Stanford University economist Paul Romer stated, “Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable.” In the 1990s and into the first years of the 21st century, this resource rearrangement was frenetically—and highly successfully—executed in the arena of information technology. Today, that resource rearrangement has slowed in IT and has accelerated in materials science. To put it another way, materials science is the new information technology and it is spurring advancement in the new energy economy of this and the coming decades. This shift promises some of the same economic momentum and standard-of-living improvements created by information technology in the 1990s.

Indeed, materials science and chemistry are today the nearly perfect embodiments of Paul Romer’s premise of technology and discovery as a key economic driver. These “hard” sciences create and combine chemicals, polymers, and solutions in an infinite and infinitely promising number of variations. The possibilities created by materials science open up countless innovative opportunities in the new energy economy—and elsewhere.

Several examples illustrate this idea:

—In a branch of physical chemistry known as exploratory synthesis, chemists mix selected elements at different temperatures and pressures with the only objective being: to see what happens. Recently, a mixture of copper, yttrium, barium, and oxygen was found to be a superconductor at temperatures far higher than anyone had previously thought possible, which will ultimately have a host of far-reaching implications for electricity transmission.

—My company, Seattle-based EnerG2, uses materials science to assemble breakthrough products at the molecular level. Right now, we’re focused on customizing electrode materials to enhance energy and power density in ultracapacitors, which store and release energy faster than conventional batteries. Controlling the molecular structure and assembly process of our engineered materials at the earliest stage possible provides flexibility, lowers costs, and maximizes performance. We effectively gave up on …Next Page »

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Five researchers from the University of Washington and Washington State University, Vancouver, working together with Washington companies, received a total of $376,454 in state funding through Washington Technology Center, according to an announcement today.  The university researchers are working with property data solutions company Data Data in Vancouver; biomaterials firm Healionics in Redmond; pressure instrumentation manufacturer Paine Electronics in East Wenatchee; nanostructure material builder Modumetal in Seattle; and medical simulator developer Simulab, also in Seattle.

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I’m extremely pleased to report that Xconomy’s headquarters in Cambridge are jam packed this week, since everybody flew in from our Seattle and San Diego offices for the inaugural XSITE—Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship—yesterday at Boston University. It’s a rare treat to have everybody together and, fortuitously, we’re also coming up on the second anniversary (this Saturday) of publishing Xconomy.com.

Today and tomorrow we’ll be taking a little time to celebrate that milestone and taking advantage of the surplus of colleagues (and working around the deficit of space) to work on making the site even better in the years to come. As always, we welcome the comments and suggestions of our readers—you can reach us at editors@xconomy.com or simply post in the comments below.

Our own posting will be light today and tomorrow, but we’ll be back Monday full force. Thanks to our incredible team for making Xconomy such a success and so damn fun to put together each day. Thanks to our underwriters, sponsors, and partners for two years of exceptional support (and in the case of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, for solving our aforementioned space problem). And thanks to all of you for reading, participating in our events, sharing your ideas and opinions, and helping us to build our network. We’re all looking forward to the next two years.

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We are incredibly excited about XSITE 2009—The Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship happening next Wednesday at Boston University—and we are especially pumped today because we have just filled the last open speaker slot for the event.

The more than 50 organizations participating in the event, listed below in alphabetical order, come from all corners of the New England innovation ecosystem: universities, startups, large public companies, non-profits, research institutes, life sciences, computing, semiconductors, telecom, medical devices, energy, cleantech, you name it. We are extremely grateful to all the participants, who have jumped in to help make this one of the cornerstone events of New England Innovation Month.

See the agenda for a complete list of speakers and panelists, and check out www.xsite2009.com for all the updates as the event approaches. With just a week to go, and the Saver registration rate set to expire today, it’s a great time to sign up for XSITE, which you can do here. We hope to see you next Wednesday.

XSITE 2009 participating organizations:

Adimab
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
Atlas Venture
Boston-Power
Boston University
Boston University School of Management’s Institute for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization
CareGroup Health System
Cliniworks
Cloudswitch
Dartmouth University
DEKA Research & Development
EMC
Excel Medical Ventures
Extend Media
EveryZing
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology)
Flagship Ventures
Flybridge Capital Partners
FloDesign Wind Turbine
Founder Collective
General Catalyst Partners
GlaxoSmithKline
GlycoFi
GreatPoint Energy
Harvard Medical School
Highland Capital Partners
IBM
IST Energy
Kepha Partners
Kiva Systems
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Office of Business Development
Microsoft
NaviNet
New England Venture Capital Association
Partners Healthcare Center for Connected Health
Pulmatrix
Renewable Energy Business Network
Satori
Seventh Sense
SiOnyx
Sirtris Pharmaceuticals
Skyhook Wireless
Solventerra Energy
StyleFeeder
Terrafugia
1366 Technologies
38 Studios
Verenium
Visible Measures
Wakonda Technologies
WiTricity
Xconomy
Zafgen

Plus two unnamed stealth companies

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Seattle-based Washington Technology Center announced today it has been awarded $136,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to improve thin-film silicon solar cells. The project, done in partnership with Oregon State University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, involves using nanotech methods to trap more light in the solar cell so as to produce more electricity. The money comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

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Heading into the summer months, deals in the Northwest show no signs of slowing down. Neither does Xconomy, which debuted the reporting of our Seattle intern, Eric Hal Schwartz, last Tuesday. In the past week, Eric, Luke, and I have had our hands full with deals in biotech, materials, software, and energy.

—Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is acquiring the Seattle-based assets of Rosetta Biosoftware from Merck, the drug giant based in Whitehouse Station, NJ, as Luke reported. Financial terms were not given, but Merck has agreed to become a customer of Microsoft’s new Amalga Life Sciences platform, which is designed to help researchers analyze vast pools of genomic data. Merck will also help the Redmond, WA-based software powerhouse better understand the life sciences market. The deal is expected to close by the end of June, and Rosetta is supposed to be integrated into Amalga Life Sciences by early next year.

—Luke reported that Bothell, WA-based Seattle Genetics, a maker of targeted antibody drugs, raised $11.5 million in a stock sale. The company received approval from existing shareholders to sell more shares to Baker Brothers Life Sciences, an investment firm led by Felix Baker. The sale comes on the heels of a $55 million offering the company pulled together in January.

—Seattle-based Modumetal, a nanotech and advanced materials startup, is closing a new round of equity funding worth between $1.5 million and $2 million. The round’s investors include Seattle-based Alliance of Angels and Second Avenue Partners, who co-led a previous seed round, as well as new investor WRF Capital. The money will be used to help the company’s anti-corrosion and heat-resistant material products reach the market. Modumetal is led by co-founder and CEO Christina Lomasney, a former Boeing employee.

—Eric reported that Mediquest Therapeutics, a Bothell, WA-based developer of topical treatments for inflammatory diseases, sold $2.3 million out of a $15 million equity offering. Mediquest was founded in 1994 and is working on a treatment for Raynaud’s disease, a condition that causes numbness in the fingers and toes when they are exposed to the cold.

—Response Biomedical, a Vancouver, BC-based maker of fast diagnostic tools …Next Page »

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Seattle-based Modumetal, an advanced materials startup, is closing a new round of equity funding worth between $1.5 million and $2 million, according to co-founder and CEO Christina Lomasney. The round includes existing Seattle-area investors Alliance of Angels and Second Avenue Partners, as well as new investor WRF Capital.

Modumetal “grows” what are called nanolaminated structures in vats using a patented process. These nanomaterials are essentially new kinds of metals that are stronger and lighter than steel. The original idea behind the company was to make better armor and structural components for the military and other applications, and the company has been supported in part by U.S. government grants. But Modumetal is now seizing some new opportunities, both short-term and long-term.

“Our vision has really expanded quite a lot,” Lomasney says. “This is turning out to be a much bigger market opportunity than we realized. This idea of creating a new dial for controlling material properties is really important to overcoming performance limitations in materials design.”

In particular, the new funding will be used to expand Modumetal’s effort in creating new kinds of coatings that resist corrosion in manufacturing lines, and withstand high temperatures in engines and turbines so they’ll run more efficiently. All while replacing toxic metals like chromium and cadmium, which are used in most anti-corrosion materials. It’s not the sexiest sounding application, but Lomasney says anti-corrosion and thermal barriers add up to a staggering $500 billion market. She says Modumetal’s first large-scale products will hit the market this year, targeted at aerospace manufacturers and the maritime industry, as well as transportation, military, and oil and gas sectors.

“This is a company that creates a brand new industry,” says Dan Rosen, chair of Alliance of Angels. “One of my co-investors said, ‘Am I wrong, or is this the biggest invention in metallurgy since the Bronze Age?’ You’re going to be able to create metals that have never existed before.”

Modumetal has grown (in a vat?) to 15 employees. I first reported on the company last summer, and will have more on its technology and strategy soon.

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Seattle-based Modumetal, a nanomaterials startup, and the University of Washington have received a $5,000 grant from Washington Technology Center to develop an anti-corrosion polymer coating for sulfuric acid pipelines. Leslie Warren, project manager at Modumetal, and Rajendra Bordia, UW professor of materials science and engineering, are leading the effort. Modumetal was founded in 2006 and has developed a method for “growing” advanced metal materials for defense, transportation, and other applications.

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Signing up for XSITE 2009, Xconomy’s Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship on June 24, ensures your access to the biggest showcase of New England technological ingenuity on either side of the Charles. Signing up early has even more benefits—and by benefits, I mean beer. And prizes.

That’s because the first 50 paid registrants to XSITE will be invited to a pre-conference party at the Cambridge Brewing Company on June 10, 5:30-7:30 pm, where you will enjoy New England brewing ingenuity with your peers and the Xconomy staff.

Partygoers will also be eligible to win one of three fabulous prizes:

—A $500 gift certificate to Beacon Hill’s No. 9 Park, one of Gourmet Magazine’s top 50 restaurants in America. No. 9 Park serves up premiere Boston chef Barbara Lynch’s elegant interpretations of Italian and French country fare. (You can thank Atlas Ventures for this one.)

—A 16GB iPod Touch, along with lunch at Legal Seafoods in Kendall Square with Xconomy Chief Correspondent Wade Roush. Sample some of the restaurant’s world-famous chowder (served at every presidential inauguration since 1981) while Wade shows you some of his favorite apps from the iTunes store to load onto your new iPod.

—Breakfast with Xconomy founder and editor in chief Bob Buderi at Henrietta’s Table. This Harvard Square restaurant won a Green Business Award from the Boston Business Journal for its tireless efforts to serve local foods and a gastronomic philosophy that chef Peter Davis summarizes as “fresh and honest.” You’ll also receive signed copies of Bob’s three books: Guanxi, Engines of Tomorrow, and The Invention that Changed the World.

Register today to join the party!

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Nano-Terra is sticking to its original strategy: Let other companies spend the money on manufacturing and marketing products that arise from its inventions, while making its money from licensing its nanotech creations and pulling in royalties on product sales. Now the Cambridge, MA-based startup is considering spinning off separate businesses to pursue more applications, including one to commercialize a novel particle to combat counterfeiting, Nano-Terra CEO Myer Berlow tells Xconomy.

Berlow’s company has attracted international attention for its suite of nanotechnology patents licensed mostly from Harvard University. This latest potential spin-off gives a glimpse at a new way the intriguing technology could be put to practical use in the marketplace.

The potential spin-off company would make the nano-sized particles for companies that would put trace amounts of them into products such as perfume, Berlow says. These particles, which Berlow says cannot be replicated, could be quickly detected in a bottle of perfume with a handheld device to show whether the product is a fake. And the structure of the particles—which are way too small to see with the naked eye—can be altered over time to throw off counterfeiters.

“What you have to be careful of—even though we are thinking about a number of [potential spin-offs]—is you have to make sure that you are staying within your area of expertise,” says Berlow, who is a former president of global marketing for Internet company America Online.

Spinning off companies would be a new approach for Nano-Terra to commercialize its technology. The firm, founded in early 2005, typically seeks corporate partnerships to apply its innovations in surface chemistry and materials science, many of which originated from lab of renowned Harvard chemist and company co-founder …Next Page »

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New ideas for alternative energy and cleantech were in the air on Tuesday at the University of Washington, which hosted a regional meeting of the National Academy of Engineering and a public symposium on energy topics. We’ve taken a keen interest in this subject lately at Xconomy as we prepare for our own Northwest cleantech event next week, and wanted to hear from a couple of our very own Xconomists—Ed Lazowska of UW computer science and engineering (who co-organized the meeting), and Charles M. Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering and the former president of MIT.

In his opening remarks, Vest noted that the National Academy of Engineering will soon release a report called “America’s Energy Future.” “We hope it will become a bible for policymakers to understand what the technological and economic facts are about most of the major technologies that may play a role in the next 10 to 20 years in the distribution, generation, and transportation of electrical energy,” Vest said. “It will not be a policy document, but it will be a basis of facts which we hope those in Congress and the administration will utilize.”

Here are a few highlights from three of the ensuing energy talks:

—Rob Pratt, a staff scientist and program manager at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, spoke about “smart grid” technologies and how minute-by-minute communications and monitoring of energy use could lead to huge overall savings in cost and carbon emissions.

In California, for example, an estimated 1 percent decrease in electricity demand would lead to a 10 percent decrease in energy bills, because electricity generation is most expensive during times of peak demand (e.g., hot summer days). That could translate into some $50 billion in savings for the U.S., if people had enough information about power usage to adjust their consumption levels.

Pratt presented the results of a trial of 112 homes on the Olympic Peninsula, in which letting customers explicitly control their energy usage and savings (and guaranteeing they would not pay more than normal) led to a 15 percent decrease in peak load demand over the course of a year. “You need a simple, intuitive interface,” Pratt said. “Do you need standards for [smart grid] communication? Ours were simple—you need to understand cost, quantity, and time.”

As for his outlook, Pratt said, “I predict this country will embark on an energy efficiency program that will make anything else we’ve done look like child’s play.” He noted that the cleanest power plants are the ones that produce energy for intermediate demand levels—not the peak, not the lowest. And he sees a big opportunity in electric vehicles, provided people manage the timing of charging them up. Giving consumers and utilities minute-by-minute data to track usage levels will be crucial. “The smart grid can help sort this out,” he said. “If we buy the smart grid, this is free. This is like software.”

—Tim Rahmes, biofuels program manager at Boeing (he’s based in Everett, WA), spoke about his team’s recent efforts to test biofuels for aviation. Boeing’s customers in the airline and defense industries are concerned with carbon emissions, fuel availability, and fuel costs, he said. The most important thing about Boeing’s biofuel effort is that it must be sustainable, and not compete with …Next Page »

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Seattle-based Alliance of Angels, a network of individual investors focused on the Northwest, announced today it invested a total of $6.4 million in 36 companies in 2008—the second-highest amount in the organization’s 11-year history. Nineteen of the investments were new, in startups spanning Web 2.0, software and services, mobile, gaming, nanotech, and consumer/retail. Five portfolio companies had exits last year: CleverSet, Coffee Equipment Company, Insitu, Shelfari, and SnapIn.

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It’s been a pretty slow couple of weeks for deals in the Northwest, what with the holidays. But there were still some big ones in software and biotech—starting with an Xconomy exclusive below.

—Xconomy broke the news this morning that Seattle-based Qwell Pharmaceuticals has raised a $7 million Series A round led by Arch Venture Partners and the Wellcome Trust. Qwell, which is developing new types of drugs to fight cancer and inflammation, could end up raising as much as $35 million in its first round, said Arch managing director Steve Gillis, in an exclusive interview with Luke.

—Hillsboro, OR-based FEI (NASDAQ: FEIC), a maker of high-resolution imaging tools, acquired the assets of Brisbane, Australia-based Intellection Holdings for about $2.8 million. The deal seems to strengthen FEI’s position in the global mining and mineralogy markets.

—Bob reported on Hopkinton, MA-based EMC’s acquisition of part of Seattle software startup SourceLabs. The deal, which was first reported by TechFlash, involves undisclosed assets and employees, but does not include the Swik.net open-source project run by SourceLabs, according to EMC (NYSE: EMC). The data-storage giant may be focused on SourceLabs’ data management tools, which would bolster its efforts in cloud computing.

—Not technically a deal, but some useful advice on how to follow through on deals. Moni Miyashita of IBM in Armonk, NY, gave pointers on how to successfully integrate a company after a merger. The keys, according to Miyashita, are strong leadership and performance management focus from the top.

—Lastly, Luke rounded up the latest rumors that Microsoft might be getting ready to lay off 10 to 15 percent of its staff—as many as 15,000 people. As of today, the rumors remain unsubstantiated. CNBC, citing a Microsoft source, reported the Redmond company will embark on a cost-cutting initiative this year, but that a big layoff is unlikely. Nevertheless, the rumors persist, according to reports in PC World and Network World. If anything happens, look for it before Microsoft’s quarterly earnings report on January 22.

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Hillsboro, OR-based FEI (NASDAQ: FEIC), a maker of nanotech imaging tools, announced today it has acquired the assets of Intellection Holdings, a Brisbane, Australia-based firm that makes automated mineralogy equipment. The deal was worth $2.8 million, and seems to strengthen FEI’s position in global mining applications.

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