Yuki Hamada, a biophysical scientist focusing on remote sensing, has been selected for cohort 15 of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Transitions Energy I-Corps.

The program, which includes 14 teams from across the national lab complex, provides a framework for market exploration and stakeholder discovery, and it has proven to have a high rate of success. Participants learn to define their technology value proposition, determine product-market fit through stakeholder interviews, and develop realistic market pathways for their technology.

Hamada, along with Argonne principal software engineer Adam Szymanski, participated in the program with their automated camera system, AVIAN-SOLAR. It uses artificial intelligence to detect and monitor bird activity at solar facilities over an extended period of time to allow for a better understanding of potential positive and negative impacts of solar facilities on bird populations.

“Energy I-Corps is so much more than learning processes and techniques of about technology commercialization in a classroom,” said Hamada. ​“Learning and applying simultaneously and producing a comprehensive plan in 10 weeks is intense, but that is the beauty of Energy I-Corps. After going through Energy I-Corps, I must say it is the way to deliver a technology to those who need it fast through commercialization.”