Argonne National Laboratory

Feature Story | Science and Technology Partnerships and Outreach

New Director to lead Technology Development and Commercialization division

Suresh Sunderrajan has been appointed Director of Argonne’s Technology Development and Commercialization Division (TDC), effective April 20.
Suresh Sunderrajan brings a wealth of experience at major corporations and as a serial entrepreneur. He will take over as Director of Argonne's Technology Development and Commercialization division on April 20.
Suresh Sunderrajan brings a wealth of experience at major corporations and as a serial entrepreneur. He will take over as Director of Argonne's Technology Development and Commercialization division on April 20.

Sunderrajan comes to Argonne from United Technologies Corporation, where he served as Director of Innovation Business Development (IBD), the Corporate IP monetization organization. He was responsible for patent and technology licensing, patent sales and new business incubation opportunities and was part of the team that built this fledgling organization from concept through over $100 million in committed contract value in three years. He served as the primary liaison between IBD and UTC Aerospace Systems and between IBD and Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation.

Prior to this role, Sunderrajan was a serial entrepreneur, part of the founding team for four different start-ups. He founded and served as CEO of Coolerix LLC, a startup company commercializing a breakthrough air cooling technology developed at Sandia National Laboratories for applications in LED lighting and power electronics.

Sunderrajan was President and a founding member of NNCrystal US Corp., a venture capital-backed start-up seeking to commercialize quantum-dot technology in LED lighting applications, where he was responsible for all U.S.-based operations for the firm, including product development and commercialization, marketing and sales and general administration. He served as Chief Operations Officer and General Manager of NN-Labs, LLC, (sold to Hangzhou Najing Technology Ltd.) and was Co-Founder and Vice-President of Marketing for G3 Technology Innovations, LLC (sold to Big Sky LLC).

Sunderrajan also worked at the International Copper Association where he supervised several globally-dispersed early stage technology commercialization activities; at Eastman Kodak Company, where he led the commercialization of several generations of photographic imaging supports, the creation of a silver nanomaterials-based antimicrobial business and was a Director with the Corporate Venture Capital group; and at Union Camp Corporation (International Paper) where, as a Senior Process Engineer, he led the first alkaline conversion of a coated board machine in the United States.

He holds more than 30 U.S. patents and received the Distinguished Inventor Award at Eastman Kodak, and is a Certified Licensing Professional. Sunderrajan earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University, Raleigh and an S.M. in Management and Engineering from MIT.