Diversity In Action

Battelle is a leader in the business of innovation

The institute is always glad to talk with prospective employees. “We look for expertise in a technical discipline, broadly defined,” says its CEO

Battelle, the world’s largest nonprofit R&D organization, bills itself as “the business of innovation.” Through its global offices the organization provides all levels of government with innovative approaches to some of the world’s most pressing problems. Its four research divisions are national security and defense, energy technology, health and life sciences and laboratory management.

The organization, explains president and CEO Carl Kohrt, has three main purposes. “First, we are involved in scientific discovery. Second, we apply that discovery to solve important problems for industry and society. Third is to take profits that are not reinvested in the company’s work to the community. We support education, most recently the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines, for K through 12.”

Battelle manages or co-manages seven U.S. labs for the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security. The company has its own major U.S. technology centers, plus facilities in Asia and Europe. More are on the horizon.

“We also start companies,” says Kohrt. “We have a large venture fund we use to work with new ideas, mostly from the national labs we manage for the U.S. Department of Energy. Once they’re running successfully, we sell them.”

The organization’s tax-exempt status requires it to return 20 percent of profits from these start-up businesses to the community.

Its status as a privately owned nonprofit lets Battelle work on difficult research for long periods of time. “It allows us to do things that others may not choose to do.”

Battelle is growing fast. “We are four times larger than we were six years ago,” Kohrt reports. Hiring is active around the country, with 250 unfilled tech jobs in one division alone. About a third of new hires are new or recent grads.

At Battelle “technical” is a very broad term. Almost all employees have college degrees; most have advanced degrees. “We look for expertise in a technical discipline, broadly defined,” says Kohrt. And the institute is always glad to talk with prospective employees who have that broad outlook on the future.

The largest group is working on the discovery side. “As a former scientist I think it’s more interesting to work in the interdisciplinary areas, like an interface between biology and computation or physics and biology,” Kohrt explains. “The most important discoveries are where people take an interest in one area and apply it to another.”

Nearly 85 percent of Battelle’s research is done for the government, including health research for the NIH and CDC. Energy is another important area. Security clearances are needed for many positions, but there is plenty of work that new recruits can do while they wait for their paperwork.

“We can market ourselves in certain industries and develop a relationship with, say, American Electric Power,” Kohrt says. “We’ve discovered how to store carbon dioxide deep in the earth, and, as a company that owns a lot of coal plants, AEP will be interested in the research.”

One of Battelle’s ChEs, working with three colleagues, “came up with a technique for neutralizing and cleaning water that comes from coal mines,” Kohrt adds.

Diversity is an important issue for Kohrt, and he jump-started the efforts five or six years ago. Battelle’s regional offices now have diversity action teams.

The organization also reaches out to multicultural technical professional societies. A recent large grant to NSBE focused on scholarships, student leadership training and building NSBE chapters in urban high schools. There’s also an initiative to encourage girls and young women to consider careers in the sciences.

Two years ago Battelle helped start a competitive public school with a STEM focus in Columbus, OH, its headquarters city. The company recently received a grant from the Gates Foundation to expand the model to several other urban sites in Ohio. A Battelle engineer now has this effort as his full-time job.

“We are providing good role models,” says Kohrt. “STEM education often fails for lack of relevance. So part of our work is getting the kids out of the school into an environment where they can see how people earn a living and why this is important.”

D/C