Dr. Hollerman and EESC PhD Candidate Noah Bergeron Participate in the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps Program

In May 2023, EESC doctoral student Noah Bergeron and long-time Physics faculty Dr. Andy Hollerman was accepted into the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program. I-Corps is an immersive, entrepreneurial training program that facilitates the transformation of invention to impact. Dr. Hollerman is the Principal Investigator and Technical Lead (TL). Noah Bergeron is the Co-Entrepreneurial Lead (Co-EL) for the program and is also the current Acting Director of the UL Lafayette Office of Innovation Management. Former U.S. Marine Stefan Arnold, who has a great deal of experience with firearms and ammunition, will be the other Co-EL. Hutch McClendon from the Louisiana Small Business Development Center will be the industry mentor (IM).
In 2013, Dr. Hollerman and Noah Bergeron patented non-burning tracer ammunition (USPTO #8,402,896, Hybrid-Luminescent Munition Projectiles) at UL Lafayette. For the last few years, UL Lafayette has successfully licensed this technology to Ammo, Incorporated (https://ammoinc.com) who has been selling Streak® luminescent tracers to the public. In 2022 alone, UL Lafayette received more than $123,000 in patent royalties from the sale of Streak®.
The emission lifetime of persistent luminescent materials is a key characteristic that enables their use in commercial applications. Historically, the trends have tended towards the development of persistent luminescent materials with increasing long emission lifetimes. Common emission lifetimes of persistent luminescent materials vary between many minutes up to a full day. Non-persistent luminescent materials can have lifetimes in the range of milliseconds and less. While allowable by physics, few persistent luminescent materials with emission lifetimes of several seconds have yet been developed. This NSF I-Corps team will investigate the commercial potential of these proposed “shorter duration” persistent luminescent materials. We are finding uses of luminescence in the several-second regime, and the commercial potential of such unique luminescent materials. The design of these short duration persistent luminescent materials would leverage advances in materials science development, including new modeling techniques, crystal structure designs, and novel dopant chemistries. The new persistent luminescent materials would stimulate new understanding of luminescence emission lifetimes and would develop new crystal formulations to serve as the basis for follow-on sorts of photonics research.
As a result of this acceptance, Dr. Hollerman and UL Lafayette was awarded $50,000 to participate in the national NSF I-Corps program. Dr. Hollerman’s team is participating in the first summer 2023 cohort for NSF I-Corps that will run from late May 2023 until the end of July 2023.