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Kannan Krishnaswami, PhD
Technology Commercialization Manager
Kannan Krishnaswami, PhD
Technology Commercialization Manager
Biography
More than 200 companies have been formed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) since the laboratory was founded in 1965. In FY 2021 alone, laboratory research resulted in 46 new license agreements with commercial partners; many of those agreements were handled by PNNL Commercialization Manager Kannan Krishnaswami. He’s passionate about getting PNNL technology into the marketplace.
As Krishnaswami guides PNNL’s technology transfer, he captures and synthesizes complex concepts and communicates them to a wide range of technical and non-technical audiences. To do this effectively, he must embrace the attributes of both a scientist and a business person. But Krishnaswami, who has worked to advance national security for nearly two decades at PNNL, knows which discipline claims his heart.
“I have to be close to science and the technology,” Krishnaswami said. “Even my MBA is in the service of sciences.”
Krishnaswami has helped guide the commercial development of two of the laboratory’s most significant security-related inventions in recent decades. Both stem from PNNL’s millimeter wave technology—the next generation of the holographic scanner found at many airports, and a shoe scanner that will likely make taking off shoes at the airport a bygone relic.
“I'm a big proponent of national security technologies,” Krishnaswami said. “The fact that I am able to deliver an impact on an almost daily basis by pushing technologies out of the laboratory to save lives and make the nation more secure—these are the things that motivate me more than anything else.”