Brookhaven Lab to mentor in protege deal

For most of her adult life, Janet Godfrey has been a stay-at-home mom, raising seven children at her Wading River home. She is not an engineer and never even took a course in physics.

But she is now in training to take on a business based on an advanced technology pioneered at Brookhaven National Laboratory that helps test and measure air quality and flow to detect possibly harmful substances in buildings or nuclear power plants.

How did this happen? Godfrey, 53, and her husband, Jim Godfrey, 51, are partners in a small, woman-owned business in Wading River, Meadowbrook Partners, that has just signed a unique four-year "mentor-protege" agreement with the Upton-based lab, only the third such agreement BNL's manager, Brookhaven Science Associates, has inked since the program began a decade ago.

Under the program, Meadowbrook Partners will promote perfluorocarbon tracers, or PFTs, pioneered at the lab, said Paul Kalb, BNL's division head for environmental research and technology.

PFTs are colorless, odorless, nontoxic gases that can be used in airflow to detect if a material is present before it becomes dangerous to people, the lab said. So far, control rooms at six nuclear power plants have been tested, Kalb said.

Michelle Cooper, a BNL contract specialist, said Meadowbrook will seek out potential users of the technologies. If they find one, a contract will be signed between the lab and the user. The user pays a fee for the service, and some of the compensation will go to Meadowbrook, Cooper said.

"I started out as a stay-at-home mom," said Godfrey. But a few years ago, she said, she started Operation Veronica, which collected items of comfort for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as neck coolers to combat extreme desert heat. About 24,000 have been given out over the last five years. That, she said, boosted her confidence level. She and her husband, who is an engineer, incorporated Meadowbrook in 2006, seeking to do something, but they were not sure just what.

They heard about a technology transfer workshop at BNL and attended. They learned about the PFT technology and signed an agreement with the lab Sept. 6. Jim Godfrey will serve as technical adviser. His wife, he said, "has an interest in the subject and can talk to people on a non-engineering" basis.

Two other small businesses -- 3 Gals Industrial Llc, a safety supply company in Glen Cove, and engineering consultants Klasm International Inc. in Rockville, Md., -- have been in the mentor-protege program initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy. The DOE requires that at least one such program always be in place, the lab said.

A protege must be a small business able to receive government contracts, have been in business for two years and be certified as "economically or socially disadvantaged, or owned by women or service-disabled veterans."

Janet Godfrey said she "never, never, never" imagined being involved in such a venture. "I'm tickled to death they gave it to us," she said.