Journeys from ‘R’ to ‘X’: Leveraging NOAA Lab Research Transition Successes to Reshape and Accelerate the R2X Process

Transitioning research to use, or R2X, is a foundational practice at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Documentation and acceleration of R2X through transition plans is becoming the standard, particularly since being implemented into NOAA policy. In fact, NOAA’s FY22-26 Strategic Plan identifies this as a priority: “ ...NOAA will accelerate and facilitate the transition of research and development to operations, applications, commercialization and other uses.” Yet, even with guidance established and thoroughly documented, confusion about transition plans persists, often being perceived as daunting, and sometimes resulting in a challenging process.

This session will showcase R2X practitioners from diverse Laboratories across NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) that will provide real world examples of impactful research transitions with the aim of highlighting strategies that proved successful for their work, and how they improved their approaches to transition planning going forward.

Examples will span the R2X spectrum to cover a broad range of research such as the assimilation of uncrewed systems (UxS) observations into NOAA weather models, patenting NOAA inventions, and more. Panelists will discuss the different transitions they have encountered, such as operational and commercialization. They will also talk about R&D outputs including software, hardware, products, processes and/or knowledge transfer, how they were documented in transition plans, and the associated benefits with each.