In this eighth installment of our on-going series of interviews with some of the leading thinkers and scientists on the subject of energy, we interview Dr. Thomas Valone.

Facing and solving the multiple issues concerning energy is the single most pressing problem that we face as a species. There is a lot of media coverage about energy, alternative energy and global warming, but what has been missing is the knowledge and point of view of scientists, at least in the main stream media. If you have missed the first seven interviews, please scroll down the right side of the page and click on ‘Scientists — Interviews’.

Dr. Thomas Valone is a physicist and licensed professional engineer with 30 years professional experience, is a patent examiner, research engineer, instrumentation designer and also an author, lecturer, and consultant on future energy developments. He is President and founder of Integrity Research Institute and formerly a community college teacher and a Research Director for Scott Aviation-ATO, Inc. He helped design the HullCom® for naval intraship communication, a 60 Hz gaussmeter without harmonic distortion, two bioelectric therapy devices, and a dental mercury vapor ionizer-precipitator. He is editor of Future Energy, Energetic Processes Vol. I & II, Turning the Corner: Energy Solutions for the 21st Century and a few conference proceedings, as well as author of Zero Point Energy: The Fuel of the Future, Practical Conversion of Zero-Point Energy, Homopolar Handbook, Electrogravitics Vol. 1 & II, Bioelectromagnetic Healing, Bush-Cheney Energy Study, Clinton Administration Energy Study and about 100 published reports and articles. He has also served as an expert witness, an expert declaration writer for court cases and appeared on CNN, A&E, and the Discovery Channels, besides a few commercial energy videos. Currently, Dr. Valone is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Bioelectromagnetics Society, the National Space Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists. He is also a Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation. His works have been published in German, French, Korean and English.

I met Tom at the Foundation for the Futures’ conference on the future of energy and was taken with his positive outlook and the fact that he has been a patent examiner.

Evolutionshift.com:  As a scientist and patent examiner you are in superlative company.  Any other similarities with Albert Einstein?  Seriously, how does your work with the government patent office compliment your scientific work and research?

VALONE: Any comments that I make in this regard do not reflect the views of the US Patent and Trademark Office and are only my personal viewpoints as a private citizen. Of course, when a recent biography of Einstein was aired on the PBS channel, I was happy to watch, being a physicist and patent examiner. However, I learned from the narrator that “Einstein was employed at a dead-end job at the Swiss Patent Office” before he was freed by publishing three seminal journal articles and receiving other job offers. The work at the US PTO often feels like a dead-end, repetitive job since it is piecemeal, production w