For Immediate Release
April 12, 2011
Contacts: Dan Collinge, 301-405-0716 or collinge@umd.edu

University of Maryland Names Its Four Best Inventions of 2010

Digital Fingerprinting, Two Novel Drug Delivery Systems & a Smart Metal for Energy Efficient Cooling Take Top Honors

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- 2010 was another busy year for the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC). OTC received 132 invention disclosures last year or about one new invention disclosure every three days. Deciding OTC's Invention of the Year awards is a difficult endeavor-choosing the best of the best from 132 high-quality examples of Maryland's cutting-edge research is not an easy process. First, the field of 132 inventions was narrowed to nine finalists, three each in the categories of information, life, and physical sciences. Second, off and on-campus judges voted for winners in each of these categories, basing their decisions on the criteria of creativity, novelty, and potential benefit to society. And Tuesday, April 12th, the ballot results were announced at a closed reception at the UM Golf Course Club House Banquet Room.

In the field of Information Science, Nathan Goergen, Wan-Yi Lin, and K. J. Ray Liu's winning invention, "Active Sensing for Dynamic Spectrum Access," involves a novel fingerprinting method to authenticate and classify wireless transmissions, which prevents wasteful processing of unintended transmissions and permits nodes to quickly authenticate legitimate users and recognize unauthorized users. The technology achieves nearly 100 percent detection accuracy and classification accuracy, low signal to noise ratio-as low as 5-6 decibels, and efficient spectrum access under IEEE 802.22 for Wireless Regional Area Networks.
Read about related earlier work in the article:
UM Engineers Pioneer Forensics Technology to Catch Cyber Thieves.

The field of Life Science saw two winners this year. Lyle Isaacs, Da Ma, Volker Briken, Gaya Hettiarachchi, and Duc Nguyen's "Molecular Container to Enhance Solubility of Drugs" demonstrates a new cucurbit[n]uril-type (CB[n]-type) molecular container that binds to a variety of FDA approved agents in water, including Rocuronium, a widely used anesthetic during surgery. The molecular containers are highly water soluble and can be produced in scalable quantities at minimal cost. The second winning entry, Silvia Muro-Galindo and Rasa Ghaffarian's "Targeted Carriers for Drug Delivery across the Gastrointestinal Epithelium," describes a novel strategy to use the gastrointestinal (GI) trans-epithelial pathway to provide the transfer of orally administered molecules. This technology safely and effectively targets the GI epithelial cells for speedy transport across the GI cell body with no negative effect on the GI permeability. Oral drug delivery means less discomfort for patients.

Ichiro Takeuchi, Jun Cui, Manfred Wuttig and Yiming Wu's "Thermoelastic Cooling" is the winner in the category of Physical Sciences. This novel cooling technology based upon thermoelastic shape memory metal alloys will contribute to US energy consumption reduction goals. The coefficient of performance (COP) of a solid-to-solid thermoelastic cooling system can be 102% more than that of a liquid-to-vapor compression technology. Since the refrigerant in a thermoelastic cooling system is in a solid state, the technology completely eliminates the need for the high global warming potential halofluorocarbon refrigerants while requiring a smaller operational footprint.
For more information on this techonology read this article:
New 'Smart' Metal Could Mean Cool Cash for Consumers, Less CO2.

• "A.T.T.U.N.E. (Automatic Terrorists' Technology Usage Networked Environment)" by Massimiliano Albanese and Venkatramanan Siva (V.S.) Subrahmanian;
• "Self-Optimization, Dynamic Positioning and Mobility Management in Wireless Networks" by Stuart Milner, Christopher Davis, and Jaime Llorca;
• "Diagnostic Assay for Biomolecular Interactions" by Vincent Lee and Kevin Roelofs;
• "Fly Ear-Inspired Miniature Acoustic Sensor System" by Miao Yu and Haijun Liu;
• "Time Domain-Based Decoding Methods for Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interfaces" by Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, Trent Bradberry, and Rodolphe Gentili.

• Recorded more than 2,000 information, life and physical science invention disclosures
• Secured more than 400 U.S. patents
• Licensed more than 540 technologies to industry
• Signed more than 650 license agreements
• Generated more than $23.5 million in technology transfer income

Assisted in the creation of more than 60 high-tech start-up companies founded on the basis of technologies developed at the University of Maryland. Seventeen out of 20 start-up companies founded in the last five years (FY06-FY10) were founded in Maryland.

OTC operates under the leadership of executive director Gayatri Varma and continues to serve as a source of innovation and education on intellectual property, technology transfer, and the commercialization process.

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