Top University of Maryland Inventions Announced at Annual Event

By Anne DeLorenzo

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Martin Peckerar's battery could be spread over wheat bread with raspberry jelly on top. It's that flexible. But that would put to waste the battery's top-notch energy efficiency. Its title - the "World's Highest Energy Density Thin Film Battery" - is no exaggeration. In addition to a powerful PB&J, this battery's energy density and flexibility make possible a number of stronger, smaller products, including wireless sensor networks, active RFID, wearable electronics, and medical devices. Peckerar developed the battery with Neil Goldsman, Yves Ngu, and Zeynip Dilli, and George Metze from the National Security Agency. The thin film battery is just one of the inventions honored at this year's Invention of the Year Reception. The reception was hosted by the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) to recognize University of Maryland inventors and inventions from 2008.

Each year, OTC awards the prize of top invention in three categories. Peckerar's battery took the honors in the area of physical science. In life science, graduate student Matt Dowling's "Nano-Velcro" bandages impressed the judges. These bandages use a modified form of chitosan, a substance found naturally in the shells of crustaceans. The result is a Velcro-like material both strong enough to prevent blood loss inside its boundaries and weak enough to prevent damage to newly formed tissue on its removal.

It can be modified into a liquid spray for easy and sterile application. The bandage has potential to significantlyimprove mortality rates for the hundreds of millions of cases of uncontrollable bleeding that occur each year. From the battle field to the operating table, the benefits of this developing product are substantial. Srinivasa Raghavan and Matt Dowling from the University of Maryland collaborated with John Hess and Grant Bochicchio from the University of Maryland, Baltimore to develop the "Nano-Velcro" bandages.

John Baras' key exchange system, the Information Science award winner, was built in collaboration with the Army Research Laboratory. Secret keys are central to nearly all secure internet transactions. Every time you sign into your bank account a key is used to decode your password and check it against a similarly decoded bank record of that password. Usually such information is kept securely within a bank's database, however as keys are periodically updated, part of the key is revealed. Baras' technology allows for message encryption and its reversal without the potential for a third party security breach by avoiding the need to actually communicate keys. The invention holds great interest for national defense systems, major banking companies, and other industries where secrecy is of great importance. It was created by Baras and John Yu from the University of Maryland with Brian Sadler from the Army Research Laboratory.

The Office of Technology Commercialization waded through 135 inventions that were disclosed in 2008. After narrowing the field to nine, 22 on and off-campus judges were given the task of picking the best in each category of Life, Information, and Physical science. Award winners receive a plaque and cash prize, and a place among some of the best inventions created by Maryland's prestigious science programs.

Other finalists include information science nominees "Image Categorization System for Digital Forensics Applications" by Mr. Xiaodong Yu and David Doermann and "Multi-Objective Collaborative Robust Optimization (McRO)" by Mian Li and Shapour Azarm; life science nominees "Synthesis of Fluorescent Porous Silica Nanoparticles" by Philip DeShong, Michael Zachariah, Peter DeMuth, Anand Prakash, Charles Luckett, and Douglas English and "Junction Probes for the Detection of Molecular Polymorphisms" by Herman Sintim; and physical science nominees "Microporous Bone-Implant Joints" by Sreeramamurthy Ankem and "Ultra Low Emission Colorless Distributed Combustor" by Ashwani Gupta.

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