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August, 2007
From Our Technology Issue
Turning Research Into Dollars
by Suzanne Driscoll
| The cry of “gold in them thar hills” enticed prospectors to California during the 1860s, but golden opportunities are more elusive these days. There is, however, a treasure trove of marketable products coming out of our own local universities. | Fifth recent reports showing 97% of our local businesses employ fewer than ten people, small start-ups may be the key to future economic success for Rochester. Not only are universities conducting research, but they are tapping into their potential for future companies. Both the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology have formed commercialization offices that assist researchers in bringing their discoveries and inventions to market. These efforts can include finding licensing opportunities, venture capital investors, management teams, and other sources of funding. Among the success stories, particularly in the medical field at the U of R are the meningitis vaccine, the new vaccine for cervical cancer prevention, and companies such as iCardiac.
With so many great products looking for a home and at the same time, private investors looking for a business to invest in, the question becomes how do they find each other? What follows here is a small sample of current research coming out of our local universities that stands ready and waiting to come to market. We have provided contact information to obtain additional information about these new and innovative products.
Rochester Institute of Technology
C-Print®
C-Print® is a communication access service that provides printed display of spoken information in real time. To date it has been used primarily with deaf and hard-of-hearing students in an educational setting where it has resulted in enhanced information capture, higher comprehension rates, and improved learning.
The C-Print System is easy to learn and use. The associated online training program consists of a series of easy to follow, self-paced module. It has already been tested and evaluated by more than 400 participants.
C-Print was developed by the educational research component of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), a college of Rochester Institute of Technology. A captionist using a laptop with C-Print Pro software enters what is being stated using an abbreviated form of English. The full text is instantaneously displayed on a student's laptop. Students can take notes, ask questions; and fully participate in the class.
RIT is currently licensing C-Print to end-users. This product is ready for expansion to multiple markets. It has potential applications in business, industry, government, secondary and postsecondary education, legal, and community settings. Developed for use with deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, the system has potential for use with visually impaired individuals, English language learners, the learning disabled, and physically challenged. RIT is currently seeking to either find individuals interested in forming a start-up company around C-Print and other assistive learning technologies developed at NTID, or else find an established company interested in licensing C-Print.
NanoPower
Research Labs
Stephen Hoover of Xerox Corporation has been quoted as saying, “Nanotechnology is the technological tsunami coming at you.” The NanoPower research Labs (NPRL) at RIT is positioning itself to commercialize technology related to nanomaterials and nanostructure for power applications. A significant and growing intellectual property portfolio has been developed surrounding carbon nanotube synthesis, functionalization, solvent
| The NPRL wishes to expand its relationships with companies, universities, and government agencies in collaborative efforts to develop power generation and storage devices. | dispersions/separations by type, and application to lithium ion batteries. In addition, intellectual property has been developed for the use of nanomaterials such as quantum dots for solar cells and alpha-voltaic batteries.
NPRL is dedicated to the development of new materials and devices for power generation and storage for microelectronic components and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). A premium is placed on size, weight, and flexibility in power system design for most microsystems. The NPRL focus is to develop the materials and devices that are compatible with these microsystem constraints by exploiting the potential opportunities afforded through nanostructured materials and nanotechnology.
The NPRL wishes to expand its relationships with companies, universities, and government agencies in collaborative efforts to develop power generation and storage devices.
Fourier Series Waveform Modulation
A New Digital Modulation Technique
A new Fourier Series Waveform Modulation (FSWM) technique has been developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Communications Technology (LACT) at RIT that results in increased data transmission speed capability and improved bandwidth efficiencies. Thus more data can be transmitted over the same channels than existing commercial technologies. FSWM has application in many sectors including cable, satellite, DSL, P2P and fiber optics. This technology has been proven using numerical simulations. Work is now progressing to implement the technology on an actual chip. FSWM represents a new approach to digital modulation. In essence, it is a hybrid analog/digital technique that incorporates key features of both. The digital information is first encoded into waveform shapes. Then the information is extracted using simple mathematical technologies that can be implemented in hardware. RIT is currently in negotiation with a start-up company that is interested in licensing the FSWM technology. Please contact Varda Main, Director of the RIT Technology Licensing Office, to discuss licensing opportunities or to obtain further information for any of these RIT technologies. She can be reached at 585-475-2986 or Varda.main@rit.edu.
University of Rochester
Center for Electronic Imaging Systems
The following are five of the many technologies the Center for Electronic Imaging Systems (CEIS) helps make available to businesses in the Rochester area. Over the past five years, CEIS has delivered more than $315 million in economic impact in New York State in terms of new jobs, revenues, cost savings, capital improvements, and acquired funds. The center actively reaches out and networks to support workforce development through sponsored showcases, seminars, and technical events.
CEIS benefits the regional economy by matching researchers at the University of Rochester and other regional institutions with New York State and Rochester region businesses, including smaller companies that might not be able to afford hiring full-time scientists. The businesses benefit by receiving cutting-edge research, while the scientists benefit by having additional funding to carry out their research.
With 40 projects across a wide range of companies, CEIS reported to the New York State Office of Science, Technology, and Academic Research (NYSTAR) that technology created by its researchers and commercially developed by local industrial partners has delivered record benefits.
Microstructuring and Nanostructuring of
Ophthalmic Polymers and Devices
using Tightly-focused, High-intensity Femtosecond Optical Pulses
Contact: Wayne Knox (585) 273-5520
Intense femtosecond optical pulses can create significant materials modifications when they interact with virtually any kind of material. Many kinds of materials have been micromachined using femtosecond laser radiation, and the unique nature of the interaction of a material with a very short optical pulse results in the ability to make extremely small feature sizes (down to 100 nm) with submicron positioning accuracy. Exotic materials such as radioactive materials, high explosives, individual cell nuclei, polymers, hard metals such as titanium, etc., have all been successfully machined, and a new industry is starting to form in this area.
This project studies the materials and optical modifications created by tightly focused, high intensity, ultrashort light pulses with a range of polymer materials and devices that are of interest in ophthalmology for vision correction.
Intelligent Visual Digital Assistants
Contact: Christopher Brown (585) 275-7852
This project develops machine collaboration with users in natural environments. Called an intelligent digital assistant (IDA), the technology can interact with its users about what is happening in the world. Ultimately it will use this information, together with prior knowledge, to help accomplish complex tasks, such as training itself to capture, organize, and analyze a continuous video input stream into relevant or novel events.
Many abilities that people possess universally, and acquire naturally without specialized instruction, have proved extremely difficult to embed into automated systems. Vision and its ties to cognitive representations with flexible access and inference are still mysterious. One goal of this work is to facilitate breakthroughs toward the development of an IDA by developing techniques, algorithms, and prototype systems for IDAs that will augment human perceptual and intellectual abilities.
3D Stereo from 2D Mono Video
Contact: Christopher Brown (585) 275-7852
As we move around in the world, we get several clues about its three-dimensional structure. We usually think that our two eyes and the resulting stereo effect provide most of our 3-D awareness. From stereo cameras to WWII style binocular rangefinders, technology also has favored a stereo solution, or “disparity-based” solution-the information lies in the spatial disparity between left and right images. Recently, lasers and ultrasound have made stereo ranging obsolete, and this project works on an alternative way to create stereo views from images.
A highly important depth clue is parallax, i.e., how fast or how much an object's image position changes as it moves or the imager moves. Parallax is why you can maneuver through the world, usually without problems, with one eye shut. Unlike stereo, motion is essential.
The goal of this project is to convert the parallax depth information in consumer and commercial single-camera videos into stereo depth (disparity) information for viewing in any of a number of two-channel stereo viewing technologies. One obvious approach is to present a frame from time t to one eye and a frame from time t+dt to the other eye. Object parallax (change through time) is thus converted to disparity (change between two images). Behind this simple idea lurk a host of practical technical problems, and it is those that motivate
this work.
Polarized White-Light OLEDs
as Efficient Backlight for Liquid Crystal Displays
Contact: Shaw Chen (585) 275-0909
Monodisperse glassy nematic oligofluorenes have been demonstrated for the best combination of efficiency and polarization ratio of polarized blue OLEDs reported to date. To substantially improve device efficiency and lifetime, we propose to insert molecular cores, such as anthracene and benzothiadiazole, into oligofluorene structures for stable emission of polarized blue and complementary colors. A mixture of oligomers at an optimum ratio is expected to constitute polarized white OLEDs potentially useful as energy-efficient backlight for liquid crystal displays. In addition, multifunctional materials with tunable luminescent and transport properties will be used to achieve balanced charge injection to further improve device performance.
Development and Characterization of
High Performance Transistors on Glass
Contact: Karl Hirschman (585) 475-5130
In recent years, society has developed an enormous market for integrated microsystems, such as cell phones and flat panel displays. Currently, the electrical drivers behind the displays are polysilicon or amorphous silicon based thin film transistors (TFTs). To support the trend to a more compact product size, designers are integrating traditional bulk silicon based components onto the display with TFTs. This is commonly referred to as system on glass or system on panel. System on glass also lowers the manufacturing costs of the entire product. System on glass technology trends would occur rapidly if the characteristics of thin film transistor were better. Corning TFT substrates could yield devices with better characteristics than current generation polysilicon or amorphous devices. Corning's proprietary substrate material has the potential of demonstrating a carrier mobility comparable to that of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) devices, making it the ideal substrate for system on glass applications.
This research hopes to demonstrate fabrication of TFTs on a new substrate material in development by Corning; either low temperature polysilicon on glass, or a different semiconductor grade silicon variant. The substrate material has the potential of yielding transistors with higher performance than currently commercialized polysilicon and amphorius silicon thin film transistor technologies.
BSM
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