Clark School Invention of the Year Winners

Clark School teams won three out of four top prizes in the 2011 UM Office of Technology Commercialization Invention of the Year Awards.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Prof. K. J. Ray Liu and his team won in the Information Science category for their "Active Sensing for Dynamic Spectrum Access" project, 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.

Another team, consisting of ECE Professor Christopher Davis, Civil Engineering Research Professor Stuart Milner, and ECE alumnus Jamie Llorca, was a runner-up in the Information Sciences category for their invention, titled "Self-Optimization, Dynamic Positioning and Mobility Management in Wireless Networks."

Fischell Department of Bioengineering Assistant Professor Silvia Muro won one of two prizes in the Life Science category for "Targeted Carriers for Drug Delivery across the Gastrointestinal Epithelium," which 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.

A team consisting of Materials Science and Engineering's Ichiro Takeuchi, Jun Cui, Manfred Wuttig and Yiming Wu won in the Physical Sciences category for "Thermoelastic Cooling." This novel cooling technology based upon thermoelastic shape memory metal alloys will contribute to US energy consumption reduction goals.

For full details about the competition and winners, please see the university press release.

Published April 14, 2011