Tech Transfer Insights #6 - Brown, Arizona, and Kansas State

all right everybody welcome back to another episode of tech transfer insights uh let's pick up where we left off last time with selecting three new universities select three new univers from the original all right Brown Arizona and Kansas state that sounds good all new ones this time so let's go take a look at I don't know is brown actually the largest university in Rhode Island probably is maybe not but it's really pretty campus who never been there so be back in a second looking at Brown all right so I got to say this one was another easy one a lot of times these universities come with like uh recently posted Technologies and this one came up I think it was posted in like June or something so a little bit more than a month ago at the time I'm recording but I'm a huge space nerd and like space exploration is another hobby of mine I write for a Blog and all that kind of stuff but and I I shouldn't say but one of the things that I really like about it is the technologies that are developed as part of them so again sensors are a major part of that that and as an electrical engineer this one caught my mind my eye very very quickly so a magnetic field sensor based on an an anonymous hall effect so a lot of times we use hall effect sensors for detecting magnetic fields in general but this has a different underlying use case or like underlying mechanism that is different than traditional magnetic field sensors and you know it's interesting because they say in here they were interested in exploring startup opportunities right so I thought that was interesting they specifically say that uh but it's it's suited for you know security scanning scanning microscope uh non-invasive detection of subsurface things there's a lot that goes into what magnetic sensors can do and I would be interested in learning more Spa navigation of space applications right the thing that I said that caught my my eye originally I'd be interested to see what specific Advantage the underlying mechanism provides to these things but again sensors in general can be a platform technology and certainly thought this one was interesting enough to be to Warrant a look so they P that was issued in the late 2022 uh for foundation professor of physics for the inventor there's also a paper down here you can read more about back in 2020 so if you are interested in learning more about how Anonymous holif effect magnetic field sensors would work I think you can email this generic email address here for Brown's technology transfer office but up next who do we have Arizona so we'll be back in a second with there something from there all right so next up is University of Arizona um I guess I'm going to go with space things as a theme for At least these two I don't know if the next University will have anything related to space exploration but in this case we're going to talk about heliostats so this is the apparatus and method for Clos Loop control of heliostat motion uh basically what a heliostat is is a giant mirror that reflects sunlight towards a common Target in most cases it's used in solar thermal power generation systems so basically you have a field of these mirror heliostat mirrors surrounding a tower and they all collectively reflect sunlight to the tower which heats up water inside the tower which is use to drive a turbine and create uh essentially renewable electricity not through photov voltaics um you know relatively common or growing uh industry for power generation but essentially what a Clos Loop control system is versus an open loop control system is kind of an idealized version of feedback for making sure that the heliostat is orientated orientated oriented in the correct direction to make sure that it is applying the maximum amount of solar energy to the tower that it's trying to to provide that energy too in open loop systems they normally don't have a feedback loop that allows it to correct itself it just kind of positions it no matter where the sun is whereas with this it seems it has sensors that allows for a closed loop control techn or technique in control theory that is much much much better uh so you know there's no measurements or objective data associated with this one in at least in this description but assumingly it would dramatically incre a closed loop system would dramatically increase the amount of power generated by a heliostat in the source of renewable energy systems um highly accur you know the increased efficiency it's cost effective I can't imagine to be terribly expensive to implement because it just seems like they're using some cameras and sensors to align them better uh but you know it's another play in both the renewable energy industry but also in the space in their space industry because Helio stats are also used in space exploration so if you're interested in learning more about this one contact Mr Jonathan lson as one of the licensing Representatives but I wanted a bonus here because I thought this one was this this was interesting and easily patentable although it doesn't actually have a patent listed here anywhere but here's one that I thought was really interesting just because it shows you the breadth of of Technologies you'll get to look at here so this is word game which I guess is kind of like Wordle but spelled portal which is basically like a cell phone game that teaches people about quantum mechanics I don't know is this something that's panded I doubt it is it something that's interesting sure I thought that was a really uh interesting sorry an really interesting underlying technology that again is it patentable is it defendable maybe not but it shows the breadth of like this is literally I think the one right after the heliostat control system so it shows the breth of potential ideas that come out of these places you're interested in collaborating with any of these guys to [Music] see how you can Implement a word game based on teaching people about quantum mechanics you know that's a thing you can also do so all right next up we I'm of Kansas State so I'll be back in a second with that all right so this one was interesting um Kansas State's website seemingly hasn't been updated in about five years and they had an interesting set of default links that were just like some web developer kind of put in placeholders and never actually populated them but they also use Autumn which is the association of University technology managers is basically the uh profess Prof Organization for people who manage Technologies at universities and they apparently have I didn't know they have a Marketplace but I guess it makes sense that they do though this is the only University that I've ever seen use it so for whatever that's worth they had not many Technologies available and I normally don't do uh biological based things but I thought this was interesting because you know it goes with the Guist of uh I'll say swine flu which I think is technically different than swine fever but it sounds like um the an a researcher at Kansas State uh developed a vaccine for African swine fever which now vaccines in themselves are obviously one of the most useful medical disc discoveries that Humanity has literally ever made um so I think in this case it's probably Veterinary although they don't explicitly say that because you know swine fever would imply that it is affecting pigs so in this case it also has a diagnostic flow device for a differentiating a diva differentiating infected from vaccinated animals uh oh okay so you can't really tell uh when somebody has been or one one of the animals has been vaccinated or not that's interesting um at least with the FDA process the vaccine for pigs is a lot easier than vaccines for humans and also having a diagnostic test to tell if something or an animal has been vaccinated or not is probably very useful what I don't know is how big of a problem African swine fever actually is I'm assuming that you know there's some issue there whether it's an Africa or in other places I know China kind a huge thing where they ended up M to slaughter like millions of pigs a couple years ago so you know there's obviously potentially a market for this but unclear without diving deeper into it how big of a market that would actually be uh but I think that's also it for the week so if you guys wouldn't mind leaving a like And subscribe I'd very much appreciate it also I'll put the links to all the technologies that we talked about today down in the description including the bonus one of the the quantum game Quantum word game and and if you want have any feedback on any of the Technologies or ideas of how to implement them or ideas of Technologies you want me to take a look at or and especially ways that I could do better in terms of making these videos I'd very much appreciate it but that is it for this week I will see you all next week with a set of new ideas from some of the world's greatest research universities thanks everybody