Invention of the Year Winners!
A new imaging technology for identifying
cancerous tumors and determining the effectiveness of anti-tumor drugs
received the APL Invention of the Year award at a ceremony held on April
30, 2002. Phillip Singerman, executive director of the Maryland Technology
Development Corporation (TEDCO), and Wayne Swann, APL's director of technology
transfer, congratulated 182 researchers for their work and presented plaques
and cash awards for the three top inventions of 2001.
The two finalists are: Selectively Permeable Molecularly Imprinted
Polymer Membrane for Blood Iron, Environmental Nitrate and Phosphate Pollution
Removal and Wide Area Metal Detecting System and Metal Object
Identification Using a 3-D Steerable Magnetic Field Antenna.
New Hopkins Incubator
The Baltimore City Board of Estimates approved a $750,000 grant for the development of another emerging technology center-officially called the Emerging Technology Center at Johns Hopkins Eastern. The new center will nearly double the size of the city's incubator program and boost the employment base, according to the Baltimore Development Corp.
Additional funding for the $6.6 million new technology incubator comes from The Johns Hopkins University, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, TEDCO and the Economic Development Administration.
Construction on the incubator is set to start later this year.
Patents
& Pizza
The APL Office of Technology Transfer held another Patents & Pizza
seminar on October 3, 2002. The Offices of Patent Counsel and Technology
Transfer host the informational sessions to inform Laboratory inventors,
project staff and other interested Laboratory professionals about issues
relating to APL tech transfer. The guest speaker was Mr. Rami
Habal from Mohr, Davidow Ventures.
The Spring Patents & Pizza seminar is scheduled for mid-February 2003,
with more details coming soon.
Click here for information on past seminars, including handouts.
Doing Our Part
- Hypersonic Missile Engine Tested: APL recently led
a team that successfully conducted the first-ever ground test of a full-scale,
fully integrated hypersonic cruise missile engine using pure liquid
hydrocarbon fuel. During the test, conducted May 30 at NASA's Langley
Research Center, the engine operated at conditions simulating Mach 6.5
cruise at 90,000 feet. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
and the Office of Naval Research sponsor the program.
- APL Builds a Better Mine Detector: APL physicist
Carl Nelson is developing a low-cost mine detector that one person can
backpack to a suspected minefield and then operate either autonomously
or by remote control. Equipped with an advanced electromagnetic induction
sensor developed in conjunction with the U.S. Army, along with a sophisticated
classification algorithm, the Mine Rover detects suspected mines—even
ones that are mostly plastic—and marks their location, thus removing
the threat to the operator.
- APL Oscillators Fly: A quartet of APL-designed and
-built ultrastable quartz oscillators—the world's most accurate
spaceborne timekeepers—is now in orbit aboard the two spacecraft
of NASA/JPL's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission
to accurately map the Earth's gravity field. As the satellites fly about
130 miles apart 300 miles above Earth, the oscillators' precise and
stable signals continuously measure satellite-to-satellite distance—and
thus their relative velocity—with unprecedented accuracy. Scientists
are then able to convert velocity changes into an accurate map of the
global gravity field.
- $21.5M FAA Contract Signed: APL has signed a 5-year, $21.5 million contract with the Federal Aviation Administration to continue work on the agency's Safe Flight 21 program for improving the safety, security, efficiency and capacity of the National Airspace System. APL's work will include program management and planning, systems engineering, test and evaluation support, including data collection and analysis, and vulnerability assessments.