invention

Eight George Mason Inventions You Need to Know About

Katarina Benson — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 18:16:29 +0000

Eight George Mason Inventions You Need to Know About Katarina Benson Wed, 12/11/2024 - 13:16

American inventor Thomas Edison is credited with saying “genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” and many innovators can attest to this. The inventive process requires a lot of grit and determination. It can often take years to bring an innovation from idea to market.

Each year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issues patents to ��AV that cover the creation of new or improved products, processes, or machines. The university received its first patent in 1996 for research professor Jenefir Isbister’s invention of a test for microbial contamination. Since then, George Mason has been awarded 296 U.S. and international patents, a quantifiable testament to the university’s bold approach to problem-solving and perseverance in creating solutions.

Alumni often share inventorship of patents with their faculty mentors for work they contributed during their time at George Mason.

In 2023, the Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact recognized University Professor Lance Liotta, cofounder and codirector of the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM), with a George Mason Lifetime Disclosure Award. During his career at George Mason, Liotta has filed more than 120 patent disclosures.

Disclosures to the university’s Office of Technology Transfer are the first step toward a patent for an invention or discovery. Liotta has 100 inventions to date and the prototype of one of these inventions—laser capture microdissection, a method to procure subpopulations of tissue cells under direct microscopic visualization—is in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History collection.

The Office of Technology Transfer at George Mason is the bridge between university researchers and industry visionaries bringing cutting-edge technology to life. Not only are they charged with protecting the university’s and researchers’ intellectual property, but they also negotiate licensing agreements to launch these technologies in the marketplace.

In this feature, we take a look at some of the George Mason patents that are available for licensing.

1. Regulating substance craving in real time

George Mason professors Padmanabhan Seshaiyer of the Department of Mathematical Sciences and Holly Matto of the Department of Social Work share a patent for REMind-h, an innovative tool that helps individuals in substance abuse recovery regulate their responses to drug craving cues. Their invention monitors the biobehavioral state of the user and strategically delivers, in real time, personalized recovery cues to prevent the person from relapsing. It is the first patent for the Department of Social Work.

2. Giving rehab a leg up

Liotta and CAPMM research professor Marissa Howard, BS Bioengineering ’17, PhD Biosciences ’22, hold the patent on a wearable device that measures, tracks, and monitors a wearer's physiological conditions during a rehabilitation period. The device collects metrics, such as temperature, patellar shifting, limb circumference, and acceleration, and communicates data through a networked communication system so medical personnel and patients can stay updated with the patient’s rehabilitation progress and make adjustments. Howard and Liotta share the patent with Rachel Naidich, Matthew Luu Trang, Ish Sethi, Rebecca Woodhouse, and Kshamata Neupane, who worked on the device as high school students in George Mason’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program.

3. Keeping the lights on

George Mason alum Eniye Tebekaemi, PhD Information Technology ’18, and College of Engineering and Computing professor Duminda Wijesekera have a patent for a secure overlay communication model for decentralized autonomous power grids. The model is a logic-based system deployed onto computing devices in power grid stations and substations. In response to detecting various power grid faults, such as line failures and overcurrent states, the system can automatically rearrange power line configurations.

4. Putting an end to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

Researcher Yuntao Wu, a professor in George Mason’s School of Systems Biology and the Center for Infectious Disease Research, has devoted his career to finding a cure for HIV. He’s received several patents for his work in this area, including “Targeting the Cofilin Pathway” and “Method and System for Inactivating Virus Infectivity for Producing Live-Attenuated Vaccines.” In 2013, he founded the biotech company Virongy after licensing an HIV drug-screening technology that was developed in his Science and Technology Campus lab.

5. Making aircraft safer

Professor Lance Sherry, director of George Mason’s Center for Air Transportation Systems Research, and PhD student Oleksandra Snisarevska share a patent for “Systems and Methods for Improved Airline Safety,” a machine learning model that can be trained using historical flight data to generate alerts. When sent to a computing device onboard an aircraft, these alerts can provide information to the flight crew regarding the status of automated aircraft functions.

6. On-demand protection from flood waters

This invention—patented by Professor Emeritus George Donohue and alumni Adel Youssef, BS Systems Engineering ’20; Lucciana Remy, BS Systems Engineering ’20; Faris Masri, BS Systems Engineering ’20; and Murat Gokturk, BS Systems Engineering ’20—provides systems and methods for making dynamic, low-visibility, portable pneumatic cofferdams that can be readily deployed in flood susceptible areas. Created as a senior design project, this inflatable, pneumatic cofferdam system is permanently anchored around a location’s perimeter. It creates a barrier of flood protection that can be deployed instantly in the event of a flood threat. When not deployed, it acts as a functional boardwalk.

7. Wearable device monitors muscle function

While there are wearable sensors for heart rate, skin temperature, and even electrolytes, no commercially available sensors monitor for muscle function. George Mason bioengineering professor Siddhartha Sikdar, director of the Center for Advancing Systems Science and Bioengineering Innovation, and Professor Parag Chitnis have developed a wireless wearable device that uses ultrasound sensors to monitor for muscle injury, function, and fatigue and can assess muscle recovery. The monitoring technology is ideal for sports medicine, personal fitness, and rehabilitation applications.

8. Promoting wound healing and closure

Inspired by a peptide that was first discovered in Komodo dragons, DRGN-1 is an antimicrobial peptide developed by College of Science researchers Barney Bishop, Monique Van Hoek, and Myung Chung. The peptide has been modified into a cost-effective antimicrobial and anti-biofilm treatment that can be used as an alternative to antibiotics in the treatment of infected wounds. The potential uses of DRGN-1 include antimicrobial sprays, wound dressings, topical gels, and as a coating for catheters.

Discover more technologies with the Office of Technology Transfer

Five Things to Know about George Mason’s Mobile CoffeeBots

Colleen Rich — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 16:36:06 +0000

Five Things to Know about George Mason’s Mobile CoffeeBots Colleen Rich Mon, 09/30/2024 - 12:36

Sometimes the most elegant solutions are the simplest, like using one waste product to eliminate another, such as used coffee grounds, called CoffeeBots, engineered in a ��AV laboratory.

From left to right: Jeff Moran, Amit Kumar Singh, and Tarini Basireddy pose with CoffeeBot samples.
Photo by Teresa Donnellan.

CoffeeBots can remove pollutants from seawater. By combining spent coffee grounds with iron oxide (rust), George Mason engineers have created CoffeeBots in the laboratory of College of Engineering and Computing professor Jeff Moran using the remains of Moran’s morning brew. Moran’s lab focuses on developing self-propelled microparticles for medical and environmental applications.
A CoffeeBot can move through water by using a magnet. Coffee grounds have an irregular, porous surface to which pollutants can bind, even with the much smaller iron oxide nanoparticles attached. Since iron oxide is magnetic, a simple handheld magnet can drive CoffeeBots through polluted water and remove them.
CoffeeBots are reusable. While using coffee grounds to clean up oil spills is not entirely new, this team is the first to show that mobile CoffeeBots outperform stationary ones since moving particles encounter more pollutant molecules. Making the coffee grounds magnetic has another benefit: Once the CoffeeBots are recovered, they can be reused several times before losing their efficacy.
Students discovered the use of coffee grounds. Postdoctoral research fellow Amit Kumar Singh in Moran’s lab originally proposed the project as a way for then-Thomas Jefferson High School student Tarini Basireddy to gain hands-on experience in the laboratory without having to interact with dangerous chemicals.
CoffeeBots can be used against three types of seawater pollutants: methylene blue, oil, and microplastics. The team found that the particles can be an effective solution for cleaning methylene blue, a carcinogenic dye commonly used in textile production, especially when they are first loaded with ascorbic acid, which helps break down the dye and render it nontoxic. And microplastics, like oil, cling to coffee grounds because they are hydrophobic.

Learn more about CoffeeBots

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invention

College of Engineering and Computing

Five Things

Retro Mason: Hussam wins Grainger Challenge Prize 2007

Colleen Rich — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 17:10:05 +0000

Retro Mason: Hussam wins Grainger Challenge Prize 2007 Colleen Rich Wed, 08/03/2022 - 13:10

��AV chemistry professor Abul Hussam won the $1 million Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability Gold Award from the National Academy of Engineering for his inexpensive water filtration system designed to remove arsenic from drinking water in his native Bangladesh.

In some developing areas, village water wells often contain the poisonous element arsenic. In Bangladesh alone, more than 18 million people daily drink arsenic-contaminated water. For Hussam, this threat hit close to home. After years of research and testing, Hussam and his brothers developed the Sono filter, which costs only $35 and lasts at least five years. More than 250,000 of these filters can be found in homes, schools, and businesses in Bangladesh, Nepal, and India.

His invention also garnered him the Bangladesh American Society for Humanity Award and led Time magazine to name Hussam one of the 2007 Global Heroes of the Environment.

Hussam, pictured here (left) in 2007 with graduate student Kirubel Assegid and the Sono filter, is director of the Center for Clean Water and Sustainable Technologies in the College of Science.

Photo credit: Evan Cantwell/Creative Services

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Mason professor Mahesh P. Joshi aims to license his business strategy game

Colleen Rich — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 10:00:34 +0000

Mason professor Mahesh P. Joshi aims to license his business strategy game Colleen Rich Tue, 03/03/2020 - 05:00

In This Story

Maheshkumar P. (Mahesh) Joshi

School of Business professor Mahesh P. Joshi created BiggieBills after searching for years for an interactive strategy game to use in his classes. Photo by Lathan Goumas/Office of Communications and Marketing.

The idea came to him in the middle of the night during a cruise with family and friends. He spent the next day in the cabin, writing out the rules for a novel business strategy board game.

Despite being on vacation, Mahesh P. Joshi, associate professor of global strategy and entrepreneurship at ��AV’s School of Business, recruited his family and friends to test out the card game. In the middle of playing, Raj S. Davé, a family friend and patent lawyer, suddenly said, “We need everyone to sign confidentiality agreements before we continue playing.”

And that’s how Joshi knew he had invented something different. In December 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed and granted a patent for BiggieBills, a complex interactive strategy game designed for executive training, company retreats and business classes. BiggieBills will be available for licensing agreements in May, once the game is digitalized.

“The idea that I should create a game to help people better understand complex business strategy had been festering in my brain for a while,” said Joshi. “But the details of what that game would be came together at once, and I had to rush to get it down.”

BiggieBills is a business strategy game that is played in teams. Photo by Lathan Goumas/Office of Communications and Marketing.

Joshi was the founding director of Mason’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and recently served as its director of research and practice. In addition to teaching Mason students and research, Joshi advises and provides consulting to the public-sector, private-sector and not-for-profit organizations about corporate entrepreneurship and strategic and cross-cultural business management.

Joshi is introducing BiggieBills in the classes he teaches, including executive training sessions for companies and government agencies. In addition, he’s marketing the game to other business schools and executive training programs.

BiggieBills is a “team game that is fast paced, has an explicit goal and evolves in a dynamic competitive context,” said Roy W. Hinton, former associate dean of executive education at the School of Business who encouraged Joshi to develop BiggieBills. “It generates great team discussions about appropriate moves, and players quickly see the impact of their decisions.”

BiggieBills is played in teams, and can be adapted to include as many as 50 players. Each team takes on the role of an established business trying to gain the top position in a chosen industry. The standard game lasts about three hours, and a crucial point in the learning process occurs when the game facilitator debriefs at the end.

The game is focused on business strategy, but can be modified to include other topics, such as entrepreneurship, new product development and sales management. The two main ways to win are to be the first team to earn a billion dollars or to be the last remaining team standing after all others have declared bankruptcy.

Davé, president of the Davé Law Group in Alexandria, Virginia, said that the game is a teaching tool that is fun to play.

“Why is it fun? It’s influenced by luck and strategy, just like life. You can win or lose, just like in life,” said Davé, who helped Joshi obtain the patent on his game.

Joshi said he created BiggieBills after searching for years for an interactive strategy game to use in his class, but not liking what he found.

“There’s no game like this around,” said Joshi. “If there had been, I would have used it in my classes, and wouldn’t have had to invent it.”