Technology Blog

The University of California, Santa Barbara is now marketing a novel method to determine the proper formulation of chemical permeation enhancers to dramatically increase the transephithelial permeability of therapeutic compounds delivered through mucous membranes, as well as novel formulations based on those methods. By increasing permeability, smaller dosages of the therapeutic are required, decreasing toxicity.

A Non-Confidential Description of the technology is available at this link: http://www.industry.ucsb.edu/technologies/details/2008-365

For more information about the above technology, please contact Franco Caporale at 805-893-2073 or caporale@research.ucsb.edu

The Troland annual research awards of $50,000 given to each of two recipients to recognize unusual achievement and to further their research within the broad spectrum of experimental psychology – go to Miguel P. Eckstein, associate professor, Vision and Image Understanding Laboratory, department of psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, and to Isabel Gauthier, associate professor of psychology, department of psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville. Eckstein was honored “for sophisticated theoretical analysis and modeling that address fundamental issues in perception and cognition and their application to the practical problems of medical imaging.” Gauthier was chosen “for seminal experiments on the role of visual expertise in the recognition of complex objects including faces and for exploration of brain areas activated by this recognition.” The Troland Research Awards were established by a bequest from Leonard T. Troland and have been presented since 1984.

(Source: http://www.nationalacademies.org/)

The University of California, Santa Barbara is now marketing a new method of using hollow gold nanospheres (HGN) located within or tethered to liposomes, together with pulsed near infrared (NIR) laser irradiation, to create the rapid release of a therapeutic agent from liposomes to the targeted area. In situ tests have demonstrated that this method ruptures over 90% of the liposomes in approximately 10 seconds, without use of toxic reagents or the need to heat large scale areas.

A Non-Confidential Description of the technology is available at this link: http://www.industry.ucsb.edu/technologies/details/2008-435

For more information about the above technology, please contact Franco Caporale at 805-893-2073 or caporale@research.ucsb.edu

The University of California, Santa Barbara is actively seeking a company interested in commercializing a series of novel red phosphors that are based on vanadate garnets. The unique color characteristics as well as the high chemical stability make them interesting candidates for red phosphors in the next generation of UV LED-based white lamps. This new technology is patent pending and currently available for licensing.

A Non-Confidential Description of the technology is available at this link: UC Case 2008-080 Non-Confidential Description

For more information about the above technology, please contact Franco Caporale at 805-893-2073 or caporale@research.ucsb.edu

The University of California, Santa Barbara is now marketing a new device that will allow the use of commercial LED light sources in existing halogen lamp housing. With this device, a microscope company could offer a light source for fluorescence imaging at a fraction of the cost and without investing in new optomechanics.

A Non-Confidential Description of the technology is available at this link: UC Case 2008-079 Non-Confidential Description

For more information about the above technology, please contact Franco Caporale at 805-893-2073 or caporale@research.ucsb.edu

The University of California, Santa Barbara is actively seeking a company interested in commercializing a new system called Envisor, for automatic construction of environmental maps. The Envisor system allows users with standard hardware to quickly acquire useful information about their environment, enabling experimentation with more advanced augmented reality technique. The two main contributions of Envisor are a modular orientation tracking algorithm that provides configurable, long-term and drift-free tracking, and a technique for using this tracked video feed to automatically create environment maps online.

A Non-Confidential Description of the technology is available at this link: UC Case 2008-061 - Non-Confidential Description

For more information about the above technology, please contact Franco Caporale at 805-893-2073 or caporale@research.ucsb.edu

Expanded Agreement Advances Konarka’s Leadership Position in Organic Photovoltaics

Lowell, Mass. - Oct. 22, 2007 - Konarka Technologies, Inc., an innovator in development and commercialization of Power Plastic ®, a material that converts light to energy, today announced the company has expanded its license agreement with DuPont Displays to advance the polymer work of Nobel Laureate Dr. Alan Heeger, chief scientist, co-founder and director of Konarka. The expanded intellectual property (IP) agreement gives Konarka sole rights to practice the technology covered by Dr. Heeger’s patents for photovoltaic (PV) applications, as well as several DuPont patents covering related technology. In 2004, Konarka announced licensing certain intellectual property from DuPont Displays to develop organic polymer-based solar cells, and today’s announcement grants Konarka a position as sole licensee and sublicensee in that field.

“The acquisition of a preferred position in this intellectual property will help us to further maintain our leadership position in the development of organic photovoltaic technology and the commercialization of Power Plastic®,” commented Rick Hess, president and CEO of Konarka. “Additionally, this will give us further IP protection of the technology in addition to the substantial Konarka patent portfolio.”

Under the original licensing agreement, Konarka has had access to certain intellectual property originally developed by DuPont and by the University of California at Santa Barbara, including work developed by Dr. Heeger, as well as work from Dr. Serdar Sariciftci. Now, Konarka is granted rights to a unique position with respect to these U.S. patents.

“We are very pleased that DuPont Displays™ technology developed as part of our OLED displays effort can also be a part of enabling the advancement of organic photovoltaic technology through this agreement with Konarka, said William Feehery, president of DuPont Displays.

About Konarka Technologies, Inc.
Konarka builds products that convert light to energy… anywhere. As the leading developer of polymer photovoltaic technology that provide a source of renewable power in a variety of form factors for commercial, industrial, government and consumer applications, Konarka has a broad portfolio of patents, technology licenses and an accomplished technical team. The Company’s Power Plastic® technology is focused on delivering lightweight, flexible, scalable and manufacturable products. Konarka Technologies is headquartered in Lowell, Mass., U.S.A., with European headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany, business development offices in Asia and a research and development facility in Austria. For additional information, visit http://www.konarka.com.

(Source: www.konarka.com)

Five faculty members at UC Santa Barbara have been awarded the distinction of Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.The new UC Santa Barbara AAAS Fellows are:

Guillermo C. Bazan, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, for design and realization of tandem catalysts for the production of polyolefins, and for the rational design of materials with desirable electro-optical properties.

Barbara Herr Harthorn, associate professor of women’s studies and director of the Center for Nanotechnnology in Society, for contributions in bringing together scientists, social scientists, policy makers, and the general public to gain awareness and understanding of the risks and opportunities in science and technology.

Ken C. Macdonald, professor of marine geophysics and Earth science, for fundamental contributions to the understanding of the tectonics of the world-encircling mid-ocean ridge system and the construction and evolution of oceanic crust.

John M. Melack, professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology and associate dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, for internationally recognized research on the inherently interdisciplinary topics of limnology and watershed-level biogeochemical cycles, in high mountains, saline lakes, and Amazon wetlands.

Jeffrey D. Richman, professor of physics, for contributions to the field of elementary particle physics, particularly for experiments exploring the physics of heavy quarks and the source of matter-antimatter asymmetry.

Currently, there are three technologies developed by Dr. Bazan’s research group that are available for licensing:

- UC Case 2000-395 “SOLUBLE TETRAHEDRAL COMPOUNDS FOR USE IN ELECTROLUMINESCENT DEVICES”
http://www.industry.ucsb.edu/technologies/details/2000-395

- UC Case 2003-157 “BINAPHTHOL BASED CHROMOPHORES FOR THE FABRICATION OF BLUE ORGANIC LIGHT EMITTING DIODES”
US Patent Application Number 10/759,505

- UC Case 2003-545 “BRIGHTER ORGANIC LIGHT EMITTING DIODES”
http://www.industry.ucsb.edu/technologies/details/2003-545

For more information about the above technologies, please contact Franco Caporale at 805-893-2073 or caporale@research.ucsb.edu

AmberWave Systems, a New Hampshire-based firm developing advanced technologies for semiconductor manufacturing, said Thursday that it has licensed technology from The University of California, Santa Barbara,. The licensing agreement covers material science research in the field of mesoporous materials, which are being used to develop fuel cells, high-performance batteris, and ultracapacitors. Financial terms of the licensing agreement were not disclosed. The technology is based on research in the school’s Department of Chemical Engineering, which was co-invented by Professor Brad Chmelka at UCSB.

Dr. Chemelka’s group is currently focused on the fabrication and functions of new catalysts, adsorbents, porous ceramics, and heterogeneous polymers. They also have a broad interest in heterogeneous solids, whose sizable variations in local ordering and dynamics have pronounced influences on the adsorption, reaction, optical, or mechanical properties of these material.

Source: www.socaltech.com (October 5, 2007)

Richard Kemmerer and Giovanni Vigna, two researchers of the UCSB Department of Computer Science, have found that several electronic voting machines have serious security vulnerabilities.

The UCSB team tested one of the three major brands of electronic voting machines, which are used in 48 of California’s 52 counties. Of the other two brands, one also was banned and the other was allowed to remain in use with tight security precautions. After about five weeks of working with the machines, the UCSB researchers found the Sequoia systems vulnerable both physically and electronically.

Their report to the secretary of state covered just about every imaginable way to skew an election, from sneaking in a stack of phony voting cards to infecting the electronic voting systems with malware. The team could only share broad outlines of their attacks – many of the details are still being kept secret by the state government.

Kemmerer said writing the malware to infect the system would take a highly skilled computer scientist, but starting the hacks would take very little training. He said the team tampered with the voting system without access to its source code.

“Even with the paper trail that is mandatory in California, you would not be able to tell that someone had modified the election. These machines were very vulnerable. This is a great victory for the public.” said Giovanni Vigna.

(Source: Pacific Coast Business Times - August 16th 2007)

The UCSB Office of Technology & Industry Alliances is currently marketing an anomaly detection technique developed by Richard Kemmerer and Giovanni Vigna that automatically translates suspicious web requests into anomaly signatures. For more information about this invention, please contact Franco Caporale at 805-893-2073 or caporale@research.ucsb.edu.