UB inventors to be honored at workshop
Program on May 1 to include session on rules and regulations of patent process

By Sue Wuetcher
Reporter Editor

Nineteen UB inventors will be honored at a workshop and awards presentation to be held from 2-5:30 p.m. May 1 in the University Inn and Conference Center, 2401 N. Forest Road, Amherst.

The event is presented by the UB Business Alliance Office of Technology Transfer & Licensing. Co-sponsors are the Erie County Industrial Development Agency and Empire State Development Corp.

The workshop will explore the creative process, the importance of documenting inventions and the latest rules and regulations regarding protecting inventions through the patent process. It is geared toward inventors and engineers in small and large companies, university and government researchers, technology managers and students.

Following the workshop, an awards presentation will be held to recognize the inventors named on the 22 patents issued to The Research Foundation of State University of New York in 1999. The inventors are:

- Luis A. Colon, associate professor of chemistry, who invented a method of fabricating organic-inorganic hybrid materials based on silica.

- Hugh Van Liew, professor emeritus of physiology, who developed a liquid perfluorocarbon emulsion that is used as an effective artificial blood substitute. Co-inventors are Mark Burkard, formerly of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics; Claes Lundgren, professor of physiology, and Ingvald Tyssebotn, professor of physiology.

- Anthony Campagnari, associate professor of microbiology, who invented a new method for detecting the presence or absence of amplified nucleic acid products. Co-inventors are David W. Dyer, formerly of the Department of Microbiology, and M. Bud Nelson of Columbus, Ohio. Campagnari also was named on a patent for an outer-membrane protein of the bacterium that causes middle-ear infections.

- Linda Hall, professor emeritus of biochemical pharmacology, who isolated and sequenced from Drosophila a full-length cDNA clone encoding a novel protein required for insect sodium channel expression. Co-inventor is Guoping Feng, formerly of the Department of Biochemical Pharmacology.

- Marie-Louise Hammarskjold, formerly of the Department of Biochemistry, who invented a DNA sequence in which the code for the REV gene of HIV has been deleted. Co-inventors are David Rekosh, formerly professor of biochemistry; Molly Burton, formerly of the Department of Biochemistry, and Eric Hunter of the University of Alabama.

- Thomas I. Kalman, professor of medicinal chemistry and biochemical pharmacology, who invented a chemical method for making novel prodrug forms of important drugs that are used to treat viral infections, such as AIDS and hepatitis.

- Dennis C. Policastro, formerly of Erie County Medical Center, who developed a device that provides a simple and inexpensive aid to the physician in estimating the pressure in the jugular vein. Co-inventors are Robert E. Mates, professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Kenneth Peebles, engineering design assistant in the engineering school.

- Ping-Chin Cheng, professor of electrical engineering, who has invented an iterative process for cone-beam tomography. Co-inventors are Donald Snyder of Clayton, Mo.; Joseph OÕSullivan of St. Louis; Ge Wang of Iowa City, and Michael Vannier of Alton, Ill.

- Paras Prasad, executive director of the Institute for Research in Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics, who developed styryl dyes and materials and their applications. Co-inventors are Jayant Bhawalkar, formerly research assistant professor of chemistry; Guang S. He, senior research scientist in the Department of Chemistry; Chan E. Zhao, Raz Gvishi, Gary E. Ruland and Jaroslaw Zieba, all formerly of the Department of Chemistry; Ping-Chin Cheng, professor of electrical engineering, and Shan Jen Pan of the Department of Electrical Engineering.

- Linda B. Ludwig, assistant professor of medicine, who developed a method that mimics a mechanism used by HIV to down regulate gene expression, a process that may be utilized for HIV-gene therapy.

- Donald D. Hickey, research assistant professor of physiology, who invented a method used to determine mean left atrial transmural pressure from the esophageal balloon placed adjacent to the left atrium.

- Timothy F. Murphy, professor of medicine and microbiology, who was granted two patents for two different surface proteins on the bacterium Moraxella catarrhalisÑthe third-most-common cause of middle-ear infections in childrenÑwhich may be used as vaccines to prevent these infections.

- Jeffrey Higginbotham, associate professor of communicative disorders and sciences, who invented a device that allows individuals a fast and effective means of speaking through a computer using natural language utterances. Co-inventor is David P. Wilkins of the Max Plank Institute in the Netherlands.

- Richard T. Evans, associate professor of oral biology and microbiology, who developed new drugs to treat gingivitis and periodontal diseases, and which also may be useful in other acute and chronic inflammatory infectious diseases. Co-inventors are Robert Genco, SUNY Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Oral Biology; Robert Coburn, professor of medicinal chemistry; and Joseph Dunn of Therex, Inc.

- Eli Ruckenstein, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, who invented a new method to prepare composites with high toughness by exploiting the incompatibility of the polymers. Co-inventor is Li Hangquan. Ruckenstein also was named as the inventor on a patent for creating a method of preparing chitosan macroporous membranes with controlled porosity. His co-inventor is Xianfang Zeng of the Department of Chemical Engineering.

- Andrew J. Wand, research assistant in the Department of Chemistry, who designed a self-sealing, high-pressure cell for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging. Co-inventors are Mark R. Ehrhardt and Jeffrey L. Urbauer of the Department of Chemistry.

- Wayne A. Anderson, professor of electrical engineering, who invented a thin-film capacitor that can be used to improve the memory in computer applications. Co-inventor is Lin Huang Chang of the Department of Electrical Engineering.

- Deborah D.L. Chung, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and Niagara Mohawk Chair of Materials Research, who invented a mesoporous carbon, which has a larger pore size allowing for a wider range of applications. Co-inventor is Wieming Lu, a doctoral student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

- Joseph W. Vilani, clinical assistant professor of nuclear medicine, who developed a quality control test pattern to be used in nuclear medicine clinics.