Penn State Among Top Ten University Patent Recipients
March 4, 2003
University Park, Pa. --- The United States Patent and Trademark Office has ranked Penn State among the top 10 university patent recipients of 2002.
Penn State is the only school in Pennsylvania to make the top ten and is ninth in the U.S. in the number of patents awarded last year. Penn State was 11th in the nation in 2001.
The top ten, in order, are: University of California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of Texas, Johns Hopkins University, University of Wisconsin, State University of New York, Penn State and Michigan State University.
James E. Rogan, Under Secretary and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, notes, “The protection of intellectual property is an incentive for putting ideas and creativity to work. New discoveries create the entrepreneurs of small business, provide new jobs and economic growth, and are the foundation to our nation’s prosperity.”
Many of the 50 patents awarded to Penn State last year are already generating business, jobs and economic growth at spinoff companies. For example, two patents on inventions related to catalysis technology for pharmaceutical applications, developed by Dr. Xumu Zhang, associate professor of chemistry, are being put to work at Chiral Quest, Inc. The company is the first start-up based solely on Penn State technology to become publicly traded.
Thin film technology for deposited silica and other materials was invented by Dr. Stephen Fonash, the Bayard D. Kunkle professor of engineering and director of the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility, and was patented by the University last year. Fonash’s co-inventors are Ali Kaan Kalkan, research assistant, and Sanghoon Bae, a former graduate student. The technology is being commercialized at NanoHorizons Inc., a spinoff housed in the Technology Centre Incubator of the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County located at Innovation Park at Penn State.
A gel drug delivery method invented by Dr. Daniel R. Deaver, adjunct professor of dairy and animal science, and Dr. David Edwards, former associate professor of chemical engineering, was also patented last year and is being commercialized by EIEICO, Inc. The company was formed in 1999 when Penn State bundled inventions related to new poultry feed and swine genetics into the same start up company to bring new agricultural products to market.
In fiscal 2002, Penn State expended more than $500 million on the research and creative activities from which patentable inventions spring. The research funding comes primarily from federal, industry and foundation sources, is spent in Pennsylvania and stimulates the local economy. For faculty and students at Penn State, the opportunity to do relevant and commercially useful research is an important component of the educational experience and fulfills a central mission of the University to serve the people of the Commonwealth and the nation.
**bah**