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Technology Gap Innovation Fund (TGIF) Award Recipients

TGIF funds have been awarded for a diverse group of projects at the UW.

2009 First Round TGIF Award Recipients
2008 Second Round TGIF Award Recipients
2008 First Round TGIF Award Recipients
2007 Second Round TGIF Award Recipients
2007 First Round TGIF Award Recipients
2006 Second Round TGIF Award Recipients
2006 First Round TGIF Award Recipients
2005 Second Round TGIF Award Recipients
2005 First Round TGIF Award Recipients
2004 First Round TGIF Award Recipients

The recipients of the TGIF awards for the first round of 2009 are:

• Guozhong Cao of Materials Science and Engineering will further develop his Dye-sensitized Solar Cell technology.  Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC) is one of the most promising thin-film based photovolatics (PV) technologies, exhibiting higher conversion efficiency, more durability and lower production costs than its competitors.  Cao's popcorn-style nano-aggregates are engineered to be drop-in replacement for current photoelectrodes, which will facilitate integration into large-scale DSC manufacturing.

• Corey Fagan, Ph.D. and Jon Hauser of Psychology will complete the development of the TOPS (Tracking Outcomes of Psychological Services) platform originally implemented as a pilot system in the UW's Psychological Services and Training Center.  While many mental health treatments are found to be highly-effective when properly delivered mental health practitioners lack the quantitative data necessary to determine the parameters of quality treatment delivery.  TOPS allows providers of psychological services to monitor patient outcomes, by bundling over 40 psychometrically-sound instruments that monitor client functioning at baseline, at each session, and at termination.  TOPS captures data that will enable mental health practitioners to improve upon treatments, treatment measures and training techniques over time.

• Blake Hannaford of Electrical Engineering and Mika Sinanan of Surgery will build and test a Smart Multi-sensing Grasper prototype for use as a surgical tool.  By integrating multiple bio-sensors in close proximity on the grasper surface the grasper jaws will gather a combination of data about the grasped tissue insitu.  In addition to restoring a lost sense of touch, surgeons will be able to distinguish tumors from healthy tissue.

• Rodney Ho of Pharmaceutics will further develop a novel lipid nano particle that would drastically improve the performance of a contrast agent for use in MRIs and PET scans.  The new formulation is also safer on the patient.  Developing a more potent contrast agent used in these imaging technologies would also allow for early disease diagnosis with the hope of improving patient outcomes.

• Alex Jen and Angus Yip of Materials Science and Engineering will develop a cost effective and easy to adopt manufacturing process for their transparent organic electrode.  Companies are currently using brittle and expensive inorganic electrode materials such as Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) to manufacture touch screens, LCD displays, electroferretic displays, architectural lighting and photovoltaic cells.  ITO producers and consumers are keenly interested in finding a replacement for ITO as it is difficult to produce in large quantities and one of its components, Indium, is both restricted in terms of supply and mined in less than ideal locations.

• Tadayoshi Kohno and Arvind Krishnamurthy of Computer Science and Engineering will improve the OpenAdeona technology built to provide mobile device security.  The OpenAdeona solution tracks devices in a way that maintains the user's privacy and enables scenarios where the owner can privately connect to a device remotely and issue commands or downloads data, to protect the data on the device.  According to a recent study by Intel the average lost laptop costs $50,000 due to lost data.

• Dr. Wei Li of Mechanical Engineering and his team have developed a method to selectively foam polymeric devices using high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), creating an open-celled foam structure through which, fluids may be passed.  The unique plastic forms created by this process can conform to printed circuit boards and be used to cool electronic devices more efficiently than current methods.  This method will be scalable in a way that metals and silicon are not, making the process simpler and less expensive than boxing entire systems and cooling them with a spray.

• Dr. Andre Lieber of Medicine will further develop a drug therapy designed to enhance the efficacy of existing therapeutic monoclonal antibodies used to treat cancer.  To date the technology has demonstrated significant improvements in the killing of tumor cells both in vitro and in vivo.  The team will use the funds to generate the necessary preclinical efficacy and safety data.  If successful the therapeutic product would be positioned for commercialization success.

• A team led by Prof. Eve Riskin of Electrical Engineering and Prof. Richard Ladner of Computer Science and Engineering has developed a sophisticated video codec for conducting real-time two-way video communication over a 3G or WiFi network.  The first application of the technology, named MobileASL, enables deaf people to use mobile phones to communicate with each other or an interpreter.  Funds will be used to transition the technology for commercial licensing.

• Brian Schowengerdt of Mechanical Engineering and his team have developed a very small (1 mm in diameter by 9 mm in length) projector to be incorporated in cell phones, handheld PCs, laptops, and other mobile devices.  They will use the funds to build a portable demonstration unit as these new "pico projectors" are of interest for consumer and business applications.  The projector unit of the FSD or Fiber Scanned Display is orders of magnitude smaller than other pico projector technologies, its wider throw angle enables it to project larger images from a shorter distance, and it can be fabricated with lower material costs.

The recipients of the TGIF awards for the second round of 2008 are:

• David Baker, Alexandre Zanghellini and colleagues in Biochemistry and the interdisciplinary Biomolecular Structure and Design group have developed a method for computational enzyme design to create on-demand enzymes for use in agrobusiness, the biopharmaceutical industry, and industrial and other markets in which made-to-order enzymes are needed to catalyze chemical reactions.  The team will make technical improvements to the software technology.

• Mark M. Benjamin of Civil and Environmental Engineering has developed a new particle that when coated on water purification membranes, greatly reduces fouling due to clogging of membrane pores. The new coating and water treatment process requires fewer cleaning steps and less transmembrane pressure, increasing membrane efficiency for filtering contaminants. The team will test the new process in realistic settings.
  

• Jae-Hyun Chung of Mechanical Engineering will develop a prototype biosensor platform for the rapid detection of tuberculosis infection. The current methods of TB diagnosis require expensive equipment and trained technicians generally unavailable in developing countries. The most accurate method is bacterial culture, which  requires two to four weeks.  Chung’s biosensor, which utilizes a nanotip concentration method, will enable amplification-free detection of genomic Mycobacterium tuberculosis in one hour.

• Nancy Maizels of Immunology has developed a platform for rapid production of high-affinity, virus-specific antibodies. Maizels’ group will use the method to generate diagnostic monoclonal antibodies that recognize Hepatitis C and West Nile viruses.
  

• Alex Mamishev of Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering has developed a highly effective and efficient evaporative electrospray technology for cooling microelectronic devices.  His team will demonstrate proof of concept for this new technology that promises greater cooling capacity for high heat flux applications.
  

• Kenneth Schenkman of the School of Medicine has developed a method and device that directly and non-invasively monitors shock in real time. Early identification and continuous monitoring of shock in trauma and critically ill patients will save lives and decrease medical costs. Schenkman’s team will make technical advancements to the device in preparation for testing.

• James Stout in the School of Medicine and the UW research group,  interactive Medical Training Resources (iMTR),  have developed Spirometry 360, an interactive online training and quality assurance program for spirometry, a testing procedure central to the screening, diagnosis and monitoring of respiratory disease.  The new web-based program, which consists of three components, expands upon the highly commercially successful Spirometry Fundamentals training CD through reinvestment of project royalties.

The recipients of the TGIF awards for the first round of 2008 are:

• Professor Karl Bohringer of Electrical Engineering is developing microfluidics systems based on the movement of droplets along textured surfaces. This technology will provide a unique, efficient, flexible, and low-cost alternative for micro-scale analysis of biological liquid samples. These systems have commercial potential in the field of portable and disposable biomedical devices for "point-of-care" patient testing and for research. The TGIF funds will be applied to designing, fabricating, and testing the technology.

• Raimondo D'Ambrosio, associate professor of Neurosurgery will use TGIF funds to improve features of his Algorithmic eXplorer of Electrophysiological Signals (AXES) software. AXES automates the mining of large sets of brain wave data, a big improvement over the current practice of manual brain wave data analysis, which is time consuming, slow, and expensive. The software will be marketed to pharmaceutical companies and laboratories involved in the discovery of drugs for epilepsy, a condition that afflicts approximately 2 million Americans. AXES is already being used to test epilepsy therapies in vivo.

• Computer Science & Engineering assistant professor James Fogarty, associate professor James Landay, and graduate student Michael Toomim are developing a solution for controlling access to semi-private content on the Internet based on shared knowledge of users. This novel approach will eliminate the need for remembering passwords and adding users to lists of "friends," making the sharing and viewing of semi-private content on social websites easier and more intuitive. The team will apply the awarded funds to designing, building, and testing a plug-in application and a platform-independent Web application.

• The laboratory of Materials Science & Engineering professor Alex Jen will use TGIF funds to build a large-scale prototype organic photovoltaic cell device for harvesting solar energy. The organic solar cells are stable and highly efficient, and represent an advance in ultra-low-cost photovoltaic technology. The development of the prototype will be key to the successful commercialization of the solar cells, which could lead to roof tiles, windows, and portable electronic devices that generate their own power supply.

• The research group of assistant professor Babak Parviz of Electrical Engineering is developing a power supply for "functional" contact lenses: lenses that incorporate a display, electronics, wireless telecommunication, biosensors and other sophisticated technology. Parviz' group will use TGIF funds to design, fabricate, and demonstrate the operation of a photovoltaic power supply integrated on a contact lens.

• Chunye Xu, research assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering, and professor Minoru Taya of Mechanical Engineering will use TGIF funds to optimize the design of a tactile array for use in orthotics, prosthetics and cosmetic enhancements. These new sensors are based on electroactive polymers that provide significant advantages over sensors currently in use: they sense forces in three dimensions (vectoral forces), they are flexible and thus fit better into prosthetics and orthotics, they are low cost, and they require low power consumption.

• PhD student Woon Jong Yoon and Eric Seibel, research associate professor of Mechanical Engineering will use their TGIF award funds to build a working prototype of a unique cytoscope imaging device for scanning the interior surface of the bladder. As opposed to manually operated cytoscopes, which are the current standard, Yoon and Seibel's imaging device is remotely controlled. This robotic scope is computer programmed to scan the bladder in an efficient motion sequence, ensuring a complete 3-D picture and substantially reducing the likelihood of missing a cancerous tumor. The device is also smaller and more flexible than current rigid scopes, and thus more comfortable for patients.

The recipients of the TGIF awards for the second round of 2007 are:

• Rodney Ho and John Hoekman of Pharmaceutics will develop a prototype pressurized drug-delivery device that deposits drug in the upper nasal cavity, providing direct access to the brain, which increases drug effectiveness and reduces toxic side effects from drugs given orally or intravenously. The researchers will also collect preclinical data to demonstrate the enhanced delivery of two analgesic drugs to the central nervous system.

• Rose Ann Cattolico of Biology will optimize the industrial-scale culture of a high lipid-containing strain of algae that produces biofuel. The algae cultured in Cattolico's laboratory grow rapidly in fresh water (as opposed to marine environments, which many algae require) and can be cultured in high volume. The funds will support research to generate high lipid-producing strains, optimize the lipid quality, and determine the effect of various factors on lipid production.

• Pierre Mourad of the Applied Physics Lab and Joel Berg of Pediatric Dentistry will build and test a bench-top LED (light-emitting diode) device to identify locations in teeth where cavities may be forming. The device will be the first inexpensive and simple system to identify cavities without using lasers.

• Wesley C. Van Voorhis of Medicine will produce and test a new, more sensitive and specific diagnostic test for syphilis. Van Voorhis and colleagues have discovered three protein antigens of the organism that causes syphilis. The team will collaborate with the Program for Appropriate Technology for Health (PATH) to use the antigens in the development of point-of-care diagnostic test strips.

• Paul Yager of Bioengineering and colleagues have developed a bench-top system to monitor the concentration of a popular anti-epileptic drug in saliva rather than blood. They will develop and validate a second assay for another commonly-prescribed drug, and combine the two tests into one while demonstrating reliability and accuracy comparable to blood-based tests. Their ultimate goal is to develop a practical system for drug monitoring at home, saving patients time and money.

The recipients of the TGIF awards for the first round of 2007 are:

• Glenn Bartholomew of Chemistry will use TGIF funds to further develop and optimize a simpler method for processing organic electronic devices than is currently used. A major hurdle to the wider use and longer lifetimes of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) for electronic displays is that currently used materials degrade quickly in the presence of air. The new process uses organic electronic materials that are not degraded by oxygen.

• Daniel Chiu of Chemistry and colleagues at UW startup Pfemtoquest will apply TGIF funds to the testing and clinical trial of their patent pending biochip filter for the prognosis of breast cancer. The biochip recovers circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood, which correlate with patient disease status, treatment success, and patient survival rate.

• Jae-Hyun Chung of Mechanical Engineering will use his TGIF award to fund the demonstration of Shadow Edge Lithography (SEL). SEL is used to fabricate nano-sized structures on semiconductors and biochips. The throughput and resolution of the SEL technique are far superior to currently available methods.

• David Koelle of Medicine will direct TGIF funds to the creation and testing of a second generation vaccine for Herpes Simplex-2 (HSV-2), the virus that causes genital herpes. If successful in current and future studies, the vaccine could prevent serious and even fatal infections in neonates and immune compromised persons, and reduce the risk of infection with other sexually transmitted agents such as HIV.

• Vikram Jandhyala and John D. Rockway of Electrical Engineering will use their TGIF award to fund beta testing of their simulation software Lab-on- Chip Design Analysis. This unique, fast software allows for large-scale 3-D modeling and analysis of physical effects such as fluidic flow and particle motion in microfluidic devices.

• Tueng T. Shen of Ophthalmology and Bioengineering will apply TGIF funds to the completion of experiments with a prototype antibiotic drug delivery system for patients receiving artificial intraocular lenses during surgery for cataracts. The drug delivery system attaches to the implanted lens and delivers a consistent amount of antibiotics to prevent infection after surgery.

The 2006 Second Round TGIF Award recipients and their projects are:

• Michael R. Bailey of the Applied Physics Laboratory will use the TGIF award to make improvements to and test a new system for determining when kidney stones have broken up completely during treatment. This feedback will lessen damage to the kidneys and surrounding tissue by reducing the number of shock waves used in treatment.

• Valerie Daggett of Medicinal Chemistry has designed a sophisticated software program for modeling and simulating protein dynamics, such as protein folding and interactions with other molecules. TGIF funds will support the development of a graphical user interface and functionality needed for protein and drug design.

• Daniel F. Leotta of the Applied Physics Laboratory will use TGIF funds to modify and test an ultrasound-based system for detecting breast cancer and monitoring the effectiveness of chemotherapy. The ultrasound system detects small, early stage tumors, (an improvement over x-ray mammography) by detecting new blood vessels associated with malignant tumors.

• James M. Olson of Pediatrics has developed a molecular probe named “Tumor Paint” to help surgeons distinguish brain tumors and other cancers from normal surrounding tissue. TGIF funds will be used to further study the properties of Tumor Paint.

• Babak Amir Parviz of Electrical Engineering will use TGIF funds to design, build, and demonstrate the operation of a small (100 x 100 pixel) flexible display created with a micro-component self-assembly process that also incorporates single crystal LEDs and silicon transistors. This prototype will demonstrate a novel approach to the cost-effective manufacture of high performance flexible displays.

• Daniel T. Schwartz of Chemical Engineering will use the TGIF award to produce sample products created with a unique low-cost, single-step process for producing 3-D metal patterns. Electrochemical Printing (EcP) replaces multiple steps and tools currently in use.

• Younan Xia of Chemistry will use TGIF funds to demonstrate high volume production of electrospun nanofibers. Electrospinning produces thousands of nanofibers with uniform diameters. These fibers have potential uses in antimicrobial films, purification membranes, and electrochemical and energy-storage applications.

The 2006 First Round TGIF Award recipients and their projects are:

• Blake Hannaford of Electrical Engineering and Anuja Bhandari of Ophthalmology were awarded TGIF funds to further develop an eye surgery simulator for assessing learned skills of new surgeons. The simulator will cost thousands less than current simulators on the market.

• Chunye Xu and Minoru Taya of Mechanical Engineering will use TGIF funds to develop and optimize prototypes of sunglasses, helmet face shields, and goggles employing electro-chromic polymers. This approach permits lenses that can change from light to dark in less than a second, are available in different colors, and can be manufactured using inexpensive materials.

• Randal Ching and colleagues in Mechanical Engineering, and David Haynor and Yangqiu Hu of Radiology will use the TGIF award to fund test their Patient-Specific Models. These 3-D anatomically accurate plastic prototypes allow surgeons to "see and feel" the part of the body they will work on before going into the operating room. The models are manufactured much faster and with higher quality than similar commercially available products.

• Shaoyi Jiang of Chemical Engineering was awarded TGIF funds to develop and test a marine coating paint made with highly effective antimicrobial compounds that are non-toxic to the environment, unlike metal-based paints currently used to coat marine vessels.

• Ram Samudrala of Microbiology will apply TGIF funds to the in vivo testing of a compound that has been shown to be effective against all three classes of herpes virus in the laboratory. The compound fights the virus in a novel way, which is important as the herpes virus is developing resistance to drugs currently on the market.

The 2005 Second Round TGIF Award recipients and their projects are:

• Lawrence Crum of the Applied Physics Lab, Bioengineering, and Electrical Engineering, whose award will support the design, construction, and testing of a prototype device that uses high-intensity ultrasound to ablate and cauterize tissues in laparoscopic surgical procedures. The device will reduce blood loss and preserve more of the organ of interest.

• Xingde Li, Bioengineering, whose award will help fund the development, implementation, and testing of a compact hand-held device to perform real-time focus tracking with a scanning optical coherence tomography (OCT) endoscope. The OCT scope with focus tracking will permit tissue imaging with ultrahigh resolution, enhancing the capability of detecting cancer early.

• Hui Liu, Electrical Engineering, who will use TGIF funds to develop a test bed to demonstrate Structures Dirty Paper Coding (SDPC) technology on wireless networks and digital subscriber lines. SDPC can increase the usable bandwidth of a network for negligible cost.

• Kenneth A. Schenkman of the Departments of Anesthesiology and Pediatrics, Gordon A. Cohen of the Cardiothoracic Division of the Department of Surgery; and Lorilee S. L. Arakaki and Wayne Ciesielski, Pediatrics, whose TGIF funding will enable clinical testing of a reflectance optical spectroscopy instrument for directly measuring heart cell function during cardiac surgery. The instrument will allow surgeons to monitor oxygen levels and intervene to prevent heart tissue damage when oxygen levels are low.

• Uri Shumlak, Aeronautics & Astronautics, and Brian Nelson, Electrical Engineering, whose TGIF funding will support the design, assembly and testing of a plasma-based extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source for use in fabricating nanometer-scale features on semiconductor chips. The project will demonstrate a stable, high power EUV light source for photolithographic processing of next generation microelectronic devices.

• Dan Suciu, Computer Science & Engineering, who will use TGIF funds to develop a demo for a probabilistic database system that can query imprecise data. This technology will allow for the management and query of large amounts of heterogeneous, often unstructured data.

• James Preston Van Hooser of the Comparative Medicine Department, whose TGIF award will be used to construct, test, and evaluate a novel hands-free workstation to decontaminate animal cages in specific pathogen-free environments. The workstation will reduce the time spent disinfecting animal cages and will increase user handling control, thereby reducing the potential for pathogen contamination and endangerment to the animals.

The 2005 First Round TGIF Award recipients and their projects are:

• Les Atlas of Electrical Engineering and Pamela Souza of Speech and Hearing Sciences, whose award will fund the demonstration of a patented technology that dramatically improves the ability of the hearing-impaired to isolate a desired speaker's voice in the presence of other conversations and noise.

• Maya Gupta, Electrical Engineering, whose grant will fund the improvements and testing of an algorithm that improves the quality of printed images.

• Vikram Jandhyala, Electrical Engineering, for enhancements to a unique suite of simulation software for designing micro- and nanoelectronics.

• Vipin Kumar, Electrical Engineering, for the development and testing of prototype microcellular vinyl siding, which uses less material and is a better insulator than traditional vinyl siding.

• Wei-Chih Wang and Per Reinhall of Mechanical Engineering, for development of a prototype electro-optic imaging system whose small size will render medical procedures such as endoscopies much less invasive.

• Younan Xia, Chemistry, for the scale-up of silver and gold nanostructure synthesis for electronics and medical applications such as cancer diagnosis and treatment.

• Miqin Zhang, Engineered Biomaterials and Materials Science and Engineering, for the construction of hybrid scaffolding material for repair and regeneration of load-bearing and large bone defects.

The 2004 First Round TGIF Award recipients and their projects are:

• Alex Jen, Materials Science and Engineering, whose development of a prototype white organic light-emitting diode device will enable high-quality lighting that is environmentally friendly, bright, and adaptable to any shape, design, and color.

• David T. Linker of Internal Medicine and Cardiology, whose grant will support refinement of a lightweight, non-invasive device for long-term monitoring of atrial fibrillation, which will aid in the reduction of stroke and congestive heart failure.

• John W. Gastil of the Department of Communication and John D. Wilkerson of the Political Science Department, for the re-versioning and integration of their popular simulation software Election Day and LegSim into Desktop Democracy , a software package designed to give high school students true-to-life experiences in the electoral and legislative processes.

• Paul Muchowski of the Department of Pharmacology, whose award will fund the automation of a screening method for rapidly generating drug targets and drug candidates for neurological disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.

• Robert M. Sweet of the Department of Urology, who developed a virtual simulator to train new surgeons on a common procedure to treat enlarged prostate, and whose grant will fund translation into a PC-compatible format and other improvements.

How to apply for TGIF

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