The photographer’s mom and niece, in a Fermilab onesie, prepare for Halloween. Happy Halloween!
Aaron Sauers
Aaron Sauers is Fermilab’s patent and licensing executive.
Derek Plant, a Fermilab technical specialist, invented a portable device to quickly mimic the presence of a train on the tracks. OPTT filed the patent application in 2017, and the patent was granted earlier this year.
Curtis Baffes disclosed his whiffletree flange sealing idea to the Office of Partnerships and Technology Transfer in 2017. A whiffletree is a mechanism that distributes force evenly through a system of linkages. Baffes has used whiffletrees to support large telescope optics that would otherwise warp under their own weight.
Anna Pla-Dalmau is a prolific inventor at Fermilab, with several patents to her name. These patents relate to extruded plastic scintillator, which is used in particle detectors. She has explored the extrusion of polystyrene pellets with dopants to yield high-quality scintillator. The extrusion line built at Fermilab continues to produce the material for research institutions around the world.
Bring a cup of coffee (or tea!) and join Fermilab’s patent and licensing executive for an informal discussion of intellectual property on Friday, May 29, at 1 p.m. If you have an idea for an invention or would like to learn more about intellectual property at the laboratory, drop in. Read on for sign-in information.
Sujit Bidhar contacted OPTT in 2017 about a compact, low-power nanofiber electrospinner he was developing to produce targets for high-intensity particle beams. OPTT filed a provisional patent application in February 2018. The technology is currently patent-pending.
During the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, Fermilab scientist Arden Warner began experimenting with oil in water seeded with magnetite. He found that magnetite forms a preferential bond with the oil and can be manipulated with magnetic fields. Warner shared his idea with the Office of Partnerships and Technology Transfer in 2011, and the first electromagnetic boom patent was issued in 2014. The technology is in the process of being commercialized.
Fermilab employees are continually creating technologies that address problems in basic science, and it turns out that many of these technologies can be spun off for uses beyond particle physics. That’s a big reason to protect them. When we protect technologies, we can support their use in our everyday lives. Your invention could help improve medicine, the environment, industry and the economy.
Aaron Sauers’s niece learns something new every day.
Look out, oil spills. The concept of using floating magnets for cleaning up oil spills, which started as a demonstration in a 9-ounce cup, is now a full-scale prototype — thanks to an agreement between Fermilab’s Office of Partnerships and Technology Transfer and Natural Science LLC.