| "The invention process has been an educational experience and good preparation for working in industry. It's also been a lot of fun." |
The UW Technology Enterprise Cooperative gives faculty and students an opportunity to experience the entrepreneurial process and learn about forming technology based enterprises. A joint program between the college and the School of Business, UW-TEC is co-directed by Business Professor Anne Miner and Assistant Dean of Engineering Lawrence A. Casper. Its many services include in-kind resources, seminars, training, and fostering partnerships that help develop a technology to the point of commercialization. Two of its efforts to assist entrepreneurship are an invention prize for undergraduates and the virtual cooperative.
| Contest brings out students' inventive spirit |
Through "The Schoofs Prize for Creativity," an invention contest sponsored by alumnus Richard Schoofs, some engineering undergraduates are finding a market for their ingenuity. Since the 1996 competition, for example, $10,000 first-place-winners Robert Meyers and Matt Younkle have initiated the patent process for their invention, the Turbo Tap. This carbonated beverage dispenser reduces "foaming" and fills a pitcher faster than traditional taps. While they wait for a patent to be approved, the inventors have been negotiating with several breweries in hope of licensing the technology to one of them. Younkle says the invention process has been good preparation for working in industry. "It's also been a lot of fun," he adds.
Younkle's goal is to wrap up a deal with a brewer by the time he graduates this spring with an electrical engineering degree. He says the negotiation process has been rewarding, but he has no intention of entering the beer business full time. "I like coming up with ideas and turning them over."
Younkle prepared two more inventions for the 1997 competition, bringing his total to five inventions in the contest's first three years. "This kind of thing is what I live for," he says.
The $7,000 second place winner in the '96 competition, civil and environmental engineering major Peter Parker of Baraboo, has also applied for a patent for his invention, which enables snowplow drivers to avoid leaving a wall of snow at driveway entrances. In simple terms, Parker's Snow Hold Fin is a blade held in a frame that is attached perpendicularly to a plow's right side. When the blade is retracted, snow passes through the frame. When the fin is moved forward, snow can be trapped for up to 15 feet.
Peter Parker displays his Snow Hold Fin, the curved steel plate on the plow's left edge. When the operator presses a button in the cab, the fin flies out and prevents snow from filling a driveway.
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"It's going good right now," says Parker of the patent process. "However, there were some changes to the design as it went from paper to actual use." That actual use came initially as he tried the device out on his own pickup truck, and then as it was implemented this winter on a city of Baraboo snow plow.
The goal is to try the device out on all of Baraboo's snowplows. "The public works committee really wants this to work," says Parker. "I'm pretty optimistic, too."
Marc A. Anderson, a professor of civil & environmental engineering, has developed and patented a new class of materials called "nanoporous ceramics" that have been shown to remove volatile organic compounds from air when one of the ceramics is illuminated with ultraviolet light. In cooperation with the college's NASA-funded Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics (WCSAR), this technology has been developed into a device that may help preserve stored fruits and vegetables by removing ethylene from the air. A similar unit has been used in a plant growth chamber for space shuttle experiments, says Ray Bula, WCSAR's director.
| Virtual cooperatives demonstrate partnership at its best |
Thanks to UW-TEC's "virtual cooperative" program, Anderson, Bula and other participants are further developing the technology by scaling up units for field trials in food and plant storage facilities. In concept, the virtual cooperative is an enterprise laboratory where students, faculty and staff can join together to further develop intellectual property, such as this air cleaning device design, to the point where it may be commercially viable.
In the case of PhotoKleen, the name given to Anderson and Bula's cooperative, staff and students are involved, providing contributions of time and other resources. "It's a delightful concept," says Anderson of the participants working together. "It gives students and staff experiences that academic scientists are traditionally isolated from. Now, faculty, staff and students have a chance to work with real-world technologies and try to understand the commercial process." If the air cleaning technology is successfully demonstrated and markets are developed, the cooperative may eventually "spin out" of the university to become a new Wisconsin business.
The PhotoKleen virtual cooperative has benefited from the School of Business partnership in UW-TEC. A team of graduate students from the school's Enterprise Center conducted a market study for initial applications of the air cleaning units in various plant storage businesses. "This is an exciting project to have as a 'pioneer' virtual cooperative," says Anne Miner, UW-TEC co-director and a professor of business. "We hope to see increasing business-engineering collaboration as time goes on, with students playing a variety of roles. Technology based business represents a lively and exciting type of entrepreneurship--and a vital part of our economy."
| For further information, please contact: |
UW Technology Enterprise Cooperative, 608/265-4104
innovation@engr.wisc.edu
Copyright 1997 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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Date last modified: Wednesday, 19-Mar-1997 12:00:00 CST
Date created: 19-Mar-1997
