Rubloff, Wu win UMD Invention of the Year Awards

Professor Gary Rubloff (MSE/ISR) and ISR-affiliated Professor Min Wu (ECE/UMIACS) were both winners of University of Maryland Invention of the Year Awards, announced at the annual Celebration of Innovation and Partnerships event on April 29.

Rubloff, Professor Sang Bok Lee (ChemBiochem), and their research team won in the Physical Sciences category for their invention, “A Revolutionary, High Energy Density Nanopore Battery.” The battery is made of nanotubular electrodes and an electrolyte, all confined in an anodic aluminum oxide nanopore. It is an all-in-one device with excellent capacity retention and shows promise for higher energy availability for a given power density due to larger surface area and shorter transport time for the ions in the electrode material. It signifies the potential that nanostructure design has for high power electrochemical storage.

Wu and her research team won in the Information Sciences category for their invention, “Verifying the Source of Video Streams Using Electric Network Frequency (ENF) Signals.” The invention is a novel technique to measure the ENF signals of objects lit with incandescent or fluorescent lighting by exploiting the rolling shutter mechanism in a modern Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) camera. The invention enables the source verification of a video stream.

The winner of the Life Sciences category was Dr. Javier Atencia-Fernandez, research assistant professor at the Fischell Department of Bioengineering, for his invention, “A Groundbreaking New Bacteria Detection Method for Testing Complex Food Samples.”

UMD’s Office of Technology Commercialization, part of the Division of Research, received a total of 187 disclosures in 2014. The nine nominees for Invention of the Year were selected based upon their potential impact on science, society, and the open market, and the three winners in the categories of physical sciences, life sciences, and information sciences, were selected by a panel of independent judges.

“We are very proud of the innovations our faculty researchers develop here on our College Park campus,” said Vice President and Chief Research Officer Patrick O’Shea. “The high quality of each year’s finalists demonstrate the strength of our research enterprise and the power of our innovation ecosystem.”

Published May 1, 2015