UNM Rainforest Innovations

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) recently issued 10 U.S. patents to UNM Rainforest Innovations during the months of July, August, and September for technologies invented at the University of New Mexico. The patents, issued during UNM Rainforest Innovations’ 2024 fiscal first quarter, are for a variety of technologies created by researchers in the Departments of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology; Nanoscience & Microsystems; Cancer Research & Treatment Center; Chemistry; Chemical & Biological Engineering; Electrical & Computer Engineering; Mechanical Engineering; Chemical & Nuclear Engineering; the Center for Biomedical Engineering; the Center for High Technology Materials and the Center for Micro-Engineered Materials.

Issued Patent for “Molecular Tracers And Modified Proppants For Monitoring Underground Fluid Flows”

Patent No. 11,692,436, issued July 4, 2023

Inventors: Richard Kemp, Timothy J. Boyle

(Ref. 2016-093)

The present invention relates to modified proppants and methods of using the modified proppants that use metal ligand tracers to characterize subterranean fluid flow. The metal and ligands are best chosen to be a strongly-coordinating, chelating ligand with a functional group for the chosen flow environment.

Issued Patent for “Single-stage Hardware Sorting Blocks And Associated Multiway Merge Sorting Networks

Patent No. 11,693,623, issued July 4, 2023

Inventors: Robert Kent, Marios Pattichis

(Ref. 2020-072) 

A system and methods for designing single-stage hardware sorting blocks, and further using the single-stage hardware sorting blocks to reduce the number of stages in multistage sorting processes, or to define multiway merge sorting networks.

Issued Patent for “Multi-source Sustainable-renewable Energy Harvester

Patent No. 11,698,058, issued July 11, 2023

Inventors: Nima Fathi, Peter V. Vorobieff, Patrick McDaniel, Seyed Sobhan Aleyasin, Mahyar Pourghasemi

(Ref. 2019-061)

A method, approach, system, apparatus and solution that generates electricity from the removal heat of sustainable thermal cycles combined with a renewable thermal energy source.

Issued Patent for “Colorimetric Radiation Detector”

Patent No. 11,698,469, issued July 11, 2023

This technology is currently licensed.

Inventors: Fernando Garzon, Kannan Ramaiyan, Kyle Troche, Timothy J. Boyle

(Ref. 2018-081) 

A low cost, rapid, flexible radiation detector uses inorganic metal halide precursors and dyes that respond to self-quenching hybrid scintillation. Remote, high-contrast, laser sensing can be used to determine when exposure of the detector to radiation occurs (even temporally).

Issued Patent for “Compositions Comprising A PCSK9 Peptide Conjugated To A Qbeta Carrier And Methods Of Using The Same”

Patent No. 11,696,941, issued July 11, 2023

This technology is currently licensed.

Inventors: Bryce Chackerian, Marcelo Amar, Alan Remaley, John Schiller

(Ref. 2014-101)

A vaccine construct comprising an antigenic PCSK9 peptide and an immunogenic carrier, and methods of using the same that are effective to lower blood cholesterol levels in a mammal and treat dyslipidemias and related disease states in a mammal without the frequency of administration required by passive immunity strategies.

 

Issued Patent for “Efficient Low-temperature, Catalyst-free Dehydrogenation Of Alkanes

Patent No. 11,708,312, issued July 25, 2023

Inventors: Abhaya Datye, Christopher Riley, Andrew De La Riva, Stanley S. Chou

(Ref. 2021-062)

Steam cracking of ethane, a non-catalytic thermochemical process, remains the dominant means of ethylene production. The severe reaction conditions and energy expenditure involved in this process incentivize the search for alternative reaction pathways and reactor designs which maximize ethylene yield while minimizing cost and energy input. According to the present invention, ethylene yields as high as 68% were obtained with a quartz open tube reactor without the use of a catalyst or a cofed stream of oxidizing agents. The open tube reactor design promotes simplicity, low cost, and negligible coke formation. Reactor designs can be optimized to improve the conversion of ethane to ethylene via non-oxidative dehydrogenation, an approach which shows promise for decentralized production of ethylene from natural gas deposits.

Issued Patent for “Removing Or Preventing Dry Etch-induced Damage In Al/In/GaN Films By Photoelectrochemical Etching

Patent No. 11,715,635, issued August 1, 2023

Inventors: Morteza Monavarian, Daniel Feezell, Andrew Aragon, Saadat Mishkat-Ul-Masabih, Andrew Allerman, Andrew Armstrong

(Ref. 2019-055)

A method comprises providing a substrate comprising an n-type Al/In/GaN semiconductor material. A surface of the substrate is dry-etched to form a trench therein and cause dry-etch damage to remain on the surface. The surface of the substrate is immersed in an electrolyte solution and illuminated with above bandgap light having a wavelength that generates electron-hole pairs in the n-type Al/In/GaN semiconductor material, thereby photoelectrochemically etching the surface to remove at least a portion of the dry-etch damage.

 

Issued Patent for “Feeding Tube Visualization

Patent No. 11,723,552, issued August 15, 2023

Inventors: Sang M. Han, Jarred Caldwell, Nicholas Brechtel, Nathan Madrid, Divya Prakesh

(Ref. 2016-045)

 An apparatus for determining a position of an object inside a body includes a first, detector configured to receive a signal from the object inside the body. The apparatus also includes a camera configured to capture an image or video of outside of a portion of the body, The object is positioned inside the portion of the body. A computing system is configured to receive the signal from the first detector and the image or video from the camera and to determine the position of the object Inside the body. A screen, is configured to display die position of the object inside the body.

 

Issued Patent for “Single Atom Metal Doped Ceria For CO Oxidation And HC Hydrogenation/oxidation

Patent No. 11,745,169, issued September 5, 2023

Inventors: Andrew De La Riva, Abhaya Datye, Christopher Riley

(Ref. 2018-096) 

The proposed inventions provides novel doped oxide and mixed-oxide materials having a metal homogenously dispersed in the form of isolated metal ions throughout the oxide lattice and methods for making the same.

 

Issued Patent for “Theranostics For Protein Misfolding Diseases

Patent No. 11,759,520, issued September 19, 2023

Inventors: Eva Y. Chi, David Whitten, Patrick Donabedian, Florencia Monge, Matthew Creyer, Adeline Fanni, Jonathan Hulse

(Ref. 2018-062)

Described here are novel agents and theranostics for use as controllable and selective photosensitizers for the diagnosis, treatment and/or tracking of amyloid protein aggregates and amyloid diseases.

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