MPS Distiguished Lecture: Professor Angus Kingon, Brown University

Creating Economic Value from Univeristy Science: What is the Role of Faculty?

May 21, 2012 2:00 PM  to

May 21, 2012 3:00 PM

Room 110, Stafford One

ABSTRACT

We will first discuss returns on our national science investments.  But can we identify critical steps that may be limiting the economic impact of our science? Key steps are discussed in the context of the "Valley of Death" between science and commercialization, and we identify certain improvements that could potentially have a substantial impact, providing illustrations with programs that have had such an impact.  Finally, we address the role of faculty and graduate students in creating economic value from their science, and argue for the need for greater involvement of these researchers in economic value creation, particularly at the pre-commercialization stages of opportunity identification.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:

Angus Kingon is Professor of Engineering, and University Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organizational Studies at Brown University as of 2008.  He is the Academic Director of the Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship Program, and the co-Director in the graduate Masters-level Program on Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME) at Brown University.  He specializes in technology commercialization and technology entrepreneurship, and has developed interventions to promote the commercialization of emerging science in several countries.  He has developed teaching methods for technology entrepreneurship and commercialization that have been adopted around the world, and also adapted for corporate use.  At the same time, Professor Kingon maintains an active research program in ceramic and electronic materials and nanotechnology.  He has published about 340 papers in refereed journals, edited 7 books, published 8 book chapters, and has 15 issued patents.  Some of his research has been commercialized, for example in conjunction with Motorola for use in mobile phones.  He was the co-winner of the Price Foundation Award as Innovative Entrepreneurship Educator for 2006.  He is a Fellow of the Center for Innovation Management Studies, and a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society.

Meeting Type

Lecture

Contacts

 Andrew J. Lovinger, (703) 292-4933 alovinge@nsf.gov

NSF Related Organizations

 Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences

New 3-D Structures Assemble With Remarkable Precision

Self-assembling nano boxes open the door to "smart" particles for medicine, manufacturing

While it is relatively straightforward to build a box on the macroscale, it is much more challenging at smaller micro- and nanometer length scales. At those sizes, three-dimensional (3-D) structures are too small to be assembled by any machine and they must be guided to assemble on their own. And now, interdisciplinary research by engineers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., and mathematicians at Brown University in Providence, R.I., has led to a breakthrough showing that higher order polyhedra can indeed fold up and assemble themselves.

 "What is remarkable here is not just that a structure folds up on its own, but that it folds into a very precise, three-dimensional shape, and it happens without any tweezers or human intervention," says David Gracias, a chemical and biomolecular engineer at Johns Hopkins. "Much like nature assembles everything from sea shells to gem stones from the bottom up, the idea of self-assembly promises a new way to manufacture objects from the bottom up."

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Gracias and Govind Menon, a mathematician at Brown University, are developing self-assembling 3-D micro- and nanostructures that can be used in a number of applications, including medicine.

Menon's team at Brown began designing these tiny 3-D structures by first flattening them out. They worked with a number of shapes, such as 12-sided interconnected panels, which can potentially fold into a dodecahedron shaped container. "Imagine cutting it up and flattening out the faces as you go along," says Menon. "It's a two-dimensional unfolding of the polyhedron."

And not all flat shapes are created equal; some fold better than others. "The best ones are the ones which are most compact. There are 43,380 ways to fold a dodecahedron," notes Menon.

The researchers developed an algorithm to sift through all of the possible choices, narrowing the field to a few compact shapes that easily fold into 3-D structures. Menon's team sent those designs to Gracias and his team at Johns Hopkins who built the shapes, and validated the hypothesis.

"We deposit a material in between the faces and the edges, and then heat them up, which creates surface tension and pulls the edges together, fusing the structure shut," explains Gracias. "The angle between adjacent panels in a dodecahedron is 116.6 degrees and in our process, pentagonal panels precisely align at these remarkably precise angles and seal themselves; all on their own."

"The era of miniaturization promises to revolutionize our lives. We can make these polyhedra from a lot of different materials, such as metals, semiconductors and even biodegradable polymers for a range of optical, electronic and drug delivery applications," continues Gracias. "For example, there is a need in medicine to create smart particles that can target specific tumors, specific disease, without delivering drugs to the rest of the body, which limits side effects."

Imagine thousands of precisely structured, tiny, biodegradable, boxes rushing through the bloodstream en route to a sick organ. Once they arrive at their destination, they can release medicine with pinpoint accuracy. That's the vision for the future. For now, the more immediate concern is getting the design of the structures just right so that they can be manufactured with high yields.

"Our process is also compatible with integrated circuit fabrication, so we envision that we can use it to put silicon-based logic and memory chips onto the faces of 3-D polyhedra. Our methodology opens the door to the creation of truly three-dimensional 'smart' and multi-functional particles on both micro- and nano- length scales," says Gracias.

Miles O'Brien, Science Nation Correspondent

Jon Baime, Science Nation Producer.

NASA Study Of Clay Minerals Suggests Watery Martian Underground

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington

Guy Webster

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

WASHINGTON -- A new NASA study suggests if life ever existed on Mars, the longest lasting habitats were most likely below the Red Planet's surface.

A new interpretation of years of mineral-mapping data, from more than 350 sites on Mars examined by European and NASA orbiters, suggests Martian environments with abundant liquid water on the surface existed only during short episodes. These episodes occurred toward the end of hundreds of millions of years during which warm water interacted with subsurface rocks. This has implications about whether life existed on Mars and how its atmosphere has changed.

"The types of clay minerals that formed in the shallow subsurface are all over Mars," said John Mustard, professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I. Mustard is a co-author of the study in the journal Nature. "The types that formed on the surface are found at very limited locations and are quite rare."

Discovery of clay minerals on Mars in 2005 indicated the planet once hosted warm, wet conditions. If those conditions existed on the surface for a long era, the planet would have needed a much thicker atmosphere than it has now to keep the water from evaporating or freezing. Researchers have sought evidence of processes that could cause a thick atmosphere to be lost over time.

This new study supports an alternative hypothesis that persistent warm water was confined to the subsurface and many erosional features were carved during brief periods when liquid water was stable at the surface.

"If surface habitats were short-term, that doesn't mean we should be glum about prospects for life on Mars, but it says something about what type of environment we might want to look in," said the report's lead author, Bethany Ehlmann, assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology and scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "The most stable Mars habitats over long durations appear to have been in the subsurface. On Earth, underground geothermal environments have active ecosystems."

The discovery of clay minerals by the OMEGA spectrometer on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter added to earlier evidence of liquid Martian water. Clays form from the interaction of water with rock. Different types of clay minerals result from different types of wet conditions.

During the past five years, researchers used OMEGA and NASA's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer, or CRISM, instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to identify clay minerals at thousands of locations on Mars. Clay minerals that form where the ratio of water interacting with rock is small generally retain the same chemical elements as the original volcanic rocks later altered by the water.

The study interprets this to be the case for most terrains on Mars with iron and magnesium clays. In contrast, surface environments with higher ratios of water to rock can alter rocks further. Soluble elements are carried off by water, and different aluminum-rich clays form.

Another clue is detection of a mineral called prehnite. It forms at temperatures above about 400 degrees Fahrenheit (about 200 degrees Celsius). These temperatures are typical of underground hydrothermal environments rather than surface waters.

"Our interpretation is a shift from thinking that the warm, wet environment was mostly at the surface to thinking it was mostly in the subsurface, with limited exceptions," said Scott Murchie of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., a co-author of the report and principal investigator for CRISM.

One of the exceptions may be Gale Crater, the site targeted by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. Launching this year, the Curiosity rover will land and investigate layers that contain clay and sulfate minerals.

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, or MAVEN, in development for a 2013 launch, may provide evidence for or against this new interpretation of the Red Planet's environmental history. The report predicts MAVEN findings consistent with the atmosphere not having been thick enough to provide warm, wet surface conditions for a prolonged period.

JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL provided and operates CRISM.

For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro.

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NASA Spacecraft Reveals New Details Of Planet Mercury

If you’re into science and astronomy, discover these popular NASA books written by military veteran astronauts.

Dwayne Brown

Headquarters, Washington     

 

Paulette Campbell

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.

 

Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EDT on Sept. 29

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 29, to discuss new data and images from the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft conducted fifteen laps through the inner solar system for more than six years before achieving the historic orbit insertion on March 18.

Briefing participants are:

-     Ed Graykzeck, MESSENGER program manager, NASA Headquarters, Washington

-     James Head, III, professor of geological sciences, Brown University

-     David Blewett, MESSENGER participating scientist and staff scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Md.

-     Patrick Peplowski, staff scientist, APL

-     Thomas Zurbuchen, professor of space science and aerospace engineering, University of Michigan

To participate in the teleconference, reporters must contact Dwayne Brown at dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov or 202-358-1726, by noon on Sept. 29 for dial-in instructions.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.

Related images and supporting briefing information will be available at http://www.nasa.gov/messenger.

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NASA-Funded Scientists Make Lunar Watershed Discovery

Dwayne Brown

Headquarters, Washington

 

Cathy Weselby

Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

 

Maria Martinez

Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio

 

Richard Lewis

Brown University, Providence, R.I.

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- A team of NASA-funded researchers has measured for the first time water from the moon in the form of tiny globules of molten rock, which have turned to glass-like material trapped within crystals. Data from these newly-discovered lunar melt inclusions indicate the water content of lunar magma is 100 times higher than previous studies suggested.

The inclusions were found in lunar sample 74220, the famous high-titanium "orange glass soil" of volcanic origin collected during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The scientific team used a state-of-the-art ion microprobe instrument to measure the water content of the inclusions, which were formed during explosive eruptions on the moon approximately 3.7 billion years ago.

The results published in the May 26 issue of Science Express raise questions about aspects of the "giant impact theory" of how the moon was created. That theory predicted very low water content of lunar rock due to catastrophic degassing during the collision of Earth with a Mars-sized body very early in its history.

The study also provides additional scientific justification for returning similar samples from other planetary bodies in the solar system.

"Water plays a critical role in determining the tectonic behavior of planetary surfaces, the melting point of planetary interiors and the location and eruptive style of planetary volcanoes," said Erik Hauri, a geochemist with the Carnegie Institution of Washington and lead author of the study. "I can conceive of no sample type that would be more important to return to Earth than these volcanic glass samples ejected by explosive volcanism, which have been mapped not only on the moon but throughout the inner solar system."

In contrast to most volcanic deposits, the lunar melt inclusions are encased in crystals that prevent the escape of water and other volatiles during eruption.

"These samples provide the best window we have on the amount of water in the interior of the moon where the orange glass came from," said science team member James Van Orman of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

In a 2008 study led by Alberto Saal of Brown University in Providence, R.I., the same team reported the first evidence of water in lunar volcanic glasses. They used magma degassing models to estimate how much water was originally in the magmas before eruption.

Building on that study, a Brown undergraduate student, Thomas Weinreich, searched for and found the melt inclusions. With that data, the team measured the pre-eruption concentration in the magma and estimated the amount of water in the moon's interior.

"The bottom line is that in 2008, we said the primitive water content in the lunar magmas should be similar to lavas coming from the Earth's depleted upper mantle," Saal said. "Now, we have proven that is indeed the case."

The study also puts a new twist on the origin of water-ice detected in craters at the lunar poles by several recent NASA missions. The ice has been attributed to comet and meteor impacts, but the researchers believe it is possible that some of the ice came from water released by the eruption of lunar magmas eons ago.

The paper entitled, "High Pre-Eruptive Water Contents Preserved in Lunar Melt Inclusions," was written by Hauri, Weinreich, Saal, Van Oman and Malcolm Rutherford of Brown. The research is funded by NASA's Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research and Cosmochemistry Programs in Washington, the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) at the agency's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and the Astrobiology Institute at Ames.

The NLSI is a virtual organization enabling collaborative, interdisciplinary research in support of agency lunar science programs. The researchers are members of NLSI teams from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and Brown. The institute uses technology to bring scientists together around the world, and it is comprised of seven competitively selected U.S. teams and several international partners. NASA's Science Mission and Exploration Systems Mission Directorates in Washington fund the institute.

For more information about the NLSI, visit http://lunarscience.nasa.gov.

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NASA Releases Images of Man-Made Crater on Comet

Dwayne Brown

Headquarters, Washington

 

DC Agle

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

 

Blaine Friedlander

Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

 

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus.

The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST at a distance of approximately 111 miles. Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet. It also accumulated 468 kilobytes of data about the dust in its coma, the cloud that is a comet's atmosphere. The craft is on its second mission of exploration called Stardust-NExT, having completed its prime mission collecting cometary particles and returning them to Earth in 2006.

The Stardust-NExT mission met its goals which included observing surface features that changed in areas previously seen during the 2005 Deep Impact mission; imaging new terrain; and viewing the crater generated when the 2005 mission propelled an impactor at the comet.

"This mission is 100 percent successful," said Joe Veverka, Stardust-NExT principal investigator of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "We saw a lot of new things that we didn't expect, and we'll be working hard to figure out what Tempel 1 is trying to tell us."

Several of the images provide tantalizing clues to the result of the Deep Impact mission's collision with Tempel 1.

"We see a crater with a small mound in the center, and it appears that some of the ejecta went up and came right back down," said Pete Schultz of Brown University, Providence, R.I. "This tells us this cometary nucleus is fragile and weak based on how subdued the crater is we see today."

Engineering telemetry downlinked after closest approach indicates the spacecraft flew through waves of disintegrating cometary particles including a dozen impacts that penetrated more than one layer of its protective shielding.

"The data indicate Stardust went through something similar to a B-17 bomber flying through flak in World War II," said Don Brownlee, Stardust-NExT co-investigator from the University of Washington in Seattle. "Instead of having a little stream of uniform particles coming out, they apparently came out in chunks and crumbled."

While the Valentine's Day night encounter of Tempel 1 is complete, the spacecraft will continue to look at its latest cometary obsession from afar.                                              

"This spacecraft has logged over 3.5 billion miles since launch, and while its last close encounter is complete, its mission of discovery is not," said Tim Larson, Stardust-NExT project manager at JPL. "We'll continue imaging the comet as long as the science team can gain useful information, and then Stardust will get its well-deserved rest."

Stardust-NExT is a low-cost mission that is expanding the investigation of comet Tempel 1 initiated by the Deep Impact spacecraft. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations.

For more information about Stardust-NExT, visit http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov.

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