Pease Group : Older patents lead to new innovations

September 1, 2013

S95-058 : Negative Electron Affinity Photocathodes as High Performance Electron Sources (1995?)

Researchers in Prof. R. Fabian Pease's laboratory have developed a patented negative electron affinity (NEA) photocathode as a high performance electron source for instruments such as electron microscopes and electron beam lithography tools. This technology uses the NEA to achieve emission from one or more areas of the cathode surface with widths of 10 microns or less. The production of small emission areas on a large flat photocathode facilitates the production of multiple, independently-modulated electron beams that can perform in parallel.

View the project in Visible Legacy Navigator...

View the project in Stanford OTL TechFinder...

Comment. This technology from 1995 is on the Stanford TechFinder Featured Technologies page today in 2013. Why would it be posted now?

The Principal Investigator, Dr Fabian W. Pease, the William Ayer Professor of Electrical Engineering, has a track record of spinning technologies out of his lab. The technology in this OTL posting is for efficiently creating electron beams with high focus has been used for electron microscopes and beam lithography. Intevac picked up the patent invented by Aaron Wolf and Kenneth Costello.

Looking at the Visible Legacy graph and timeline in Navigator, we see the lab continues to receive patents and spin out companies such as Jetalon with Francisco Machuca. Jetalon Solutions, Inc., a California-based supplier of fluid metrology products, was just acquired by Entegris. Another company is Brion Technologies, Inc., co-founded by Jun Ye and now a subsidiary of ASML.

The 1995 patents could be interesting and fundamental, check it out, but to me they lead to looking at what's new. Dr. Pease's lab is now working on Multiple-axis Electron Beam Lithography, Image processing, DNA Sequencing and Pathogen Detection. The Lab's current research is definitely worth a look.

Following Up : 2008 Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations grants to Stanford

Revisiting a news article from November 5, 2008, having sudden interest in the Gates Grand Challenges grants.

 

Gates Foundation gives three Grand Challenges Explorations grants to Stanford

 

Three medical school researchers—Mark Davis, Andrew Fire and Christina Smolke—were among the first-round recipients of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's new Grand Challenges Explorations initiative.

The awards, which were announced Oct. 22, 2008 were $100,000 each and were intended to promote the exploration of bold and largely unproven ways to improve global health.

View the widget at Visible Legacy...

Where are they now, five years later?  This experimental view above shows the three researchers mentioned in the article.  The article itself is the purple dot in the middle, and the three researchers with their labs and projects are are the three clusters.  It is easy to see the collaborations in Bioengineering and BioX, but our map doesn't show collaborative connections to Nobel Prize winner Dr Fire's lab ... yet.

William Newsome appointed to lead Stanford's new interdisciplinary neuroscience institute

April 12, 2013

William Newsome appointed to lead Stanford's new interdisciplinary neuroscience institute

William Newsome, a professor of neurobiology, says Stanford's new institute will launch a "broad, sustained interdisciplinary attack on solving the problems of the brain."

View the widget at Visible Legacy...

p.s. the green project is the White House's "BRAIN Initiative", maybe that is the most interesting part of this story?

Photoacoustic molecular imaging

April 8, 2013

How an interdisciplinary chef cooked up imaging technique

Adam de la Zerda developed a technique known as photoacoustic molecular imaging, which allows researchers to see cancerous tumors hiding under tissues.

View the widget at Visible Legacy… 

This graph was confusing when I read the article, but centered around the project it is more clear

Looking at a broader ecosystem shows why this is an exciting inter-disciplinary project that has exciting long-term implications for macular degeneration and cancer detection.

Proteomics : Characterizing proteins

Stanford's Department of Chemical and Systems Biology explores the molecular mechanisms that underlie cellular function and contribute to human disease.  According to Tobias Meyer, department chair, it is the first program in the world to combine systems biology, pharmacology and chemical biology are under the same umbrella.

Within this department, one of the labs at the cutting edge of proteomics is the Elias Lab, a team to watch.

Visit the Elias Lab in Navigator ...

Luminary Examples

We've added a list of 250 or so Stanford researchers to the site under "Examples".   Open their page in either Navigator or widget view.  If you're on the list and want to put the widget in your website, contact us and well forward the custom embed code.

Visible Legacy Navigator Beta 2

We've updated the look and features of Navigator in our beta 2 release.  This release integrates the graph and timeline views to let you see how people, projects, and organizations connect as well as how they relate in time.  Navigator is more intuitive and interactive, with more navigation cues in the roll-over and pop-up elements.  Give it a try.