What happens to the billions spent on national defense and security research funded by the government is up to the individual researchers and their institutions.
Emily Ward has spent the last several years researching how different body tissues in the torso react to outside pressure or impact.
“We?re seeing what?s happening to the inside of the torso from a ballistic impact,” Ward said.
She knows the thoracic cavity inside and out, but explaining her work to the public is not so easy.
At a high-tech conference with their partners at the National Security Agency, scientists at Johns Hopkins University?s Applied Physics Laboratory likeWard shared their inventions and innovations with investors, technology and security companies and other researchers in an effort to help get the ideas out into the market.
“Our focus is local economic development. We look at Maryland companies first, if there is one that fits the bill,” said Kristin Gray, technology transfer chief for APL.
Their work has resulted in 190 licensing or research agreements in the last eight years and spawned 17 companies, she said, “roughly half in Maryland.”
These successes resulted from $780 million in federal research and development funding over the last eight years and helped bring 53 products to the marketplace, Gray said.
Her job is to take the technologies and patents that result and market them to existing or startup companies, as well as license the technology to other researchers for further development.
The event, dubbed Information and Communication Technologies for Innovative Businesses, drew more than 250 attendees Wednesday to share information running the gamut from computer security systems to ground-sensing laser topography and imaging.
Protagoras Cutchis, a senior engineer with APL, demonstrated a remote video scanner that could save troops? lives at vehicle checkpoints. “The whole idea is to get the person driving the vehicle … to direct this. You stay back in case it blows up.”
