Stanford Technology Showcase is a museum of Stanford research successes

As part of the E-week festivities, the Stanford Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) hosted a showcase Wednesday night of Stanford tech research that has found success with real world applications. Held in the atrium of the Packard Electrical Engineering Building (right next to Bytes Cafe, one of the more delicious places to eat on campus) the showcase contained about 10 small exhibits that demonstrated how Stanford tech research is applied in the market.

According to the sign at the front of the atrium, the OTL helps Stanford students and professors turn their research into "tangible products" to give the inventor and the university income.

Soon after the forum on social entrepreneurship and world problems let out a steady stream of students and faculty came in and went directly to the tables that held the Chinese food. This became mainly a social and networking event, but visitors did make their way across the atrium and looked at many of the products that help fund the university.

The most popular exhibit was the FM sound synthesizer, invented by Prof. John Chowning in 1971, which mixed two pure tones together in order to get a 3rd (different) tone. OTL spent 4 years trying to get American companies interested in the technology, but in 1975 gave Japan based Yamaha Corp. the exclusive licensing. Yamaha used this to develop their 1983 DX synthesizer (which gave 80's music a whole new dimension), and in the 90's the FM sound chip was the sound generator installed in millions of PC's. This is OTL's second largest source of royalties.

When I was in front of the Genscan exhibit, a woman next to me remarked, "Wow." So I had better include it. According to the exhibit, "Genscan is a popular software tool to aid scientists around the world in the task of gene mapping and sequencing for both human and plant genomics." Invented by Professor Christoper Burge, it was one of the first technologies OTL offered as a "ready-to-sign" license, which used set conditions but resulted in discount financial terms for the licensee.

Also on the genome front was the Direct Multiplex Genotyping on Genomic DNA, created by the Stanford Genome Technology Center. This device helps with genome and DNA detection, and was licensed to ParAllele (a startup founded by the inventors) in 2001. ParAllele was acquired in 2005 by Affymetrix.

There were also a few communications technologies on display. One was the Deformable Grating Modulator, invented in 1991 by then Professor David Bloom. He started Echelle Inc. to develop the technology, which helps light beam displays. This is applicable for HDTV's, home theater systems, and handheld communication devices. Strangely, when I did a google search for the Echelle url, I only found that now it is a cosmetic company in Alabama. Weird. But according to the exhibit, the technology is being used currently by Sony for some of its HDTV's.

There was also an exhibit about the fiber optic amplifier, invented in the early 1980's by Professors H. John Shaw and Michel Digonnet, that "enables light signals to be transmitted over long distances, allowing data and voice transmissions to be sent over fiber optic cables." There have been over 150 inventions from this fiber optic research, which was sponsored by Litton Systems (which was acquired by Northrup Grunman).

Another exhibit was by the current dean of the Engineering Dept., Jim Plummer. In 1976 he invented the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor, whose application obviously is to help semiconductors switch large currents (on a small scale model like the washing machine, or for big power plants).

The final tech exhibit that caught my eye was the Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) research by Professor Calvin Quate in the mid-1980's. This led to more than 40 technologies, and is a way to image very small things (even a single atom). It has found uses in semiconductors, materials research, and life sciences.