DURHAM, N.H. - The University of New Hampshire Office for Research Partnerships and Commercialization (ORPC) recently celebrated the success of faculty and staff members in increasing the number of innovation disclosures more than 100 percent to set a UNH annual record of 32. Mathematician Kevin Short was also awarded the university's second annual Innovator of the Year award.

"UNH is leading the country in the use of intellectual assets," said ORPC Executive Director Marc Sedam. "We've spent the last year working with our colleagues across campus and our fiscal year accomplishments reflect that. We want the technology developed at UNH to be used to help keep jobs in the state and disclosures are crucial to that success. The disclosures of today lead to tomorrow's revenue and opportunities."

The goal of the ORPC is to promote and advance the use of UNH's intellectual assets to improve the university's academic standing and relevance, attract high quality faculty and students, engage the business community, create local well-paid jobs, and generate revenue. Last year the office increased royalties by 10 percent and patent applications were up 40 percent.

Maria Emanuel, senior licensing manager, noted that 20 of the 32 disclosure and licensees were made by first-time disclosers, evidence that the ORPC's efforts to get word out on campus have been a success.

"This is an incredible achievement but we can and must do more," said Sedam. "Our goals include helping faculty achieve their research goals through commercialization, getting 25 disclosures, supporting and promoting the InterOperability Lab, and creating at least two spin-off companies."

Sedam also shared that the first quarter of fiscal year 2013 (July-September) is already showing progress. Nine disclosures have been received; 20 licenses have been completed, compared to 22 in all of fiscal year 2012; a startup company has been launched with several more in the pipeline; and royalties are at 50 percent of fiscal year 2012.

In addition, Kevin Short was awarded the university's second annual Innovator of the Year Award in honor of his discovery of chaotic compression technology and its applications in signal processing. Short launched UNH's first spin-off company, Chaoticom, and most recently the university's fifth spin-off. Setem Technologies uses the mathematics professor's research to develop signal separation technology that addresses the "cocktail party problem"—the ability to focus on the specific speech source and mitigate/eliminate any extraneous background noise or interference.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.

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