Within months of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that the social and physical impacts of the pandemic varied dramatically across demographics: the elderly and African Americans suffered higher mortality rates, while women—and particularly mothers of young children—bore the impact of school and day care closures. Furthermore, the pandemic exacerbated issues in the workplace, such as the disparity of workloads both at home and in the office.

For university professors, the methods of teaching shifted dramatically. Courses were moved entirely online, resulting in increased time spent on course prep and research. Like many other professionals, faculty were also forced to find time to manage childcare and homeschooling.

Rachel Wheeler, chair and professor of religious studies at the IU School of Liberal Arts, recognized this problem and assembled a team of IUPUI faculty to develop an app, COVIDCV, that allows individuals to document burdens and challenges posed by the pandemic.

The team is now moving to a broader app, RealCV, which will use artificial intelligence to translate work that often goes unacknowledged, frequently called “invisible labor,” into a set of skills, such as strategic planning, project management and communications, that will be legible to current and potential employers.

Wheeler expressed several of the core ideas behind the creation of RealCV in a 2020 essay, My Real CV, which drew attention to the ways that women’s CVs often grew more slowly than men’s because women are more likely to oversee domestic duties at home and invisible labor at work. The essay also highlighted the negative effects of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace.

Wheeler applied for special research funding, which Indiana University made available to faculty seeking to help combat COVID-19 and its negative effects, with an initial team including Aaron Ganci, associate professor of visual communication design at the Herron School of Art; Rajeev Raje, associate dean for planning, finance, and faculty affairs and professor of computer and information science at IUPUI’s School of Science; and Jane Williams, associate dean for academic affairs and strategic initiatives and associate professor of psychology at IUPUI’s School of Science. With this funding, the researchers were able to hire Umesh Raja, a graduate student in computer science, and build an app that allowed users to create a way to memorialize their pandemic experience.

The project received additional funding and research support from the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute. Additionally, the project benefited significantly from the researchers’ participation in a start-up bootcamp for faculty entrepreneurs which was organized by IU’s Innovation and Commercialization Office (ICO).

With the addition of Hyeju Jang, an assistant professor of computer & information science at IUPUI’s School of Science, and a translational grant from ICO, the team is developing an AI-assisted functionality that enables individuals to contextualize their work. The researchers hope the app’s capabilities will contribute to more equitable workplaces, while also spotlighting how the pandemic has changed people’s ability to balance their responsibilities at work and at home.

“Our team is currently at a major transition point, moving from our CovidCV app to a new, more comprehensive RealCV app that will help users to ‘find’ their hidden skills developed in both their home and work lives and translate them into terms legible to current or potential employers,” Wheeler said. “For instance, a parent who shoulders the primary responsibility for managing an autistic child’s care has valuable workforce skills that likely never appear on their resume. Our hope is that the app can help women and minority candidates find the jobs that match their ambition and skills.”

Currently, Wheeler’s development team is working to harness Natural Language Processing and AI capabilities to create the building block for the RealCV platform.

Bri Heron, technology marketing manager at Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, contributed this story.

New technology aims to revolutionize the orthopedic manual therapy industry

A new device that would allow physical therapists to monitor the level of pressure they apply to the soft tissue of patients seeking greater mobility and pain relief, developed by Indiana University researchers, is one step closer to the healthcare market.

Health Smart Technologies, a startup company formed by Terry Loghmani, PT, Ph.D., an associate professor of physical therapy at the IU School of Health and Human Sciences at IUPUI, with co-founders Sohel Anwar, PE, Ph.D., and Stanley Chien ECE, Ph.D., of the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI, has been acquired by BVS Muscle.  With the acquisition, BVS Muscle, a new portfolio company from Indianapolis-headquartered Boomerang Ventures, will exclusively license the researchers’ quantifiable soft tissue manipulation (QSTM) device system developed at IU.

Loghmani developed the QSTM device system with her engineering colleagues as a way to monitor the forces being applied during soft tissue manipulation in musculoskeletal pain conditions. Current methods cannot dose the amount of soft tissue manipulation; however, QSTM enables clinicians to monitor, progress and record the type of manual therapy forces they’re providing to help patients move better while reducing their pain. The QSTM technology can also be used for training and research purposes.

“QSTM is to manual therapy what the Fitbit is to exercise, Loghmani said. “QSTM better enables individuals’ rehabilitation using objective measures to set and achieve goals. This progressive technology fills a recognized need to integrate patient feedback and clinician perception with quantitative metrics, creating a positive shift to the digitally informed era of evidence-based soft tissue manual therapy practice.”

Loghmani is a physical therapist, orthopedic manual therapist, massage therapist and an instrument-assisted soft tissue manipulation expert whose research has helped advance the manual therapy field. Her teaching is focused on the foundations of physical therapy examination and assessment.

Before arriving at IU in 1998, she was the first physical therapist to work with the Graston Technique to help develop the protocols and training program for the modern-day forerunner of instrument-assisted soft tissue manipulation. She received a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy from IU, a master’s degree in physical therapy from the University of Indianapolis, and a doctorate from IU in anatomy and cell biology.

“Terry’s knowledge in academia and clinical care was one of the main reasons we were interested in this device. This technology revolutionizes the manual therapy industry and does a phenomenal job of helping patients,” said Dick Aderman, studio director of Boomerang Ventures, a combination venture studio and venture fund that partners with founders, investors and institutions to leverage new technologies to improve health care. “Bringing healthcare products to life from universities is textbook for us. We are excited to commercialize this device to help improve patient outcomes and help clinicians such as physical therapists, chiropractors and massage therapists advance manual therapies.”

Currently, the device is in the prototype stage, and BVS Muscle will be working to assess its market potential to commercialize the device.

IU Innovation and Commercialization Office

These innovations were disclosed to the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office. The mission of the office is to transfer IU innovations from lab to market for public benefit and global impact. The office filed patents to facilitate commercialization of the innovation. IU personnel can disclose an invention online.

Boomerang Ventures

Founded in 2019, Boomerang Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on early growth-stage connected health technology companies. Leveraging a combination studio and venture fund, Boomerang provides the collaborative direction, deep industry expertise and continuum of support founders need to take their innovations from ideation to market. Boomerang believes that better patient care begins with identifying and solving the biggest challenges in healthcare. Boomerang Ventures is proudly and strategically based in Indianapolis, where the healthcare and entrepreneurial business climate is a thriving community ripe with opportunities. With a secure niche at the intersection of health technology, studio-fund synchronization and the Midwest, Boomerang differentiates itself from the competition. Boomerang Ventures is Healthcare Innovation, Reimagined. Learn more at boomerang.vc.

Bri Heron, technology marketing manager at Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, contributed this story.

Five Indiana University researchers have received patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for cutting-edge technologies and other innovations that they aim to move to market. Below is information about each of the patents.

Patent issued to IU innovation that tests cell response to biochemical agents:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a patent on Trophowell, a platform created by Alexander Gumennik, assistant professor of intelligent systems engineering at the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, that tests cell response to biochemical agents.

The cost-effective testing well is used for tissue engineering and can be utilized in the fields of drug discovery and personalized medicine.

Patent issued to IU method that treats salt and water balance diseases:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a patent for a method created by IUPUI School of Science Professor Bonnie Blazer-Yost. The method utilizes SGK1 inhibitors that reduce sodium reabsorption in the blood, thus reducing the development of diseases related to salt and water balance, particularly for hydrocephalus and hypertension. (See a video on Blazer-Yost’s research below.)

Patent issued to IU innovation that utilizes peptides for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a patent for utilizing peptides in treating neurodegenerative diseases to IU School of Dentistry Associate Professor Mythily Srinivasan. Srinivasan developed peptide analogs of a p65 interacting protein that helps suppress inflammation and degeneration for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

Patent issued to IU School of Medicine treatment for breast cancer:

The U.S. Trademark and Patent Office has recently issued a patent for a combination therapy for breast cancer treatment by Jian-Ting Zhang, adjunct professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the IU School of Medicine.

Zhang’s treatment is combinational use of FDA approved drugs for cancer. The combination of protein pump inhibitors and the PARP inhibitor drastically stops breast cancer cell growth.

Patent issued to an IU novel compressed sensing method and system:

The U.S Trademark and Patent Office has issued a patent for a wireless sensor network developed by IUPUI School of Science Professor Yao Liang. Data acquisition from multi-hop large-scale outdoor wireless sensor networks is challenging, however, Liang’s method drastically improves data acquisition while reducing network transmissions and wireless communication costs.

These innovations were disclosed to the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office. The mission of the office is to transfer IU innovations from lab to market for public benefit and global impact. The office files patents to facilitate commercialization of the innovation. IU personnel can disclose an invention online.

Bri Heron, technology marketing manager at Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, contributed this story.

Every year, 12 million traumatic open wounds are presented at U.S. emergency departments, and it is critical to thoroughly clean these wounds in order to prevent infection. A novel tap water wound irrigation device developed by Dr. Brian Sloan, an associate professor emeritus of clinical emergency medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, was recently awarded U.S. Patent No. 11,654,229 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Currently, saline irrigation devices are used to treat these wounds, but these devices are expensive and don’t pose a significant statistical difference in reduction of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in wounds compared to Sloan’s novel tap water irrigation device.

“The idea of a convenient, inexpensive and efficacious wound irrigation device that uses tap water instead of sterile saline will revolutionize the wound care industry,” Dr. Sloan said. “This device has been shown to effectively irrigate traumatic wounds with potable water, which decreases cost and provides clinicians with a professional, easy to use and readily available product.  Clinicians have long understood the benefits of using tap water for wound irrigation, and now there is a device that can deliver tap water to open traumatic wounds in the emergency department, at urgent care, in developing countries and at home.”

Additionally, the tap water irrigation device has a potential cost saving of over $65 million per year, as these devices are not affected by saline shortages and therefore are more convenient and effective.

Dr. Sloan is a 1997 graduate of the IU School of Medicine and a 2000 graduate of the IU Emergency Medicine residency program. The former IU basketball player and member of the 1987 NCAA champion Hoosiers recently retired from a 20-year tenure in the school’s emergency medicine department, where he earned the moniker “mayor” of the night shift. His emergency medicine interests include musculoskeletal medicine, exertional heat stroke and sports medicine related topics.

The patent was filed by IU’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, which aims to drive innovation to the market for the benefit of the public, the university, and innovators for state, national and global commerce.

Bri Heron, technology marketing manager at Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, contributed this story.

Indiana University recently hosted the Midwest Material Innovation Consortium (MMIC) for a two-day meeting aimed at discussing industry news, trends and opportunities within the material science industry. The event, which took place last month, was organized by IU’s Office of Business Partnerships, together with the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office (ICO) and IU Ventures, IU’s early-stage venture and angel investment arm.

The MMIC includes corporations, venture capital funds, startups, universities and research groups that all share the goal of identifying and commercializing material science innovations. In addition to IU, consortium members include Cooper Standard, GM Ventures, Caterpillar, Koch Industries, Avery-Dennison, DuPont, Energy Foundry, HG Ventures, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, University of Michigan and Purdue University.

“This type of event is an excellent opportunity for our faculty to connect with potential industrial partners and to create partnerships with the ultimate goal of translating academic research for local, state, federal and global community impact,” said Todd Skochdopole, technology commercialization manager at IU ICO.

The summer meeting began with a tour of the Fibers and Additive Manufacturing Enabled Systems (FAMES) Lab, which is housed in the Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering at IU’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. FAMES Lab Director Alexander Gumennik, who is also an assistant professor of intelligent systems engineering at the Luddy School, explained how the lab’s technology has led to advancements in areas such as tissue engineering, green energy, additive manufacturing and more.

The IU ICO hosted three faculty members from the Department of Chemistry at IU Bloomington’s College of Arts and Sciences to present their latest research efforts.

Sara Skrabalak discussed her research to develop methods for controlling architecture and shape of new nanomaterials. Amar Flood described his research to synthesize molecules and materials for manipulation of anions. Lastly, Steven Tait presented his research regarding catalyst design and testing.

Over a luncheon, hosted by Jon Schalliol, finance and operations lead of Indianapolis-based HG Ventures, several startups presented their business overviews with the goal of forming potential partnerships. The startups discussed their product pipelines, which included the world’s brightest fluorescent materials, adhesive resin for wood products manufacturing, and an adobe construction company that specializes in AI and robotics.

The next sessions included a discussion of the rise of AI and its growing uses in today’s society, how IU’s Shoemaker Innovation Center helps student entrepreneurs, as well as a discussion about the environmental and sustainability landscape industry members operate within along with the work of the Institute for Environmental and Social Sustainability at IU’s Kelley School of Business. The group finished the day with a tour of IU’s Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.

To conclude the two-day meeting, the group visited the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division and discussed its technology transfer and IP program and had a tour of the Battery Innovation Center.

“The Office of Business Partnerships was thrilled to work with schools and faculty across the Bloomington campus to host the Midwest Material Innovation Consortium member companies,” said Elizabeth Lerch, director of the Office of Business Partnerships. “Through events like these, we are building connections that grow research opportunities for faculty and their students, while supporting innovation across industry.”

Bri Heron, technology marketing manager at Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, contributed this story.

Izzy Branam, Aishwarya Chaudhari and Crystal Korff are all passionate about bringing IU research to market and protecting intellectual property. Their work at the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office will impact lives across the world.

The ICO internship program exposes interns to the day-to-day workings of a university technology transfer office. It provides education and hands-on experience that includes formal training in licensing in innovation and commercialization, marketing, intellectual property protection and contracts.

Meet the ICO interns:

What is your major and when are you graduating?

Branam: My major is Organizational and Business Psychology at the IU College of Arts and Sciences, and I will be graduating in 2026.

Chaudhari: I just graduated earlier in May with a Masters in Engineering at the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology.

Korff: I am a Ph.D. candidate for Medical and Molecular Genetics at the IU School of Medicine.

What are your responsibilities at the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office?

Branam: I act as a consultant for early-stage research inventions by conducting customer research to understand their needs, researching ways to approach FDA approval, as well as strategizing how to turn IP to marketable solutions.

Chaudhari:

My responsibilities include writing one pagers, conducting product searches and reviewing licensing agreements with commercialization managers.

Korff:

I work closely with the commercialization managers to write marketing summaries of inventions, and I also conduct prior art research.

What has been a memorable success during your tenure at IU ICO?

Branam: I recently participated in the IU Life Sciences to Healthcare Solutions Pitch Competition, and it was an eye-opening experience for me. I loved being able to present the research and network with other inventors.

Chaudhari: A memorable success during my time at ICO would be gaining a wealth of knowledge about IP and learning the inner workings of the tech transfer industry. I have really enjoyed learning from the commercialization managers, who have extensive industry experience, and how to translate research into a one pager that sums up an invention.

Also, within the last few months I’ve learned more about licensing agreements, and I’ve enjoyed sitting in negotiations and learning the nitty gritty details behind them.

Korff:

Moving academia research to the industry has definitely been one of my successes while working at ICO. I love learning how we can translate IP to solutions to help patients. In addition, I have loved learning more about the tech transfer process, particularly with licensing agreements.

What are you most passionate about learning personally or professionally and why?

Branam: I’ve been working in the startup realm for a while, so I love learning more about tech startups and growing them.

Chaudhari: I love learning more about IP protection. However, in recent months I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about the legal side in tech transfer, and it’s piqued my interest in learning more about copyrights and trademarks.

Korff: I am a research-oriented person, so I love learning how we take the knowledge learned from research labs to help treat patients.

What are your career goals? How has your internship benefited you?

Branam: I will continue to not only launch startups of my own but help others with theirs in the Indiana startup ecosystem. I know firsthand the process behind creating a startup, but this internship has helped me with conducting research and customer interviews to gain a better understanding of the market.

Chaudhari:

This internship has benefited me as I’ve been able to experience multiple facets within the tech transfer industry. I have taken invention summaries and turned them into one pagers for industry partnering and collaboration, and I’ve learned about license agreements while interacting with attorneys in law firms. Overall, I want to continue to gain a broader experience in all aspects of tech transfer to help me in the industry.

Korff:

Since starting at ICO, I’ve really loved witnessing the process of turning academic research into solutions that can help patients.

With this experience, I’ve gained a better understanding of business, marketing and management of IP, and this internship has been beneficial for my upcoming position where I’ll test patient samples for clinical trials.

Bri Heron, technology marketing manager at Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, contributed this story.

Crop diseases caused by pathogens, viruses and fungi are very costly and can result in significant yield losses for farmers.

Roger Innes, Distinguished Professor of biology at Indiana University Bloomington’s College of Arts and Sciences, has developed a method to enhance the immune system of plants to detect harmful pathogens in hopes of preventing these losses and to reduce dependence on pesticides.

Innes published a paper in 2021 in the Current Opinion in Biotechnology, a publication by Elsevier, which detailed how global yield losses caused by these diseases average 21.5 percent in wheat, 30 percent in rice, 22.6 percent in maize, 17.2 percent in potato and 21.4 percent in soybean, despite extensive use of pesticides. Foregoing pesticide use can lead to drastic increases in yield loss, but these chemicals add significant costs for farmers and can cause environmental degradation, including contamination of our drinking water. Thus, there is a pressing need to develop alternative methods for controlling crop diseases.

“By enhancing plants’ immune systems to control crop diseases, we can significantly improve crop yields to aid in expanding food supply without having to utilize harmful pesticides,” Innes said.

For the last 30 years, Innes and his team have studied how plants detect pathogens, starting from the observation that some plant varieties display strong resistance to a given pathogen while others do not. Discovering this naturally occurring variation indicated to Innes’ team that there was a difference between varieties that was likely controlled by differences in specific genes.

Investigation of the gene differences between varieties of Arabidopsis (a non-crop plant used for research purposes) led to the discovery of the molecular mechanisms that plants use to detect pathogens. Specifically, the Innes laboratory found that the PBS1 protein of Arabidopsis functions as a sensor to detect damage inside a plant cell caused by an infecting pathogen. By making small adjustments to this PBS1 sensor protein, the Innes lab showed they could extend the ability for plants to detect pathogens and develop resistance to those pathogens.

Importantly, the PBS1 protein family is present in all crop species, and the Innes laboratory has shown that the same approach can be used in soybean, barley and wheat to enhance their disease resistance traits. The Innes laboratory is now focused on engineering disease resistance in soybean and wheat. If successful, this could help prevent billions of dollars in crop losses every year.

Currently, managing plant diseases is difficult due to how quickly plant pathogens evolve, leading to development of pesticide resistant strains. The PBS1-based system being developed by Innes and his team is designed to be durable by targeting recognition of pathogen enzymes that are required for infection, and thus not easily modified by the pathogen.

Ultimately with this method, Innes and his team are aiming to reduce dependence on pesticides which are toxic to humans, especially the farmers applying them, expensive and the cause of significant environmental damages such as increased pollution from runoff during rainstorms.

“This is a multibillion-dollar problem, and our hope is to eliminate the need of pesticides as the plants will now be able to fight off pathogens without assistance,” Innes said.

Innes has a longstanding relationship with the Innovation and Commercialization Office that dates back to 1991 when he submitted his first invention disclosure. The office works closely with faculty, industry and the entrepreneurial community in Indiana to take IU innovations to market.

“ICO has been a wonderful partner with filing patents to protect our intellectual property and with helping us make connections with potential partners,” Innes said.

Bri Heron, technology marketing manager at Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, contributed the following story.

Two Indiana University faculty-led teams were selected as winners of the inaugural IU Life Sciences to Healthcare Solutions Pitch Competition, hosted by IU Research and the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office. A future reality portal that enhances addiction recovery won first place, while an instrument that assesses corneal sensation in patients won second place.

“This competition helped us identify promising early-stage technologies with the potential to deliver innovative solutions and impact,” said Hanping Guan, director of entrepreneurship at the ICO. “The participants received valuable feedback from the experienced judges on technology development and commercialization strategy. We look forward to working with IU researchers to de-risk and add value to the promising technologies to transform them into innovative healthcare solutions.”

The ICO works to create a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem for IU inventors and external partners to move discoveries from lab to market for public benefit and global impact. It commercializes IU technologies and amplifies research impact through licensing and startup formation.

The ICO organized the pitch competition, which was held on April 20 at the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute in Indianapolis, to provide an opportunity for IU faculty, staff and students to showcase research discoveries with the potential to be developed into impactful healthcare solutions. Six finalists presented their technologies and received valuable feedback from five experienced judges.

Learn more about the winners and their innovations:

First place winners: Brandon Oberlin, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the IU School of Medicine, and Izzy Branam, a freshman studying business psychology at IU Bloomington and an intern at the ICO, won the competition and $25,000 for their virtual reality portal designed to enhance addiction recovery.

Overdose is the leading killer of young adults in the United States, and every year, over 500,000 Americans die from drug-related causes. Under current treatment, relapse rates exceed 70 percent; however, the proprietary digital double avatar increased the abstinence rate from 46 percent to 86 percent within 30 days post virtual reality treatment. The future reality portal not only provides a unique solution to the urgent needs in addiction, but also has potential expanded uses in addressing weight loss and anxiety. Oberlin and Branam plan to use the funding to optimize the platform and expand the treatment from single use to 30 daily uses.

“The pitch competition was designed to help us consider the challenges of commercializing a healthcare product, and it really forced us to distill our message to its most compelling elements,” Oberlin said. “As a scientist, I am accustomed to presenting detailed data and methods before getting to the results punchline. I had to be very direct and succinct in this short pitch format; a brevity uncommon in scientific presentations. Addiction inflicts untold harm on society; we believe that our ideas can promote healing, one individual at a time.”

Oberlin and Branam believe the competition will help take them to the next phase of their project.

“Participating in the pitch competition was a great experience, and it encouraged us to take a look at our technology in a new light,” Branam said. “This competition opens the doors to continuing to enable us to make a substantial impact in what we believe is one of the most pressing issues of our time, substance abuse.”

Second place winners: Gregory Borschel, a professor of plastic surgery at the IU School of Medicine and the chief of plastic surgery at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health, and Sabin Karki and Brooke Stephanian, both students in the IU School of Medicine, won second place with SensiPen, a disposable and low-cost instrument that assesses corneal sensation in patients. Neurotrophic keratopathy is a degenerative corneal disease that affects over 3.5 million people worldwide, and with this device, the team is trying to improve the accessibility of corneal procedures. In winning second place, Borschel and his team will have a direct entry to ICO’s IU Idea to Startup Pitch Competition finals this October.

“The competition gave us an exciting opportunity to meet with a diverse array of teams building technologies to solve pressing healthcare problems, and it was inspiring to see the range of solutions presented,” Stephanian said. “With participating in this competition, we came away with a stronger ability to tell the story of our idea and we started building relationships with members of the IU commercialization ecosystem that can help bring our tool to patients.”

The finals were judged by Eric Beier, partner and chief medical officer at Boomerang Ventures; Steve Charlebois, vice president of engineering and regenerative medicine at the MED Institute; Andrew Dahlem, senior research professor at the IU School of Medicine; Kristin Eilenberg, entrepreneur-in-residence at Elevate Ventures; and Mike Myers, associate vice president and head of due diligence at Eli Lilly and Company.

Bri Heron, technology marketing manager at Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, contributed the following story.

Indiana University and Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division, have announced an expansion of their partnership to effectively leverage IU’s educational and research assets to support the nation’s strategic defense initiatives and advance and accelerate innovative solutions to national security challenges.

At a ceremony Monday afternoon, April 24, at IU’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, senior officials from IU and NSWC Crane approved an amendment to an educational partnership agreement, originally enacted in 2011, that has paired IU and Crane researchers on projects in areas of vital importance to the defense community, such as artificial intelligence, edge computing, secure microelectronics and sensor data fusion. The agreement also established a formal presence for NSWC Crane at Multidisciplinary Engineering and Sciences Hall, a 207,000-square-foot building on the IU Bloomington campus, which has recently been converted into laboratory space for IU’s Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering at the Luddy School.

IU Executive Vice President and IU Bloomington Provost Rahul Shrivastav joined Capt. Thomas (Duncan) McKay, Commanding Officer of NSWC Crane, in signing the amendment to the educational partnership agreement. With the new amendment, NSWC Crane has appointed a full-time liaison to IU to further structure the partnership between the two institutions and help facilitate collaboration on projects specific to national security innovation. In turn, IU is providing NSWC Crane with on-campus office space at the Luddy School and network connectivity.

“As IU and NSWC Crane enter an era of unprecedented potential, I’m thrilled that we are doing so in close support and alliance,” said Shrivastav. “With a liaison based on campus, we can bring together defense, academic and entrepreneurial innovators not only to solve national security problems, but to identify opportunities before challenges emerge.”

Charles Colglazier, a cybersecurity expert at NSWC and south Indiana’s representative on the National Security Innovation Network, a program office within the U.S. Department of Defense, will serve as the new liaison, working to link IU resources, including faculty and student research and innovation spaces, with emerging needs at NSWC Crane. Colglazier graduated from IU with a bachelor’s degree in physics and earned an MBA at the IU Kelley School of Business.

“This EPA renewal represents a long-term commitment from both NSWC Crane and IU to continue working together,” said Capt. McKay. “This is an expansion of an already robust partnership, and this collaboration will accelerate innovative solutions to national security challenges.”

NSWC Crane supports electronic, engineering and ordnance needs of the U.S. Navy and other military customers. It is one of Indiana’s largest high-tech employers with over 3,800 employees, of which 2,500 are scientists, engineers and technicians. NSWC Crane is the principal tenant command at Naval Support Activity Crane, the third-largest naval installation in the world, which is located approximately 40 minutes southwest of IU’s Bloomington campus.

Recent years have seen IU and NSWC Crane take major steps to pursue new collaborative efforts—in such critical areas as advanced materials, computer vision, cybersecurity, microelectronics and radiation effects—to address national defense challenges and improve Indiana’s economic competitiveness. Late last year, the two institutions re-signed a partnership intermediary agreement, initiated in 2012 and renewed in 2017, that provides NSWC Crane with an avenue to move innovative technology through the commercialization pipeline with a goal of increasing the number of licensing and startup deals for both Crane and IU.

IU and NSWC Crane also continue to explore new opportunities for collaboration that will be enabled by the recently enacted CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which calls for a historic investment of nearly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors. IU was one of the first universities to support the legislation, which represents a major initiative to build a more resilient innovation and manufacturing ecosystem.

IU and NSWC Crane are also working together to ignite high-tech innovation at WestGate@Crane Technology Park, including the park’s new $84 million microelectronics campus, which is designed to power the growth of Indiana’s semiconductor industry.

NSWC Crane was an early advocate for IU’s engineering program, established in 2016, and its researchers continue to work alongside IU scientists on advanced technology and other projects related to national security. IU and NSWC Crane recently collaborated on research into innovative techniques to protect artificial intelligence and machine learning systems used by the U.S. Navy from adversarial threats. More than 20 IU undergraduate and graduate students at the Luddy School participated in the research partnership, which was enabled through the Naval Engineering Education Consortium. The consortium is working to address the Navy’s most relevant technology needs and cultivate a world-class naval engineering workforce through student-based research conducted at U.S. colleges and universities.

In late 2020, IU also launched a new Academic Accelerator with support from the National Security Innovation Network. The program, which is designed to support and advance the development of promising new technologies with potential applications in national security and defense, recently achieved two new project milestones, both of which have implications for work at NSWC Crane.

About NSWC Crane:

NSWC Crane is a naval laboratory and a field activity of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) with mission areas in expeditionary warfare, strategic missions and electronic warfare. The warfare center is responsible for multi-domain, multi-spectral, full life cycle support of technologies and systems enhancing capability to today’s warfighter.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the fourth deadliest cancer and has a five-year survival rate of only 10 percent. PDAC, which accounts for more than 90 percent of pancreatic cancer cases, is known to be resistant to most therapeutic agents, and often the diagnosis is late in disease progression as symptoms are difficult to identify.

Aiming to improve treatment methods and health outcomes of people with PDAC, IU researcher Tao Lu, an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the IU School of Medicine and a researcher at the IU Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, has developed small molecule protein arginine methyltransferase 5 (PRMT5) inhibitors that show significant promise in tumor inhibition in mouse models.

“We discovered that PRMT5 is highly expressed in PDAC, and by showing that inhibiting the protein could reduce the tumor growth in vivo, we have hope to further develop this compound into a novel therapy for PDAC and potentially other cancers with high PRMT5 expression as well,” Lu said. “This is an exciting discovery.”

These inhibitors are instrumental for slowing PDAC progression. The researchers hope they will also alleviate PDAC resistance issues by inhibiting cell signaling that leads to drug resistance.

While there are a few treatment options for PDAC, the therapeutic drugs have considerable toxicity, such as leukopenia and febrile neutropenia, and only provide a median overall survival of 8.5 months. The researchers hope the PRMT5 inhibitor can be used to expand available treatment options for PDAC, such as using this new drug alone or in combination with the current standard treatment options, thus significantly improving quality of life for those affected by this cancer.

By inhibiting PRMT5-mediated production of proinflammatory factors, the inhibitor can also potentially be used to treat colon cancer, which is the second deadliest cancer, as well as inflammation related diseases such as wet age-related macular degeneration.

Lu’s startup, EQon Pharmaceuticals, is further developing the PRMT5 inhibitor with the goal of reaching IND readiness and a phase 1 clinical trial in treating PDAC, other types of cancers, as well as inflammatory related diseases.

Lu has a long-standing relationship with IU’s Innovation and Commercialization Office (ICO) and has worked with the office to move several inventions towards commercialization.

“Before working with ICO, I had no idea how to submit an invention disclosure or how to file a patent application,” Lu said. “ICO was extremely helpful in guiding me through those steps and helping me license my IU technology to my startup. I’m thankful for my ongoing relationship with ICO, and I’m excited to continue furthering my research.”

Bri Heron, technology marketing manager at Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office, contributed the following story.