Big potential for UH research

If you don’t, you’re not alone. Even several of Madey’s colleagues — like David McClain, dean of the business school — don’t know he’s here. But he is, and he could be one of the best things going for the Hawai’i technology scene. Madey has figured out how to make potent lasers at greatly reduced cost. That’s something that could mean patents, partnerships, new companies right here in Hawai‘i.

University of Hawai‘i professors have recently produced a handful of high-profile innovations — caffeine-free coffee and glowing green mice are among those that come to mind. But for every well-known breakthrough, several dozen equally fascinating, but less well-known, advances have come from UH laboratories.

Here are eight researchers like Madey who have produced some of the most interesting — and potentially lucrative — technologies to come out of UH in recent months. The list is hardly complete. But they represent five departments and millions of dollars' worth of grants, and their projects reveal the breadth and quality of UH research.

Mr. Telemedicine

DAVID Y.Y. YUN

Yun is a leader in many fields. A mathematician and computer scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he spent decades with the IBM Watson Research Center and Southern Methodist University, but lately has become a world authority on the technology of telemedicine. His research projects as an electrical engineering professor at the University of Hawai‘i have brought in $15 million in grants, and have attracted academic attention and corporate partners from around the world.

David Yun, here adjusting a videoconferencing unit, sees Hawai‘i as a potential biomedical hotbed. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

Yun now has several projects in the works. He seeks a patent on a new 3-D imaging process, which allows for virtual-reality "fly-throughs" of everything from capillaries to canyons. He is developing a laser-based system to detect breast cancer tumors without the use of harmful X-rays, and is helping design a telemedicine network of satellites and supercomputers to bring advanced cancer treatment planning to the world’s hinterlands.

Another Yun project is a Web service that uses small wireless sensors to constantly analyze and monitor diabetics’ blood sugar levels — technology that could be used to help treat asthma, hypertension and other chronic conditions.

With vast potential markets, Yun’s research holds great commercial promise, said Barry Weinman, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Each of the projects has already attracted government grants, corporate funding and/or joint venture offers. Business partners include Hamamatsu Photonics KK, Pacific Telemedicine, MDvista and Hawaii Multimedia Corp.

Yun said he will gladly develop lucrative commercial applications for the technology — as long as Hawai‘i stays involved. "That’s one of my main conditions," said Yun, who envisions the state as a worldwide telemedicine headquarters.

Enthusiastic and upbeat, Yun believes technological advances will lead to vast, unimaginable improvements in the quality of life. Humankind will conquer death "within a hundred years," he said.

The Laser Men

JOHN MADEY and ERIC SZARMES

Nothing about John Madey and Eric Szarmes’ laser research is new. At the same time, everything about it is. The physics professors are working with fundamental principles of light and energy that date to Einstein’s era. But using the latest technology, Madey and Szarmes are applying those principles in novel, effective and exciting ways — and on the cheap. Madey said he and Szarmes have figured out a way to produce useful fine-tuned laser beams for about 1 percent of the cost of previous technology.

Madey, 58, is a former Stanford professor and the inventor, in 1970, of the free-electron laser — a multimillion-dollar piece of equipment that became the big-budget backbone of Reagan-era "Star Wars" missile-defense research. In the 1990s, he worked on a massive, expensive government-backed laser development project at Duke University. For the last three years at UH, Madey and longtime protege Szarmes have gone in the other direction. They are using smaller, cheaper free-electron lasers to perfect processes that have a mind-boggling array of military, medical and chemical uses:

To enforce nuclear test bans. A finely tuned portable laser unit on a reconnaissance plane could sweep the atmosphere for mere molecules of underground test byproducts.

To conduct surgery. With ultra-fine tuning, laser beams can be produced that destroy tumor cells — while leaving surrounding tissues unharmed. And lasers can be tuned to cut tissue with minimal pain, operating at a specific setting that quells nerve reactions. This could be useful for treatment of severe wounds and burns, in which the overwhelming pain of surgery can be as dangerous as the trauma itself.

To analyze molecular structure. Lasers can be used to recreate three-dimensional pictures of complex compounds. This process is potentially useful in everything from producing synthetic chemicals to examining viruses like HIV for potential weaknesses.

These potential applications have all been known since the laser was invented in the 1960s. But Madey, Szarmes and other top-flight researchers have helped provide the practical means to exploit the theoretical gains of earlier generations.

If Madey has his way, the next wave of free-electron lasers will be compact and cost-effective, and will become standard equipment in hospitals and research universities nationwide. To realize his dream, Madey has joined forces with Trex Enterprises, a San Diego company with operations on Maui and Kaua‘i.

"My hope is that we’ll come up with some solid procedures within the next five years — and there’s a reasonable chance of doing that," Madey said. "If we’re successful, we’ll dramatically impact the capability of Hawai‘i to develop a high technology community."

The Compound Collector

RICHARD MOORE

Cyanobacteria are tiny, obscure, barely understood — and potentially worth their weight in platinum. Roosting somewhere on the tree of life between single-celled plants and bacteria — they’re often called blue-green algae — these microscopic organisms are miniature chemical factories, pumping out thousands of unique compounds that scientists hope could help fight diseases.

Chemistry professor Richard Moore is the big kahuna of cyanobacteria research. Over three decades of work, he has amassed a collection of 2,000 cyanobacteria specimens from around the world — a feat that may never be duplicated, thanks to new international agreements on intellectual property rights.

Moore has discovered that these specimens produce hundreds of "bioactive" compounds that can kill, damage or otherwise affect living organisms. Working with the university’s Cancer Research Center, Moore has already identified one compound that shows promise in fighting cancer. Licensed to Prozac creator Eli Lilly under the name cryptophycin, that compound is undergoing human clinical trials. If those trials succeed, cryptophycin could bring millions of dollars in royalty and milestone payments to UH.

Moore calls the search for useful compounds a "fishing expedition" — big-name pharmaceutical companies can spend untold millions fruitlessly hunting for the next wonderdrug. But Moore acknowledges that his microalgae collection is a fertile fishing ground.

Local biotechnology company Aquasearch believes so, too. Aquasearch in January signed a deal with UH for access to Moore’s collection, which the company will further sift for useful compounds.

The Frequency Guy

WAYNE SHIROMA

Patience has its virtues — as does luck. High-speed communications just happens to be developing in a direction that could mean unexpected rewards for several UH electrical engineering professors, who have toiled to harness previously unworkable, but extremely fast, signal frequencies.

Professors Wayne Shiroma and Michael Delisio have concentrated on frequencies above 28 gigahertz — waves that cycle at rates more than 15 times faster than conventional cellular-phone frequencies. Long regarded as impractical for mass communications, the faster frequencies are starting to yield their secrets, thanks to some creative thinking.

Shiroma and Delisio -- plus a handful of top researchers from other institutions -- are developing "quasi-optical" transmitters and receivers, which are antennas embedded with transistors that use light and mirrors to amplify signal power. The result is a far lighter, smaller, higher performing and more efficient communication system than current technology allows.

Such system architectures could hold the key to wireless communications of immense speed, volume and flexibility -- and could blow away the new 1.9-gigahertz "3-G" standards, which are already far more powerful than the "2-G" used by older wireless devices, Shiroma said.

Shiroma’s colleague Delisio is already taking the idea corporate. He’s helped start a California-based company, WaveStream, to commercialize the technology, and is on leave from the Electrical Engineering department. Meanwhile, Shiroma continues his research in new $1 million labs at UH. He’s looking for ways to perfect the use of ever-higher frequencies.

"The key for us is to go to higher and higher, and figure out the architecture of the equipment that lets us do that," he said.

The Pod People

EDOARDO BIAGIONI, K.W. BRIDGES, and BRIAN CHEE

The pods don’t look like much, but that’s their genius. Like alien spies, they gather information while remaining virtually invisible, disguised as hollow logs and fake rocks. Each can house sensors for heat, moisture and wind, batteries, a small computer, a wireless antenna, even a digital camera. Strewn about a lava field, a rain forest, a remote hillside, these sensors can amass immense quantities of information.

When perfected, sensors like these could save agriculture companies thousands of dollars, said Brian Chee, head of University of Hawai‘i’s Advanced Network Computing Laboratory, who is helping develop them. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

They could help farmers micromanage crops down to the individual plant. Botanists could monitor endangered species without setting foot in the field. The military could observe the environmental effects of weapons; refugee helpers could gather detailed information on camp conditions from unobtrusive sensors in tent poles and fenceposts.

The pods are as versatile as they are odd; the same can be said of their inventors. Botany professor K. W. "Kim" Bridges admits he’s also a computer nerd; Edoardo "Edo" Biagioni, a soft-spoken, shaven-headed software specialist, wants to make machines more intelligent; and Brian Chee, the former head computer-security "crypto-weenie" for the federal General Service Administration, has turned down six-figure job offers to head the university’s Advanced Network Computing Laboratory.

The trio’s combination of high science and popular mechanics -- Bridges’ students make the hollow rocks with Bondo, a plastic compound used to patch holes in car bodies — has garnered attention in military, scientific, academic and corporate circles. The Department of Defense has provided $500,000. Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park has lent itself as a perfect backdrop for the pods, which are being used to analyze climate changes and watch endangered plants.

"Whenever we visit, we’re the most popular people in the park," Biagioni said. "All the scientists are always asking us if they can see the pods."

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is sending a team of researchers to equip several dozen of the pods with cutting-edge sensors. Next up is landing some corporate funding. Agrichemical giant Monsanto has shown preliminary interest in using the pods to monitor crop moisture levels and plant conditions, Chee said.

"Irrigation control is crucial for agriculture — removing even one spin of those gigantic sprinklers could save thousands of dollars," he said.

Bridges also envisions the sensors as futuristic teaching tools. Equipped with high-resolution digital cameras, they could be linked to high-definition, flat-screen monitors to give students a full-color view of wildlife.

"Think about it," he said. "One minute you could be looking at real flowers in a real jungle in Borneo, the next at a storm on the Alaskan tundra. This technology could really open up classrooms to the world."

John Duchemin can be reached by phone at 525-8062, or by e-mail at jduchemin@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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