{"id":980,"date":"2014-10-23T15:14:04","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T15:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/?p=980"},"modified":"2014-12-01T17:44:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-01T17:44:00","slug":"have-you-thanked-a-scientist-or-engineer-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/2014\/10\/23\/have-you-thanked-a-scientist-or-engineer-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Have you thanked a scientist or engineer today?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A post from our student blogger Megan<\/em><\/p>\n

Every year the MSPL students get the distinct honor of working with Notre Dame research scientists and professors who have developed a novel method or tangible item that is in need of patent protection.\u00a0 The students work hand-in-hand with these Notre Dame faculty inventors to formulate a patent application on the inventor\u2019s idea.\u00a0 The process is a ten month learning experience and involves understanding the inventor\u2019s concept and then writing a claim set and ultimately developing a complete patent application with respect to the invention.\u00a0 This process, while it appears quite succinct, requires lots of interaction and devotion of time to interviews with incredibly talented inventors.<\/p>\n

The class that involves this thesis project is called \u201cCapstone.\u201d\u00a0 The class itself meets one to two times per week, but it is the work that goes on outside the classroom that truly shapes the Capstone experience.\u00a0 In general, my Capstone thesis project is a novel combination of washing, staining, and imaging a sample of tumor tissue all in one tiny device, resulting in a three-dimensional view of the tumor and its entire environment.\u00a0 \u201cSo what?\u201d\u00a0 You ask. Well, this isn\u2019t any regular biochemistry lab function; in fact, this is a genius collaboration with far-reaching diagnostic effects fabricated by three separate labs here on Notre Dame\u2019s campus.<\/p>\n

You see, up until now, in order to determine whether a patient had breast cancer or not, a fine needle biopsy was taken from the patient and then sliced into hundreds of small two-dimensional pieces.\u00a0 These slices were each painstakingly mounted on separate slides, stained, and imaged under a microscope.\u00a0 If you wanted an idea of what the entire tissue environment\u2014and not just a sliver of the area\u2014looked like, an extra step was added to this already complex method:\u00a0 examiners would feed the microscope images into a computer program and attempt to piece the pictures back together to get some sort of image of the tumor and its surrounding area.\u00a0 My capstone invention is groundbreaking because it proposes to keep the tissue surrounding the tumor completely intact.\u00a0 This is important because it will lead to more accurate and informed cancer diagnoses.\u00a0 Currently, pathologists make cancer treatment recommendations based on very small, two-dimensional biopsy samples, or the pieced-together computer generated methods.<\/p>\n

To arrive at this understanding I have had the opportunity to get to know four inventors, invade each of their labs, and meet with them countless hours to discuss their invention.\u00a0 Perhaps the most surprising thing about conversing with each one of them is their level of enthusiasm for what they have created.\u00a0 You might be under the misconception that scientists and engineers are a little boring.\u00a0 My four inventors are just the opposite.\u00a0 Their faces each light up with excitement when they get the chance to explain why this invention is so important.\u00a0 And just as they beam with passion over what they\u2019ve discovered, they just as quickly bubble over with delight when they get to show you how they came up with the idea.<\/p>\n

Because of my inventors\u2019 fervor for discovery, my days are full of interest and purpose.\u00a0 Take some time today to thank the scientists, engineers, researchers, educators, and anyone else you know who has worked tirelessly and thanklessly on new ideas that ultimately heal our society or just plain make our quality of life better.\u00a0 They deserve some praise\u2014so insist on it\u2014even though they probably won\u2019t want to take the credit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A post from our student blogger Megan Every year the MSPL students get the distinct honor of working with Notre Dame research scientists and professors who have developed a novel method or tangible item that is in need of patent … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29602],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":981,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/patentlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}