As you can probably imagine, things are pretty busy right now.

We’ve got a record 5 open contests, including two commercial use searches, a brand new type of search we’re hoping helps universities better monetize their research efforts.

The ear warmer contest is about to wrap up, so if you’ve got a last minute submission, make sure you get it in by January 18th.

We’re also running a prior art search for an optical signaling patent and a flashlight patent. So check those out.

As I mentioned we added a new commercial use search this week for a technology related to medical imaging and coronary stents. If you know of or can find any commercial applications of the technology (almost like a post-dated prior art search) there’s a $3000 prize in it.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to announce the winners of the Jetpack contest. We decided to split the prize between the best two submissions because they were similarly qualified. Congratulations to Sibelle Andrade and Pratap Vardhan! Each received a $500 prize.

Sibelle is a chemical engineer from Brazil with master degree in intellectual property and innovation.and Pratap, from India, holds a bachelor’s in electronics and communications
engineering with research experience in computer vision, image processing, AI and operational
research.

Once the sensitivity is gone, we’ll reveal the winning submissions as well so you can see what you found and what you missed.

We’re also ready to announce the winner of the Charge Pump contest - Lingkai Kong. Lingkai is a graduate student studying high-speed wireline signaling and energy-efficient mm-wave circuit design at University of California, Berkeley.