2020 Awardees

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic we continue to navigate as a nation, the 2020 on-campus ceremony was cancelled. Please join us in recognizing and rewarding the innovative contributions of Morgan faculty, staff, and students.

Intellectual Property Awardees

Life Science
Retrieval-Based Decision Support System to Enable the Automated Diagnosis of Multiple Skin Cancer Types from Dermoscopic Images
Dr. Md Mahmudur Rahman
School of Computer, Mathematical, & Natural Sciences

This technology can be used as a tool for doctors to assist in diagnosing melanomas and other skin cancers. To validate this technology, Dr. Md Rahman used as reference an established dataset consisting of melanoma images. The images were then run through a process that consequently allows for any potential melanoma from a patient to be compared against the dataset, with high detection accuracy.

Information Science
Multi-Layer Hidden Markov Model Based Intrusion Detection System
Dr. Richard Dean, Dr. Farzad Moazzami, Wondimu K. Zegeye
School of Engineering

This invention builds upon the concept of intrusion detection, where in the cybersecurity field certain digital events or signatures are discovered entering a computer network. The multi-layer hidden Markov model provides additional network defense by effectively covering multiple forms of attacks over longer durations. This will also reduce the incidence of false positives, determine more possible attack states, and help to identify new threats.

Physical Science
Nanoscale Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy (SECM) Electrode
Dr. Birol Ozturk, Alperen Guver, Peker Milas
School of Computer, Mathematical, & Natural Sciences

Dr. Birol Ozturk and his team of co-inventors have invented a specialized electrode that consists of tungsten and whose gold tip is less than 200 nanometers in diameter. The electrode also contains a glass insulator to prevent the electrode from being damaged. This device can be used for applications such as biosensing, electrically active cell data recording, and corrosion research and detection.

Morgan Community Innovation Awards

Student Innovator of the Year
Tasmeer Alam
School of Engineering, Doctoral Candidate

Tasmeer Alam, currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, is the 2020 Student Innovator of the Year awardee. She is a talented researcher who has developed an extensive research portfolio. She is a coinventor on Morgan patent applications; contributed to the development of MSU's COVID-19 Dashboard and web application; has authored peer reviewed papers; and received an award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in recognition of her research efforts.

Instructional Innovator of the Year
Natasha Otto
College of Liberal Arts, Psychology Department

Professor Otto was awarded the Instructional Innovator of Year award for integrating innovative technologies into her courses. Professor Otto utilized Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies to engage students in her Developmental Psychology course. This immersive experience allowed her students to simulate child rearing from birth to adulthood, illustrating the impact of genetics, attitudes, and decisions made from parenting.

Staff Innovator(s) of the Year - TIE
Sharon Oliver-Whitehurst
Office of the Provost

Sharon Oliver-Whitehurst, Senior Budget Officer in the Office of Academic Affairs, was awarded the Staff Innovator of the Year award for her pivotal role in increasing Morgan's efficiency as the University navigated through the Coronavirus pandemic. She successfully launched and implemented the "Toss the Paper 2.0" campaign, which helped transition a number of paper-dependent processes and transactions into a digital, standardized, paperless process.

Lawrence Manning & Steven Law (Team Award)
Office of Development, Institutional Advancement

Steven Law, the Associate Director of Enterprise Services, and Lawrence Manning, Development Associate in the Office of Development, were also awarded the Staff Innovator of the Year. The two gentlemen partnered to design and manage the implementation of the MSU Foundation E-pay online payroll deduction system. The system allows users to submit their payroll deduction authorizations electronically, without social security numbers, and offers auto-renew options.

Patent Awardees

Patent #10,626,363
Engineered cyanobacteria with enhanced salt tolerance
Viji Sitther, Benham Tabatabai

This technology uses cyanobacteria to produce everyday natural products for applications such as food supplements, biofuels, animal feed, nutraceuticals, and pharmaceuticals. This particular strain of cyanobacteria, F. diplosiphon, can be harvested in a shorter time frame, resulting in higher production yields.

Patent #10,673,469
Multi-based Multi-Mode Software Defined Radio
Willie Thompson, Samuel Berhanu, Jan-Paul Alleyne

This invention provides high-speed signal processing and flexible programming to support multiple telemetry waveforms that are implemented using a system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology. It was primarily developed to support communications in this special frequency band for the military.

Patent #10,688,541
Portable Shellfish Basket Washer
Donghee Kang & Ted Cooney

A shellfish basket was designed for oyster harvesters or others to clean their catches while stationed on the boat. The design includes a basket holder and high-pressure nozzle, water pump and water tank.