Tech Transfer

This page offers technology assets originated under THaW funding.  If you are interested in taking advantage of any of these resources, please contact us.

Startups:

  • VirtaLabs: Founded by THaW principal Kevin Fu and colleague Ben Ransford, VirtaLabs produces the BlueFlow software product to identify, assess, patch, and track clinical assets in health care environments.

Patents:

  • February 2024: Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David F. Kotz. Apparatuses, Methods, and Software for Secure Short-Range Wireless CommunicationUS 11,894,920 B2, February 6, 2024. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11894920B2/en — Priority date 2021-09-17, Grant date 2024-02-06. Patent describes a secure method to wirelessly transmit data between devices that are in short-range of each other. 
  • January 2024: Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David F. Kotz. System and method for proximity detection with single-antenna device. US 11,871,233 B2, January 9, 2024. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11871233B2/en. — Priority date 2019-04-26, Grant date 2024-01-09. Patent describes methods for single-antenna devices to determine proximity between themselves and another device. 
  • December 2023: Timothy J. Pierson and Jonathan F. Alter. Methods and software for pairing wireless devices using dynamic multipath signal matching, and wireless devices implementing the same. US11856408B2, December 26, 2023. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11856408B2/en. — Priority date 2021-10-29, Grant date 2023-12-26. Patent describes methods of pairing devices wirelessly that include matching received-signal-strength information regarding signal-strength patterns received by differing devices desired to be paired. 
  • December 2021: Kevin Fu, Peter Honeyman, Timothy Trippel, and Ofir Weisse. Protecting motion sensors from acoustic injection attack, May 2017. USPTO; US Patent Application PCT/US2017/033544; USPTO. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11209454B2/en?oq=11209454 and https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200300883A1/enPriority date 2017-05-19, Grant date 2021-12-28. This is a patent application for software techniques to mitigate the effects of acoustic injection attacks on sensors such as MEMS accelerometers. See also paper Trippel2017:WALNUT.
  • October 2021: Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatuses, Methods, and Software For Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication. U.S. Patent 11,153,026, October 19, 2021. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11153026B2/en — Priority date 2017-09-06, Grant date 2021-10-19. Patent describes apparatuses that provide for secure wireless communications between wireless devices under cover of one or more jamming signals.
  • November 2020: Kevin Kornegay and Willie Lee Thompson II. Decentralized Root-of-Trust Framework for Heterogeneous Networks, November 2020. Morgan State University; USPTO. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180196945A1/en Priority date 2017-01-11, Grant date 2020-11-10. Patent describes a data traffic module supporting the attestation and secure boot operations of IoT devices and legacy computing devices, and providing tamper resistance to such devices. 
  • March 2020: Xiaohui Liang, Tianlong Yun, Ron Peterson, and David Kotz. Secure System For Coupling Wearable Devices To Computerized Devices with Displays, March 2020. USPTO; U.S. Patent 10,581,606; USPTO. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170279612A1/enPriority date 2014-08-18, Grant date 2020-03-03. Patent describes a system enabling information from mobile health sensors (eg Fitbit) to be displayed onto nearby screens without being affected by local security threats. The scheme uses visible light sensor on the mobile device. See papers liang:lighttouch and liang:jlighttouch.
  • February 2020: Timothy J. Pierson, Xiaohui Liang, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatus for Securely Configuring A Target Device and Associated Methods, February 2020. U.S. Patent 10,574,298; USPTO. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180191403A1/enThis is a patent. Priority date 2015-06-23, Grant date 2020-02-25. Patent based on “Wanda” device, described in other publications. Device implements a scheme for single antenna wi-fi device to determine its proximity to another wi-fi device with which it is communicating, in order to assure it is not unwittingly communicating with a distant adversary device rather than a nearby device. See paper pierson:wanda.
  • May 2018: Andrés Molina-Markham, Shrirang Mare, Ronald Peterson Jr., and David Kotz. Continuous Seamless Mobile Device Authentication Using a Separate Electronic Wearable Apparatus, May 2018. U.S. Patent 9,961,547. Download from https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/papers/molina-markham-patent9961547.pdfThe invention is a wearable device whose motions can be correlated to inputs to a mobile device. The inventions supports continuous authentication for users wearing the device.
  • November 2017: Shrirang Mare, Andrés Molina-Markham, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. System, Method and Authorization Device for Biometric Access Control to Digital Devices, November 2017. U.S. Patent 9,832,206. Download from http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/papers/mare-patent9832206.pdfPatent covers technology reported under ’SAW’ project papers for continuous authentication of users of medical systems through motion-detecting wristbands.
  • October 2017: D. E. Holcomb and Kevin Fu. Physical unclonable function using augmented memory for challenge-response hashing, October 2017. USPTO; US Patent 9,787,481; USPTO. Download from https://patents.google.com/patent/US9787481B2/en and https://patents.google.com/patent/US10038564B2/enApplication filed 28 August 2015; Patent granted 10 October 2017. This is a patent for a method of using an array of SRAM cells to provide a physically unclonable function (PUF).