These innovations went to market

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Engineering faculty are encouraged to innovate and commercialize their world-changing research. Since 2014, two dozen companies based on faculty R&D have launched, and all but one are still active.

Arnab Nandi
Nandi
Each working with The Ohio State University Corporate Engagement Office, the new enterprises are borne from a broad spectrum of disciplines and focus on a wide range of industry solutions. The last 12 months has seen a flurry of startup activity, including the 3 we feature here.

In the past six years, Computer Science and Engineering Professor Arnab Nandi launched Ohio State’s student hackathon, HackOHI/O, and the STEAM Factory, an interdisciplinary faculty collaborative. And now he’s launched his own company.

Mobikit is a vehicle analytics platform that enables automakers, insurance providers, and mobility companies with the tools to build enterprise applications on top of data from autonomous and connected vehicles.

In April, the company received a $100,000 grant from the Ohio Third Frontier Commission to accelerate commercialization of its technologies. Mobikit has hosted four Ohio State undergraduate interns so far, and employs four Ohio State alumni as part of its full-time staff.

Ryan Harne
Harne
Based on Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Ryan Harne’s patented technology, HyperDamping develops effective, lightweight, and low-cost vibration, shock, and noise damping solutions.

Vibrations and shocks cause noise and damage to consumer electronics, vehicles, aircraft, building and gym floors, industrial equipment, and many other everyday products.

“Existing solutions trade-off weight and cost against how much damping can be achieved,” Harne explained. “HyperDamping eliminates that trade-off.”

Exceptional performance is paired with long material life, high load bearing strength, broad material and temperature compatibility, and low compression set. HyperDamping delivers this combination of performance demands by integrating structural engineering principles with materials science.

The company is currently piloting projects with partners in automotive, construction, and machinery industries. Soon after its 2018 launch, the company announced completion of a seed financing with Rhapsody Venture Partners. Propelled by venture capital and multiplying partner projects, HyperDamping is rapidly growing and is currently seeking energetic engineering talent for open positions.

DAtAnchor’s founder, Emre Koksal, is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Emre Koksal
Koksal

According to Koksal, the company’s transparent encryption technology solution empowers businesses to have full control of their data, no matter where it is accessed. It embeds governance rules into key management in such a way that, even if data is moved, these rules seamlessly move with it. An organization can create multiple context factors, such as user credentials, location, content of data, and access modality for their users to access the data in a fully transparent fashion. The technology also creates real-time audit logs on all requests made on the data, including the location of the access.

“We make it easy for users by providing seamless encryption anywhere,” Koksal said.

DAtAnchor’s solution automates data governance, which is handled via manual procedures in most businesses. It also provides a complete data trail, substantially reducing the overhead in meeting numerous compliance regulations on data security, including HIPAA and GDPR. The company’s initial clients come from a wide variety of sectors including legal, financial services and healthcare.

In February, DAtAnchor announced it had raised $1.25 million in a funding round led by Columbus-based Ohio Innovation Fund.

Categories: FacultyResearch