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Johns Hopkins APL Reaches Highest Mark for Intellectual Property Disclosures
Central Spark is among the collaborative workspaces fostering innovation at APL.
Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
Staff members at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, filed a record number of intellectual property (IP) disclosures in fiscal year 2024. These IP disclosures span a wide range of research and development efforts and empower the Laboratory’s strategic value to sponsors and the nation.
Laboratory inventors filed 564 IP disclosures from Oct. 2, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024. This represents a jump from the roughly 450 disclosures averaged over the previous five years, and more than a doubling of annual IP disclosures from a decade ago. For the first time, APL also pushed past 8,000 total IP disclosures — the most since the Laboratory began the current numbering scheme in the 1990s.
“APL exists to have game-changing impact through groundbreaking innovation,” said Susan Ehrlich, a technology manager at APL. “It’s integral to APL’s DNA, and one of our key responsibilities as a university affiliated research center. IP disclosures are a measure of how successful we are at being innovative.”
From lunar exploration to climate-mitigation breakthroughs to medical device advancements, APL’s IP is born from both sponsor-funded projects and independent research initiatives. All staff members are asked to submit IP disclosures for the innovations they create.
Protecting Intellectual Property
Ehrlich is among the Laboratory’s team of Tech Transfer technology managers who manage IP, decide what to patent, market technologies externally to find licensing partners, and ensure technology is transferred appropriately. For FY 2024, 94 patent applications, including 27 nonprovisional patent applications, were filed.
In addition to patents, APL safeguards its IP through copyright, trademark and trade secret protections. Copyright, for example, gives APL exclusive rights to control the distribution, modification and use of certain original works created at APL. Such distribution may include allowing the public to access and use APL-created software under an open-source license.
Commitment to Innovation
“As a research and development organization, our most valuable asset is our people — the innovators, scientists and engineers who are solving the nation’s most critical challenges,” said Todd Farnsworth, a registered patent attorney in APL’s Office of the General Counsel. “Intellectual property and successful patents represent their dedication and ingenuity in developing innovative technologies.”
By encouraging and incubating bold research proposals, cultivating the next generation of leaders and creating collaborative workspaces, APL fosters creativity at every level. The Laboratory’s comprehensive system of grants and collaboration initiatives empowers staff members to explore new ideas and push the boundaries of discovery. For example, the Laboratory’s Innovation and Collaboration program supports staff members in launching new concepts.
“If we want to stay ahead of our near-peer adversaries and maintain our operational supremacy, then the Laboratory must have innovations ready when sponsors need them,” said Briana Vecchio-Pagan, who manages the Innovation and Collaboration program. “Over the past decade, the Laboratory’s overall push for innovation on both internal and sponsored work has led to more and more IP being generated — IP that could transition for incredible impact.”
Within the Innovation and Collaboration program is Project Catalyst, which includes APL’s internally funded Ignition, Combustion and Propulsion grants. Each year, nearly $10 million in grant opportunities are available to fund innovative ideas, and that’s alongside several other initiatives and Independent Research and Development funding opportunities.
“It’s all about providing permissions to chase the big unknowns, and going after the ‘APL-hard’ types of problems,” said Jason Fayer, the Innovation and Collaboration deputy program manager. “That approach leads to unique solutions that can provide impactful results.”
APL is consistently named one of the nation’s top innovative workplaces, and its reputation for encouraging innovation entices top talent.
“A robust IP portfolio is a powerful tool for attracting top-tier talent,” said Meredith Barclay, supervisor of APL’s Talent Acquisition Strategies and Services Group. “Our team is dedicated to ensuring that candidates, especially Ph.D. applicants, recognize the depth and breadth of innovation happening at the Lab.”
APL researchers developed the technology for ConceptAgent, which is one of the 564 intellectual property disclosures filed during fiscal year 2024.
Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
Notable IP
Among the 564 IP disclosures submitted in FY 2024, the following three examples — described by the innovators themselves — showcase the promise of game-changing impact:
- Robotic Task Completion From Natural Language Requests
- “Imagine being able to tell a robot what you want it to do, just like you’re talking to a person. The robot then takes care of executing the task. Called ConceptAgent, our technology understands natural language instructions, plans the necessary steps and adapts in real time to changes in its surroundings.”
- Corban Rivera, David Handelman, Emma Holmes and William Paul from APL’s Research and Exploratory Development Mission Area, along with Andrew Badger from the Lab’s Space Exploration Sector, developed human-robot teaming technology with Army Research Laboratory funding.
- “Imagine being able to tell a robot what you want it to do, just like you’re talking to a person. The robot then takes care of executing the task. Called ConceptAgent, our technology understands natural language instructions, plans the necessary steps and adapts in real time to changes in its surroundings.”
- Chemical Embeddings and Multitask Machine Learning on Small, Heterogeneous Data
- “Our multitask machine learning model is trained to encode molecular structures in numerical form and predict multiple toxicological end points simultaneously from these embedded representations. The embedded representations function as ‘addresses’ in ‘chemical space,’ in which ‘neighbors’ ideally have similar chemical risk profiles, enabling risk prediction of novel chemicals based on their neighbors’ risk. A suite of high-quality predictive models, powered by our multitask chemical space embedding scheme, could rapidly increase the speed and volume of chemical screening, helping to protect warfighters from occupational hazards while reducing the reliance on costly animal studies.”
- Noah Wichrowski, Mary Versa Clemens-Sewall, Karun Kumar Rao, Casey Richardson, Nam Le, Phillip Koshute, James Y. Liu, Chris Carr and Jordan Wesley developed this technology. The work was funded by the Air Force Medical Service and conducted in collaboration with subject-matter experts at the Air Force Research Laboratory.*
- “Our multitask machine learning model is trained to encode molecular structures in numerical form and predict multiple toxicological end points simultaneously from these embedded representations. The embedded representations function as ‘addresses’ in ‘chemical space,’ in which ‘neighbors’ ideally have similar chemical risk profiles, enabling risk prediction of novel chemicals based on their neighbors’ risk. A suite of high-quality predictive models, powered by our multitask chemical space embedding scheme, could rapidly increase the speed and volume of chemical screening, helping to protect warfighters from occupational hazards while reducing the reliance on costly animal studies.”
- Removing Articles Via In-situ On-orbit Localized Impacts
- “Removing Articles Via In-situ On-orbit Localized Impacts (RAVIOLI) is a novel concept for hypervelocity impact shielding that leverages the complementary properties of aerogels and Kevlar. This technology has been extensively lab tested to demonstrate its capability for size, weight, power and cost optimizations in a variety of space shielding applications. Next, we’ll include hypersonic reentry system uses and body armor alternatives.”
- Rachel Hartig, Ben Estacio and Aayush Sharma developed this technology through Space Formulation Mission Area, Independent Research and Development, and Combustion Grant funding.
- “Removing Articles Via In-situ On-orbit Localized Impacts (RAVIOLI) is a novel concept for hypervelocity impact shielding that leverages the complementary properties of aerogels and Kevlar. This technology has been extensively lab tested to demonstrate its capability for size, weight, power and cost optimizations in a variety of space shielding applications. Next, we’ll include hypersonic reentry system uses and body armor alternatives.”
*No DoD endorsement implied. Distribution A: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. Cleared as AFRL-2024-6465 on 20 November 2024.
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