Two Iowa State University professors with more than 140 patents between them have been selected to become National Academy of Inventors fellows. (Photo by Brooklyn Draisey/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
Two Iowa State University professors recently inducted into a national organization recognizing inventors and their accomplishments said they are proud of the work they’ve done and the impacts that they’ve seen first-hand from projects they’ve led or had a hand in.
Agricultural and biosystems engineering professor Matt Darr and chemical and biological engineering professor Eric Cochran were both chosen to become National Academy of Inventors 2024 fellows, a cohort that Darr said would provide them with more connections and help them open doors for future inventors.
“We’re proud of the fact that the work that we do through innovation and inventions, through patents and tech transfer, doesn’t just stop at a research lab, but ultimately does get in the hands of men and women who feed and fuel the country,” Darr said.
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The National Academy of Inventors has more than 2,000 fellows in its ranks from all over the U.S., 11 of whom are from ISU, including Cochran and Darr. According to its website, the goal of the organization is to “recognize and encourage inventors with U.S. patents, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, encourage the disclosure of intellectual property, educate and mentor innovative students, and to create wider public understanding of how its members’ inventions benefit society.”
The two professors are credited with 141 patents and technology transfer licenses between them, with Darr having authored or co-authored 88 and Cochran having been involved in 53 finished patents and dozens more currently in the process of becoming official patents.
Cochran said the steps to receiving a patent on an invention take around five years, starting with the filing of a provisional patent application.
“It’s not a full filing … it’s kind of a flag in the ground that declares that we were first here, and nobody else can come and claim that they were first,” Cochran said.
For a year after filing the provisional application, Cochran said it is “basically a secret” kept by the applicant and the patent office. From there, the applicant decides whether they’d like to submit a “real” application to be reviewed by an examiner. There is usually some back and forth between the applicant and the examiner before the full patent is issued, he said.
He can’t discuss technical details of the patents currently under review, Cochran said, but his body of work so far has fallen into three categories — transforming vegetable fats into plastics, rubbers and other coatings; additives and other products for the asphalt industry, and chemical recycling of plastics.
Darr’s work is in the field of agricultural technology, he said, with his most well-known projects focused on yield data and monitoring. He likened picking his favorite product of his work to choosing a favorite child, but when it comes down to it, for him it’s all about the impact the work makes on the world and the people in it.
One moment that has stuck in Darr’s mind was when he was introducing a sugarcane farmer to live yield mapping. Darr was in the harvester with the farmer when he first used the technology, and he got to see in real-time how the culmination of his work will impact how the farmer thinks about his crop from now on.
“It’s a special moment because it was directly connecting our innovation and the impact it created for others,” Darr said. “To see their reaction and their excitement and the possibilities show up in their eyes with how our work could possibly impact their business and their life, those are the ones that really stand out.”
The idea of giving inventors at universities the same recognition as those in other scientific fields is relatively new in academia, Darr said, and he hopes that the work the National Academy of Inventors does in making their and others’ work more visible will show more young inventors that they do have a place, especially at ISU.
Invention is practically baked into the university’s motto of “science with practice,” Darr said, and there are plenty of faculty members and students that he hopes will take their excitement working in labs and translate their passion into commercial innovation.
“I’m hopeful that that our work is an example for others that might want to come down this path in their own disciplinary expertise in the future and they know that this is an area that, certainly Iowa State University is very open about supporting and promoting to help our work translate into making a positive impact,” Darr said.
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