100th patent application for the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center

The Badger-herald reports

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The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center recently filed its 100th patent application, a milestone for the center.

Tim Donohue, director for the GLBRC, said the mission of the research center is to generate knowledge needed to produce liquid transportation fuels and valuable chemicals from the non-edible, or cellulosic, part of plant biomedicine.

This milestone is especially significant because the GLBRC has reported 50 percent more inventions than expected for a research center given the funding level and size, Donohue said. He said he believed this was because of the way they have worked together as a facility to attack problems and solve issues.

“We have taken a team approach to solve very difficult problems around the growth of plant material,” Donohue said.

In 2007 the U.S. Department of Energy established the GLBRC. The University of Wisconsin leads the GLBRC, with Michigan State University as a major partner, and it receives funding from the DOE.

Donohue said there were more than 400 people working in the center, and almost 100 of them were undergraduate students. He said there are undergraduates who have their name on patents and, through the GLBRC, are able to do first rate science and research.




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**Within the quote, the text -- This milestone is especially significant because the GLBRC has reported 50 percent more inventions than expected for a research center given the funding level and size, Donohue said. -- is of interest.



IPBiz notes that WARF does the patenting work for Great Lakes. WARF
handled the stem cell cases for UW, for which there was a recent
denial of cert. (favoring UW).