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FACULTY INDUCTED ECU becomes charter member of national society May 15, 2012 By Crystal Baity ECU News Services East Carolina University has been named a charter member of the National Academy of Inventors. The academy, founded at the University of South Florida in 2010, recognizes investigators at universities and non-profit institutes who translate their research findings into inventions that may benefit society.
A ceremony honoring ECU’s induction and its faculty inventors was held April 25, when the university celebrated its 105th anniversary and Founder’s Day. Twenty ECU faculty members were inducted including Dr. Gregg Givens, chairman of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the College of Allied Health Sciences and a clinical audiologist. Givens has received three patents relating to remote hearing assessment, and two more patents are pending. “Hearing health care or the lack of is a global need for millions of people,” said Givens, who began working on the project in the early ’90s. “The system developed at ECU is internet based to allow for the testing of hearing, which will hopefully provide unserved individuals the care they need.” With Givens’ creation, clinicians can remotely test patients through local or area networks and the web. Assessments can be performed using smart phones or tablet PCs. The first commercial version of the diagnostic system debuted in March under the name RemotEar by Otovation, a leading provider of audiometer products for hearing professionals and care providers. “For East Carolina University, entwining research strengths with the vision to drive economic prosperity and improve the health and well-being of eastern North Carolina has clearly produced a class of individuals who are willing to endure the rigors of the patent process to call themselves inventors,” said Dr. Deirdre Mageean, ECU’s outgoing vice chancellor of research and graduate studies. ECU’s ceremony featured keynote speaker John J. Kopchick, Goll-Ohio Eminent Scholar and professor of molecular biology at Ohio University, who spoke about growth hormone therapy. The national academy has grown to more than 1,000 individual members and 33 institutions, Sanberg said. Eligible individuals must be a faculty or staff member, student, graduate or affiliate of a member institution and named as an inventor on at least one issued U.S. patent. For more information, visit http://academyofinventors.org or contact Marti Van Scott, director of the ECU Office of Technology Transfer, at 252-328-9549.
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