Outlook Magazine - Fall 2024

SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH PATENT PENDING

earch the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database, and you’ll discover dozens of Blue Devil alumni and instructors named on patents

ranging from heated firetruck valves and rain showers to methods for producing feedstock materials and using vibration to combat atrophy. Often unsung, these bona fide inventors are long overdue of our esteem. Innovation has long been synonymous with UW-Stout, so new inventions are something to celebrate. Especially when the related inventors—professors Jennifer Grant and Dmitry Kadnikov —can be found in our biology and chemistry labs. But the path to their utility patent application, for a chemical probe that improves detection of an amino acid tied to autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders and cancer, began long before UW-Stout. For decades, locating citrulline on proteins was hit or miss, and Grant, a biochemist, has pursued the motif (the structural site on a protein residue that gets converted to citrulline) since her post-doctoral research. With persistence and more than a little help from then students Dylan Meyer (’14) , now a research scientist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals who did his post-doc fellowship at Harvard Medical, and Justin Olson (’15) , currently a data scientist with Alpha Theory, she solved what had stumped others in her field for decades. Detection of citrullines within proteins, however, still proved a major challenge. Enter Kadnikov, an organic chemist who instinctively employs an iterative “bigger, faster, better” mentality. Kadnikov worked with Grant to design a more efficient, adaptable chemical probe usable by a wider range of scientists. Thanks to a few WiSys grants and their Proteomics and Organic Chemistry II students, the invention is nearly ready for market, and we can’t wait to see how it advances science for the better.

Select Alumni Patent Holders • Dan Anderson ('03) • Lance Clark Bell ('72)

• Adam Kramschuster ('01) • Dustin Mack ('06) • Basil Ogbu ('89) • Chris Plotz ('96) • Jimmy Ray Purser ('16, '23) • Mark Rohlinger ('88) • Charles Schlosser ('72) • Craig Schultz ('86) • Hans Sitte ('68) • Andrew Smith (’06) • Jim Strasser ('00) • Matthew Sundquist ('88) • Keely Hogan-Braker Wheaton ('04) • Ron White ('87)

• Dale Bohnert ('90) • Shane Cleasby ('90) • Jed Copham ('97) • Patrick Cosgrove ('85) • Eric Erpenbach ('98) • Colin Feuster ('20) • Eric Fiel ('05) • Paul Glamos ('19) • David Guelzow ('92) • Kevin Guthrie ('83) • Jerome Johnson ('81, '84) • Ken Kartman ('81, '99) • Dennis Kiffe ('72) • Nathan Kodesh (‘04)

If you’re not on our list, submit your details! Let Us Know UWStout.edu/Alumni-Patents

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University of Wisconsin-Stout