UWS visits Intellectual Ventures in Seattle

UWS Innovation dropped in to Seattle to Intellectual Ventures (IV) headquarters while in the US this month. It may be wet, cold and grey in Seattle, but the blossom trees outside the IV building believe it is Spring – beautiful.

UWS has a signed agreement with IV to jointly develop new inventions, and it was fascinating to see the depth and breadth of the undertaking based in Seattle. Having been established for a number of years, IV now has 800 people across its various teams and in addition to its US headquarters, has a footprint in 8 other countries, including Australia.

The tour of the separate IV laboratory was a real eye opener, focused on some fascinating global good projects utilising Bill Gates foundation funding. The photo above of Nicole Bates from IV with Michael Manion of Invention Evaluator (Australia) who toured the facility with me, shows a prototype in the Cold Chain project. This project aims to solve the cold chain problem of maintaining the viability of vaccines being delivered into underdeveloped countries, many of which struggle to deliver vaccines which are still useful at the point of injection.

IV’s co-founder, Nathan Myhrvold, also produced a significant sized “cook book” which takes a very different scientific look at food and cooking equipment to your usual food technologist or domestic chef. This book, “Modernist Cuisine” took 4 lbs of ink to print! Fiona Cameron, Ass. Director of UWS Innovation and Michael Manion are picture at the test kitchen with 2 of the experimental chefs.

UWS researchers who are interested in finding out more about our relationship with IV should contact UWS Innovation on ip@uws.edu.au.