Revolutionary Signal Processing Algorithms Achieve Commercialization Success
Fuentek’s Role
Fuentek played a major role in the successful commercialization of NASA’s HHT technology. As part of our strategic planning efforts, we developed an interactive website about HHT, including technical details written in understandable terms. This site also included an online registration system for downloading an evaluation copy of the software via a Software Usage Agreement. We strategized and led extensive marketing efforts and assisted in multiple licensing and partnership negotiations. We also wrote numerous nominations that secured multiple awards for the technology and its innovator.
Original Technology
HHT was developed at NASA in 1995 by Dr. Norden Huang as part of oceanic wave research. Unlike previous signal processing technologies, HHT provides an effective method for analyzing nonlinear and nonstationary signals while improving the accuracy of linear- and stationary-signal analysis. The award-winning technology’s first application within NASA was analysis of wing-flutter tests and the next generation of aircraft design. The technology also contributed to Shuttle mission safety by testing the tiles that insulate the Shuttle in space for the Shuttle Return to Flight Project following the Columbia accident in 2003.
Commercialization Success
HHT is broadly applicable across many industries, and it has been transferred into many industries. For example:
Structural and civil engineering research
• Submarine design and detection (U.S. Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center)
• Bridge-safety monitoring and engineering of highways to withstand earthquake loads (Federal Highway Administration)
• Earthquake prediction and detection research for safer structural designs (Taiwan’s National Central University)
Medicine
• Understanding how a wide variety of diseases, including avian flu, are propagated (Johns Hopkins University)
• Diagnosing sleep apnea and detecting patients with impaired blood flow regulation in the brain, a condition that may increase the risk for stroke (Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center)
Wiring and Wireless
• Signal cleaning for radio frequency identification (RFID) systems (commercial company)
• Inspection, fault analysis, and diagnosis of various types of wires (commercial company)
HHT was exclusively licensed in 2008 by DynaDx.
On the Record
“I am grateful for the expertise you brought to our interactions and the commercialization efforts. You were the first tech transfer person who actually understood my algorithms technically and the value they added in the field of mathematics. It was a relief not to see your face go blank as I explained HHT. Not only that, you provided an understanding of the fields in which HHT could be used, which was essential to our success.” —HHT inventor Norden Huang in a letter to Fuentek’s Laura Schoppe on July 17, 2006
