MATSCI 83N: Great Inventions That Matter
General Education Requirements
This seminar is expected to be in high demand. If you rank it as your first choice for priority enrollment, please be sure to apply for a second and third choice seminar for the quarter. You are also encouraged to write an additional statement for your lower ranked selection(s) so those faculty learn about your interest.
Course Description
This Introductory Seminar starts by illuminating the general aspects of creativity, invention, and patenting in engineering and medicine, and how Stanford University is one of the world's foremost engines of innovation. We then take a deep dive into some great technological inventions that are still playing an essential role in our everyday lives, such as GPS, Fiber-optical amplifier, Internet, Li-battery, HIV detector, Covid-19 testing/vaccination, personal genome machine, DNA cloning, cancer cell sorting, antibody drugs, brain imaging, and mind reading. The stories and underlying materials and technologies behind each invention, including a few examples by Stanford faculty and student inventors, are highlighted and discussed. A special lecture focuses on the public policy and ethics on intellectual properties (IP) and the resources at Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing (OTL). Each student will have an opportunity to write and present a patent disclosure of his/her own ideas.
Meet the Instructor: Shan X. Wang
"I have been on the Stanford faculty since 1993, with academic appointments in Materials Science & Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Radiology (Stanford School of Medicine). I became the fifth holder of the Leland T. Edwards Professorship in Engineering in 2018, and was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2022.
"As a researcher, inventor, entrepreneur, and consulting expert, I have learned that great inventions and patents are often the starting point of a thriving enterprise, but they are not taught systematically in regular curricula. There is a school of thought that these are not necessarily teachable. On the contrary, I want to share teachable experiences and schemes with you about inventive processes and related intellectual property policies in the real world, including the story behind winning a Bold Epic Innovation award with my students in the Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize competition in 2017, and perhaps some backstories of starting up a few biotech/diagnostics companies with my former students and postdocs. Through this IntroSem, you will learn why some inventions matter so much to us, and why so many intellectual properties do not get licensed or create value.
"I hold 76+ issued or pending patents, and have over 350 publications in nanotechnology, biosensors, diagnostics, spintronics, information storage, power management, and edge AI. In addition to my work at Stanford, I have cofounded six startups, mostly in Silicon Valley, and was an expert in several landmark patent litigation cases. I enjoy skiing, swimming, hiking, and travel, and I am married with two children who have recently graduated from Stanford (right before and during the COVID-19 pandemic)."
