Companies that need to crunch massive amounts of data might find some help from technology developed at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport.
Researchers at NUWC developed the Data Extraction and Mining Software Tool to help U.S. Navy sonar systems classify targets. Theresa Baus, NUWC’s technology transfer manager, said companies that do credit scoring, pharmacological research chemical analysis and a host of other procedures could make use of the software.
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“Companies that are dealing with a lot of different variables in large data sets would be able to use this,” Baus said. “They’re trying to extract from that data how to make a decision.”
The software actually “learns” the data and how different features interact, helping researchers who use the information in their decision making.
Baus said the software tool would be useful in a genetic-research setting.
“In the genetics world, there are a lot of different data combinations when they’re looking to study a disease or find a cure,” Baus said. The software takes large sets of data and reduces the size dramatically so only the relevant information is included for researchers to make decisions. Baus said other commercial sectors in which the software can be used are consumer market targeting, chemical analysis, enterprise level risk management and decision support industries.
The software operates more quickly than a neural network, which is a mathematical model for analyzing data, Baus said.
“This works differently and faster,” Baus said. “You don’t need an expert to run the system once it’s up and running.”
NUWC began developing the software in the 1990s and patented the technology in the late 1990s. The Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology helped fund the research at NUWC to make the software tool available for use in the civilian sector.
NUWC has formed two licensing agreements for the software – one is with a credit scoring agency and another is with a researcher doing studies on chemicals in the atmosphere. A third agreement is under discussion with an enterprise-level risk management firm.
NUWC will work with companies to make the tool available through exclusive or non-exclusive licensing agreements, creative research agreements or intellectual property exchange.
Baus said inventors and researchers can contact her to see if the software would be an appropriate tool to further their research.
“We have a number of different ways to work with companies. We’ll talk to anyone,” Baus said.
For more information, call (401) 832-8728.
