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Just before this special issue on invention went to press, I got a message from IEEE senior member and patent attorney George Macdonald. Nearly two decades after I first reported on Corliss Orville “Cob” Burandt’s struggle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the 77-year-old inventor’s patent case was being revived.

From 1981 to 1990, Burandt had received a dozen U.S. patents for improvements to automotive engines, starting with his 1990 patent for variable valve-timing technology (U.S. Patent No. 4,961,406A). But he failed to convince any automakers to license his technology. What’s worse, he claims, some of the world’s major carmakers now use his inventions in their hybrid engines.

Shortly after reading my piece in 2005, Macdonald stepped forward to represent Burandt. By then, the inventor had already lost his patents because he hadn’t paid the US $40,000 in maintenance fees to keep them active.

Macdonald filed a petition to pay the maintenance fees late and another to revive a related child case. The maintenance fee petition was denied in 2006. While the petition to revive was still pending, Macdonald passed the maintenance fee baton to Hunton Andrews Kurth (HAK), which took the case pro bono. HAK attorneys argued that the USPTO should reinstate the 1990 parent patent.

The timing was crucial: If the parent patent was reinstated before 2008, Burandt would have had the opportunity to compel infringing corporations to pay him licensing fees. Unfortunately, for reasons that remain unclear, the patent office tried to paper Burandt’s legal team to death, Macdonald says. HAK could go no further in the maintenance-fee case after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear it in 2009.

Then, in 2010, the USPTO belatedly revived Burandt’s child continuation application. A continuation application lets an inventor add claims to their original patent application while maintaining the earlier filing date—1988 in this case.

However, this revival came with its own set of challenges. Macdonald was informed in 2011 that the patent examiner would issue the patent but later discovered that the application was placed into a then-secret program called the Sensitive Application Warning System (SAWS) instead. While touted as a way to quash applications for things like perpetual-motion machines, the SAWS process effectively slowed action on Burandt’s case.

After several more years of motions and rulings, Macdonald met IEEE Member Edward Pennington, who agreed to represent Burandt. Earlier this year, Pennington filed a complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia seeking the issuance of Burandt’s patent on the grounds that it was wrongfully denied.

As of this writing, Burandt still hasn’t seen a dime from his inventions. He subsists on his social security benefits. And while his case raises important questions about fairness, transparency, and the rights of individual inventors, Pennington says his client isn’t interested in becoming a poster boy for poor inventors.

“We’re not out to change policy at the patent office or to give Mr. Burandt a framed copy of the patent to say, ‘Look at me, I’m an inventor,’ ” says Pennington. “This is just to say, ‘Here’s a guy that would like to benefit from his idea.’ It just so happens that he’s pretty much in need. And even the slightest royalty would go a long ways for the guy.”

Like many innovators, Hagit Messer-Yaron had a life-changing idea while doing something mundane: Talking with a colleague over a cup of coffee. The IEEE Life Fellow, who in 2006 was head of Tel Aviv University’s Porter School of Environmental Studies, was at the school’s cafeteria with a meteorological researcher. He shared his struggles with finding high-resolution weather data for his climate models, which are used to forecast and track flash floods.

Predicting floods is crucial for quickly evacuating residents in affected areas and protecting homes and businesses against damage.

Hagit Messer-Yaron

Employer Tel Aviv University

Title Professor emerita

Member grade Life Fellow

Her colleague “said researchers in the field had limited measurements because the equipment meteorologists used to collect weather data—including radar satellites—is expensive to purchase and maintain, especially in developing countries,” Messer-Yaron says.

Because of that, she says, high-resolution data about temperature, air quality, wind speed, and precipitation levels is often inconsistent—which is a problem when trying to produce accurate models and predictions.

An expert in signal processing and cellular communication, Messer-Yaron came up with the idea of using existing wireless communication signals to collect weather data, as communication networks are spread across the globe.

In 2006 she and her research team developed algorithms that process and analyze data collected by communication networks to monitor rainfall. They measure the difference in amplitude of the signals transmitted and received by the systems to extract data needed to predict flash floods.

The method was first demonstrated in Israel. Messer-Yaron is working to integrate it into communication networks worldwide.

For her work, she received this year’s IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies for “contributions to sensing of the environment using wireless communication networks.” The award is sponsored by Toyota.

“Receiving an IEEE medal, which is the highest-level award you can get within the organization, was really a surprise, and I was extremely happy to [receive] it,” she says. “I was proud that IEEE was able to evaluate and see the potential in our technology for public good and to reward it.”

A passion for teaching

Growing up in Israel, Messer-Yaron was interested in art, literature, and science. When it came time to choose a career, she found it difficult to decide, she says. Ultimately, she chose electrical engineering, figuring it would be easier to enjoy art and literature as hobbies.

After completing her mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces in 1973, she began her undergraduate studies at Tel Aviv University, where she found her passion: Signal processing.

“Electrical engineering is a very broad topic,” she says. “As an undergrad, you learn all the parts that make up electrical engineering, including applied physics and applied mathematics. I really enjoyed applied mathematics and soon discovered signal processing. I found it quite amazing how, by using algorithms, you can direct signals to extract information.”

She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in EE in 1977 and continued her education there, earning master’s and doctoral degrees in 1979 and 1984. She moved to the United States for a postdoctoral position at Yale. There she worked with IEEE Life Fellow Peter Schultheiss, who was known for his research in using sensor array systems in underwater acoustics.

Inspired by Schultheiss’s passion for teaching, Messer-Yaron decided to pursue a career in academia. She was hired by Tel Aviv University as an electrical engineering professor in 1986. She was the first woman in Israel to become a full professor in the subject.

“Being a faculty member at a public university is the best job you can do. I didn’t make a lot of money, but at the end of each day, I looked back at what I did [with pride].”

For the next 14 years, she conducted research in statistical signal processing, time-delay estimation, and sensor array processing.

Her passion for teaching took her around the world as a visiting professor at Yale, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, and other schools. She collaborated with colleagues from the universities on research projects.

In 1999 she was promoted to director of Tel Aviv University’s undergraduate electrical engineering program.

A year later, she was offered an opportunity she couldn’t refuse: Serving as chief scientist for the Israeli Ministry of Science, Culture, and Sports. She took a sabbatical from teaching and for the next three years oversaw the country’s science policy.

“I believe [working in the public sector] is part of our duty as faculty members, especially in public universities, because that makes you a public intellectual,” she says. “Working for the government gave me a broad view of many things that you don’t see as a professor, even in a large university.”

When she returned to the university in 2004, Messer-Yaron was appointed as the director of the new school of environmental studies. She oversaw the allocation of research funding and spoke with researchers individually to better understand their needs. After having coffee with one researcher, she realized there was a need to develop better weather-monitoring technology.

Hagit Messer-Yaron proudly displays her IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies at this year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony. She is accompanied by IEEE President-Elect Kathleen Kramer and IEEE President Tom Couglin.Robb Cohen

Using signal processing to monitor weather

Because the planet is warming, the risk of flash floods is steadily increasing. Warmer air holds more water—which leads to heavier-than-usual rainfall and results in more flooding, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Data about rainfall is typically collected by satellite radar and ground-based rain gauges. However, radar images don’t provide researchers with precise readings of what’s happening on the ground, according to an Ensia article. Rain gauges are accurate but provide data from small areas only.

So Messer-Yaron set her sights on developing technology that connects to cellular networks close to the ground to provide more accurate measurements, she says. Using existing infrastructure eliminates the need to build new weather radars and weather stations.

Communication systems automatically record the transmitted signal level and the received signal level, but rain can alter otherwise smooth wave patterns. By measuring the difference in the amplitude, meteorologists could extract the data necessary to track rainfall using the signal processing algorithms.

In 2005 Messer-Yaron and her group successfully tested the technology. The following year, their “Environmental Monitoring by Wireless Communication Networks” paper was published in Science.

The algorithm is being used in Israel in partnership with all three of the country’s major cellular service providers. Messer-Yaron acknowledges, however, that negotiating deals with cellular service companies in other countries has been difficult.

To expand the technology’s use worldwide, Messer-Yaron launched a research network through the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), called an opportunistic precipitation sensing network known as OPENSENSE. The group connects researchers, meteorologists, and other experts around the world to collaborate on integrating the technology in members’ communities.

Monitoring the effects of climate change

Since developing the technology, Messer-Yaron has held a number of jobs including president of the Open University of Israel and vice chair of the country’s Council for Higher Education, which accredits academic institutions.

She is maintaining her link with Tel Aviv University today as a professor emerita.

“Being a faculty member at a public university is the best job you can do,” she says. “I didn’t make a lot of money, but at the end of each day, I looked back at what I did [with pride]. Because of the academic freedom and the autonomy I had, I was able to do many things in addition to teaching, including research.”

To continue her work in developing technology to monitor weather events, in 2016, she helped found ClimaCell, now Tomorrow.io, based in Boston. The startup aims to use wireless communication infrastructure and IoT devices to collect real-time weather data. Messer-Yaron served as its chief scientist until 2017.

She continues to update the original algorithms with her students, most recently with machine learning capabilities to extract data from physical measurements of the signal level in communication networks.

A global engineering community

When Messer-Yaron was an undergraduate student, she joined IEEE at the suggestion of one of her professors.

“I didn’t think much about the benefits of being a member until I became a graduate student,” she says. “I started attending conferences and publishing papers in IEEE journals, and the organization became my professional community.”

She is an active volunteer and a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. From 1994 to 2010 she served on the society’s Signal Processing Theory and Methods technical committee. She was associate editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters and IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. She is a member of the editorial boards of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing and IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

In the past 10 years, she’s been involved with other IEEE committees including the conduct review, ethics and member conduct, and global public policy bodies.

“I don’t see my career or my professional life without the IEEE,” she says

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