By ADAM P. BARR

Staff Writer

Tech's Center for Entrepreneurship and Information Technology showcased the new technologies for the world of business this past week.

The conference "From Discovery to Commercialization --The Value of Intellectual Property" is today in the CEnIT.

Dr. Robert Mehalso, president of Microtech Associates; Robert Tucker, junior partner of Jones, Walker, Poitevent, Carrere and Denegre, L.L.P.; and Dr. Fran Meyer, vice-president of A.M. Papa and Associates discussed the process of taking an invention from an idea to commercialization.

"Faculty, staff, students from area universities and research centers, entrepreneurs and investors attended today to network with others from area universities, technology and business and hear from experts about identifying, protecting and commercializing intellectual property," Chris Womack, information technology coordinator for the CEnIT, said.

Dr. Les Guice, vice president for research and development, said the showcase is a chance for the students and faculty developing prototypes to get feedback on the commercialization and patentability of the product.

This is a chance for the presentations that are almost in commercial stage, Guice said.

The Innovative Venture Research Forum yesterday consisted of a four-person team to review ideas.

"This forum, [which] we have each quarter, had a triage team that views and critiques the intellectual property for potential patent and commercialization," Martha Stevens, executive secretary for the vice president of research and development, said.

These technologies that are almost in the commercial stage need investors and expert opinions to boost the product's appeal, Guice said.

"The event was [intended] to invite together different investors and people in the top of their field to critique the progress of an invention or its marketability," Guice said.

CEnIT faculty members and students will present different ideas and projects to visitors from other technological and business fields, Guice said.

These projects receive professional opinions and help the inventors' network to better their chances at commercializing the project, Guice said.

Quick Silver search engine technology, developed by Dr. Ben Choi, an assistant professor of computer science, and Patrick Peng, a graduate student of computer science, is one of the new technologies on display.

"This patent-pending technology could definitely compete with Yahoo and Google search engines," Choi said.

Choi said the new search engine has the ability to classify pages into categories that can be marked and dragged into a different window for easy selection.

"This program has better user interface than any search engine on the market," Choi said.

Intellectual property and patent-pending technology like Quick Silver is just one of the projects fostered at the CEnIT, Guice said.

"Events, like the forums, are a real networking and advising tool to the projects produced out of the [CEnIT] to better serve the faculty and students."