Tormod Njølstad (59) is hired as Innovation Manager in the Ultrasound group at ISB by September 2018.

Helpful background from entrepreneurship

Tormod left his safe and permanent position as Associate Professor at Department of Electronic Systems at NTNU and established New Index in January 2003 in Trondheim, founded on his patented idea from year 2000 of making an interactive pen for projectors, which could modernize education at universities and in schools. The brand new technology he and his colleagues developed, transformed data projectors to be interactive data projectors that could completely replace the popular, but expensive interactive whiteboards.

New Index’ scalable and instant e-whiteboard was selected by the European Commission as one of the winners of the European Information Society Technologies (IST) Prize 2004, Europe’s most distinguished award for groundbreaking IST products.

• Futher reading: Pris til pekeverktøy (norwegian/TU.no)

During several years, Tormod and his colleagues demonstrated New Index’ progress in business-to-business trade shows in US and Europe, invited potential partners to Trondheim, and were invited to demonstrate the New Index’ technology in their head quarters in US, UK, and of course: in Japan! Tormod is no more sure about on how many trips to Japan he made over the years.

A dream comes true

In 2011 his dream came true: The largest data projector manufacturer in the world, EPSON in Japan, decided to include and integrate the New Index’ technology into their product roadmap, realizing Tormod’s patented idea from 2000 of an interactive projector. EPSON acquired New Index and the operation continued in Trondheim for seven years under the new company name EPSON Norway Research and Development AS. Already 6 month after the acquisition, the first interactive projector model was launched in the market by the joint work of the engineers in the Trondheim-based subsidiary of EPSON and the EPSON’s engineers in Japan.  Today (2018) there are nine different interactive EPSON projector models in sale with interactive technologies developed by Tormod and his colleagues in Trondheim, with a world marked share of about 70%.

Next goal: Innovation of new ultrasound methods, technologies and products for a better world

Tormod has gained a lot of experience from this long journey from an idea to world-wide distributed products. Now he is ready to learn more about ultrasound. In his new role as Innovation Manager in Ultrasound at NTNU, Tormod defines his mission to find out how ultrasound research can be transferred into new ultrasound methods and new ultrasound products for a better world as NTNU’s slogan.

The following committee has been appointed to evaluate his thesis, trial lecture and defence:

§  Adjunct Professor Markku Åberg, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

§  Professor II Dag T. Wisland, UiO

§  Professor Snorre Aunet, Department of Electronic Systems, NTNU

Professor Snorre Aunet, Department of Electronic Systems, NTNU, is appointed as the administrator for the assessment commitee.

The trial lecture will take place in Rådsrommet, Electro Building, Gløshaugen, 16 March from 10:15 on the following given topic: “High-Speed (Continous Time) Delta-sigma, SAR and Pipeline ADCs – Which Should be Chosen for Different Applications in the Frequency Range from 1 to 100 MHz.”

The defence will take place in Rådsrommet, Electro Building, Gløshaugen, 16 March from 13:15.

The trial lecture and defence are public and anyone interested is invited to attend.

Rune Kaald carried out his PhD work at the Department of Electronic Systems. His main supervisor has been Professor Trond Ytterdal.

By encapsulating drugs in nanoparticles, the drug can potentially be delivered more effectively to the target tissue while limiting exposure of healthy tissue, and thus reducing side effects of the treatment.

The nanoparticles she works with can stabilize microbubbles, which can be used for imaging and in combination with ultrasound to enhance the delivery of nanomedicine to tumours and across the blood brain barrier.

The interdisciplinary project is a collaboration between SINTEF, NTNU and St Olavs Hospital. Sofie Snipstad is employed at Department of Physics, and her supervisor is Catharina Davies, who is part of CIUS Work Package 5: Multimodality and interventional imaging.

See the Forsker Grand Prix semi-final at NTNU at NRK Kunnskapskanalen (in Norwegian)

You can also read about the research in this blog post: Boblende nanomedisin mot kreft (in Norwegian)

• Naturfilosofi på en våt strand (in Norwegian).

Read the full article here:

• Linking the fractional derivative and the Lomnitz creep law to non-Newtonian time-varying viscosity

The morning sessions reflected the three research areas oil & gas, maritime and healthcare, with presentations from Dag-Haakon Frantzen, R&D Manager at BTC Archer, Frank Tichy, R&D Manager at Kongsberg Maritime and Svend Aakhus, Professor of Cardiology at St. Olavs Hospital. All three presentations gave an overview over how they use ultrasound today, challenges, and potential research projects and areas for CIUS.

This was followed by speed updates from academic and industrial partners covering technological advances, current research, and today’s applications. See the programme below for more details.

After lunch, there were two presentations from the technological research behind ultrasound. We were shown the pros and cons of different simulation and modelling approaches by Postdoc Alfonso Rodriquez-Molares at NTNU, and processing data and then using that data to reprocess it again can show more structures in ultrasound images by Professor Sverre Holm at UiO.

The final sessions were back to practical applications with Olivier Gerard, Principle Engineer at GE, showing the challenges of relatively large intraoperative ultrasound and x-ray equipment, and how to give the health personnel relevant information in real-time, and Bjørn Olav Haugen, Professor of cardiology at NTNU drew parallels between industrial and healthcare use of ultrasound, with both of them looking at ‘pumps and pipes’ in various forms.

The next full day CIUS conference will be on 23. November, following The 8th National PhD Conference in Medical Imaging on 21.-22. November. Any wishes for speakers and/or topics can be sent to CIUS Director Asta Håberg.

The presentations will be made available on CIUS’ intranet.

The programme:

• Opening (Eva Nilssen, CIUS Board director and Program Manager GE Healthcare)
• CIUS organisation, intranet, WP plans and aims for 2016-17 (Asta Håberg, CIUS director)
• Partner presentations of their current use of US/SONAR technology, what they would like to do with US/SONAR in the future and how CIUS can contribute to achieving these goals.
• BTC Archer (Dag-Haakon Frantzen, R&D Manager)
• Kongsberg (Frank Tichy, Kongsberg Maritime R&D manager)
• St. Olavs Hospital (Svend Aakhus, Professor of Cardiology)
• Speed updates:

1. Ingar Stian Nerbø, Sensorlink: “Ultrasonic corrosion monitoring of oil and gas pipes: future challenges and development needs”
2. Harald Garvik, PhD student, NTNU: “ADCs for In-probe Ultrasound Front Ends”
3. Marco Voormolen, InPhase Solutions: “Acoustic wire - wireless transfer of power and data using ultrasound”.
4. Andreas Åslund, Postdoc, NTNU: “Using ultrasound for drug delivery and blood-brain barrier opening”
5. Ann E. A. Blomberg, Postdoc, UiO, "Advanced sonar methods for marine gas seep detection
6. Bastien Denarie, GE: “ Deep Learning and how that technology can be utilized for ultrasound applications”
7. Svein Arne Aase, GE: “Demo of research scanner technology”
8. Dr. Petter Norli, R&D Director, Halfwave: "Acoustic Resonance Technology - a powerful platform for in-line inspection of gas pipelines"

• US simulation in medical technology (Postdoctor Alfonso Rodriguez-Molares, NTNU)
• Processing the data twice: Minimum variance as an alternative to geometry-based beamforming (Professor Sverre Holm, UiO)
• Minimally invasive cardiac interventions, trends and needs (Olivier Gerard, Principle Engineer, GE)
• Pumps and pipes (Professor of cardiology Bjørn Olav Haugen, NTNU)
• Closing remarks (Professor Asta Håberg, NTNU)