There’s plenty of buzz about innovation and thinking outside of the box at SAS these days. But for those who attended SAS' Patent Dinner, the proof was in the patent.

SAS Legal Counsel Director Tim Wilson offered opening remarks at The Umstead event. “So much of what we do in R&D fits into the development, the ‘D’ category,” he said. “What you have done by becoming patent inventors is on the ‘R’ side, not staying at the same level but bringing it up. That takes commitment, experience and often time away from loved ones.”

Wilson noted that 59 patent applications were filed, and 93 patents were issued in 2021, shifting back to pre-pandemic levels. SAS now holds more than 725 patents.

“Ninety-three patents is tremendous,” said Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Bryan Harris. “We punch above our weight level for a company our size.”

Harris added, “It takes guts to look at something, see a gap, and believe that you have an idea better than anyone else’s. We’re conditioned most of our life to follow the rules. But in invention, you have to look at a space that’s basically wide open and fill it. It takes more than good ideas and courage. It takes persistency, willpower and sacrifice.”

Harris encouraged those in the room – more than 160 – to help others at SAS understand what the patent process looks like and how much support is offered. He is focused on proactively reaching out to women and other underrepresented employee groups to boost the number of patents from them.

In a toast to the inventors, Harris thanked them for their efforts. “I appreciate you looking at all the bright spaces that others could not see, or thought were impossible to fill.”

Dwight Thompson, Sr. Principal Patent Counsel, took the stage to present patent plaques to each of the honorees, listed below in chronological order of patent issue date.

Let’s hear it for the inventors and their patents!

Inventors: Michael Leonard, Bruce Elsheimer, Wally Sui

• ADVANCED CONTROL SYSTEMS FOR MACHINES

Inventor: Nicholas Ablitt

• SPLITTING INCORRECTLY RESOLVED ENTITIES USING MINIMUM CUT

Inventors: Bryan Harris, Glen Goodwin, Sean Dyer, Alex Boakye, Chris Smith, Pankaj Telang,
Damian Herrick

• CYBERSECURITY SYSTEM

Inventors: Joseph Morgan, Bradley Jones, Ryan Lekivetz

• COMPARISON AND SELECTION OF EXPERIMENT DESIGNS

Inventors: Bruce Mills, Vinicius Vivaldi

• TEXT RANDOM RULE BUILDER

Inventors: Scott Kolodzieski, Vince Deters, Shu Huang, Robert Levey

• EVENT STREAM PROCESSING CLUSTER MANAGER

Inventors: Ethem Can, Richard Crowell, James Tetterton, Jared Peterson, Saratendu Sethi

• PERSONALIZED SUMMARY GENERATION OF DATA VISUALIZATIONS

Inventors: Nancy Rausch, Roger Barney, JP Trawinski

• INTELLIGENT DATA CURATION

Inventors: Oliver Schabenberger, Steve Krueger

• GRID COMPUTING SYSTEM ALONGSIDE A DISTRIBUTED DATABASE ARCHITECTURE

Inventors: Brian Bowman, Steve Krueger, Richard Knight, Dright Ho

• DISTRIBUTED DATA SET STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

Inventors: Ruth Baldasaro, Jennifer Hargrove, Eddie Rowe, Emily Chapman-McQuiston

• METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR AUTOMATED MONITORING AND CONTROL OF ADHERENCE PARAMETERS

Inventors: Xu Chen, Brett Wujek

• DISTRIBUTABLE EVENT PREDICTION AND MACHINE LEARNING RECOGNITION SYSTEM

Inventors: Brian Bowman, Gordon Keener, Steve Krueger

• DISTRIBUTED DATA SET INDEXING

Inventors: Brian Bowman, Mark Gass

• FIRST NODE DEVICE, COMPUTER-READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM, AND COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED METHOD

Inventors: Majid Jahani, Joshua Griffin, Alireza Yektamaram, Wenwen Zhou

• DEEP LEARNING MODEL TRAINING SYSTEM

Inventors: Xu Chen, Jorge Silva, Brett Wujek

• DISTRIBUTABLE EVENT PREDICTION AND MACHINE LEARNING RECOGNITION SYSTEM

Inventors: Rui Shi, Guixian Lin, Xiangqian Hu, Yan Xu

• ANALYTIC SYSTEM FOR GRADIENT BOOSTING TREE COMPRESSION

Inventors: Xilong Chen, Mark Little

• TECHNIQUES TO MANAGE VIRTUAL CLASSES FOR STATISTICAL TESTS

Inventors: Ryan Parker, Clay Barker, Christopher Gotwalt

• ANALYTIC SYSTEM WITH INTERACTIVE GRAPHICAL MODEL SELECTION

Inventors: Steven Gardner, Joshua Griffin, Yan Xu, Emily Gao

• DISTRIBUTED DECISION VARIABLE TUNING SYSTEM FOR MACHINE LEARNING

Inventors: Jeremy Ash, Christopher Gotwalt, Laura Lancaster

• ANALYTIC SYSTEM WITH EXTRAPOLATION CONTROL IN INTERACTIVE GRAPHICAL PREDICTION EVALUATION

Inventors: Bryan Harris, Alex Boakye, Sean Dyer, Chris Smith

• CYBERSECURITY SYSTEM

Inventors: Ryan Chipley, Todd Barlow

• PORTION OF A COMPUTER SCREEN WITH AN ICON

Inventors: Ryan Chipley, Todd Barlow

• PORTION OF A COMPUTER SCREEN WITH AN ANIMATED ICON

Inventors: Clay Barker, Ryan Parker, Christopher Gotwalt

• ANALYTIC SYSTEM FOR TWO-STAGE INTERACTIVE GRAPHICAL MODEL SELECTION

Inventors: Jared Smythe, Richard Crowell

• SYSTEM FOR DETERMINING USER INTENT FROM TEXT

Inventors: Michael Leonard, Jie Zhong, Kyungduck Cha, Rajendra Solanki, Rajib Nath, Macklin Frazier,
Li Xu

• INTERACTIVE GRAPHICAL USER-INTERFACE FOR ANALYZING AND MANIPULATING TIME-SERIES
  PROJECTIONS

Inventor: Brian Bowman

• DISTRIBUTED COLUMNAR DATA SET AND STORAGE

Inventors: Yu Liang, Arin Chaudhuri, Haoyu Wang

• HIGH DIMENSIONAL TO LOW DIMENSIONAL DATA TRANSFORMATION AND VISUALIZATION SYSTEM

Inventor: Brian Bowman

• DISTRIBUTED COLUMNAR DATA SET AND METADATA STORAGE

Inventors: Emily Chapman-McQuiston, Diane Emerton, Ruth Baldasaro, Daniel Kelly

• DISTRIBUTED CORRELATION AND ANALYSIS OF PATIENT THERAPY DATA

Inventors: Scott Kolodzieski, Vince Deters, Robert Levey, Shu Huang

• EVENT STREAM PROCESSING CLUSTER MANAGER

Inventor: Yonggang Yao

• ANALYTIC SYSTEM FOR FAST QUANTILE PROCESS COMPUTATION

Inventors: Christian Macaro, Jan Chvosta, Mark Little

• TECHNIQUES FOR AUTOMATED BAYESIAN POSTERIOR SAMPLING USING MARKOV CHAIN MONTE CARLO AND RELATED SCHEMES

Inventors: Xu Chen, Jorge Silva, Brett Wujek

• DISTRIBUTABLE EVENT PREDICTION AND MACHINE LEARNING RECOGNITION SYSTEM

Inventors: Rocco Cannizzaro, Christian Macaro

• REDUCING RESOURCE CONSUMPTION ASSOCIATED WITH EXECUTING A BOOTSTRAPPING PROCESS ON A COMPUTING DEVICE

Inventors: Laura Castro-Schilo, James Koepfler, Christopher Gotwalt

• GRAPHICAL INTERACTIVE MODEL SPECIFICATION GUIDELINES FOR STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING DESIGNS

Inventors: Brian Bowman, Mark Gass

• FIRST NODE DEVICE, COMPUTER-READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM, AND COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED METHOD

Inventors: Yuwei Liao, Anya McGuirk, Byron Biggs, Arin Chaudhuri,
Allen Langlois, Vince Deters

• DATA MONITORING SYSTEM

Inventor: David Ghazaleh

• DATABASE SERVER EMBEDDED PROCESS AND CODE ACCELERATOR

Inventor: David Ghazaleh

• DATABASE SERVER EMBEDDED PROCESS AND CODE ACCELERATOR

Inventors: James Cox, Russell Albright, Saratendu Sethi

• WORD EMBEDDINGS AND VIRTUAL TERMS

Inventors: David Wheaton, William Nadolski, Heather Goodykoontz

• TECHNIQUES FOR EXTRACTING CONTEXTUALLY STRUCTURED DATA FROM DOCUMENT IMAGES

Inventors: Xiaozhuo Cheng, Xu Yang, Xiaolong Li

• SPEECH AUDIO PRE-PROCESSING SEGMENTATION

Inventors: Yingjian Wang, Ray Wright

• DISTRIBUTABLE CLUSTERING MODEL TRAINING SYSTEM

Inventors: Pelin Cay, Nabaruna Karmakar, Natalia Summerville, Varunraj Valsaraj, Antony Cooper,
Steven Gardner, Joshua Griffin

• OPTIMIZING MANUFACTURING PROCESSES USING ONE OR MORE MACHINE LEARNING MODELS

Inventors: Reza Nazari, Afshin Oroojlooy, Alexander Phelps, Davood Hajinezhad, Bahar Biller,
Jonathan Walker, Hamza Ghadyali, Kedar Prabhudesai, Xunlei We, Maggie Du, Jorge Silva,
Varunraj Valsaraj, Jinxin Yi

• DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION WITH SEQUENTIAL DECISION MAKING

Inventors: Josh Griffin, Riadh Omheni, Yan Xu

• NONLINEAR OPTIMIZATION SYSTEM

Inventors: Andrew Clegg, Christopher Struble, Ron Hackett

• TECHNIQUES FOR AUTOMATED SOFTWARE TESTING

Inventors: Samuel Leeman-Munk, James Cox, David Styles, Richard Crowell

• MACHINE LEARNING CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

Inventors: Joseph Morgan, Ryan Lekivetz, Caleb King, Bradley Jones

• TOOL FOR HYPERPARAMETER VALIDATION

Inventors: Henry Bequet, Ron Stogner, Ricky Zhang, Qing Gong

• MESSAGE-BASED COORDINATION OF CONTAINER-SUPPORTED MANY TASK COMPUTING

Inventors: Afshin Oroojlooy, Reza Nazari, Davood Hajinezhad, Jorge Silva

• UNIVERSAL ATTENTION-BASED REINFORCEMENT LEARNING MODEL FOR CONTROL SYSTEMS

Inventors: Henry Bequet, Ron Stogner, Eric Yang, Qing Gong, Ricky Zhang

• AUTOMATED MESSAGE-BASED JOB FLOW CANCELLATION IN CONTAINER-SUPPORTED MANY TASK COMPUTING

Inventors: Henry Bequet, Ron Stogner, Eric Yang, Qing Gong

• AUTOMATED MESSAGE-BASED JOB FLOWRESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN CONTAINER-SUPPORTED
  MANY TASK COMPUTING

Inventors: Henry Bequet, Ron Stogner, Eric Yang, Qing Gong, Ricky Zhang

• COMMANDED MESSAGE-BASED JOB FLOW CANCELLATION IN CONTAINER-SUPPORTED MANY TASK COMPUTING

Inventors: Ryan Lekivetz, Bradley Jones, Joseph Morgan, Caleb King

• TOOL FOR DESIGN EXPERIMENTS WITH UNCONTROLLED FACTORS

Inventors: David Wheaton, William Nadolski, Heather Goodykoontz

• TECHNIQUES FOR EXTRACTING CONTEXTUALLY STRUCTURED DATA FROM DOCUMENT IMAGES

Inventor: Xu Chen

• MACHINE LEARNING CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

Inventors: Steven Gardner, Joshua Griffin, Yan Xu, Patrick Koch,
Brett Wujek, and Oleg Golovidov

• MULTI-OBJECTIVE DISTRIBUTED HYPERPARAMETER TUNING SYSTEM

Inventor: Brandon Reese

• DISTRIBUTABLE FEATURE ANALYSIS AND TREE MODEL TRAINING SYSTEM

Inventor: Charles Shorb

• ATOMIC POOL MANAGER FOR A DATA POOL USING A MEMORY SLOT FOR STORING A DATA OBJECT

Inventors: Ryan Parker, Clay Barker, Christopher Gotwalt

• ANALYTIC SYSTEM FOR INTERACTIVE DIRECT FUNCTIONAL PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS

Inventor: Xu Chen

• DISTRIBUTABLE EVENT PREDICTION AND MACHINE LEARNING RECOGNITION SYSTEM

Inventors: Xilong Chen, Mark Little

• TECHNIQUES TO MANAGE VIRTUAL CLASSES FOR STATISTICAL TESTS

Inventors: James Cox, Nancy Rausch

• COMPUTERIZED PIPELINES FOR TRANSFORMING INPUT DATA INTO DATA STRUCTURES COMPATIBLE WITH MODELS

Inventors: Carlos Pinheiro, Matthew Galati, Natalia Summerville

• LOCATION NETWORK ANALYSIS TOOL FOR PREDICTING CONTAMINATION CHANGE

Inventors: Brian Duke, Ankur Gupta, Vesselin Diev

• SELF SIMILARITY MEASURE FOR FRAUD MEASUREMENT

Inventors: Jack Rouse, Rob Pratt, Jared Erickson, Manoj Chari

• AUTOMATED CONCURRENCY AND REPETITION WITH MINIMAL SYNTAX

Inventors: Xilong Chen, Xunlei Wu, Jan Chvosta

• REDUCING CONSUMPTION OF COMPUTING RESOURCES IN PERFORMING COMPUTERIZED SEQUENCE-MINING ON LARGE DATA SETS

Inventors: Kai Shen, Haoyu Wang, Arin Chaudhuri

• HIGH DIMENSIONAL TO LOW DIMENSIONAL DATA TRANSFORMATION AND VISUALIZATION SYSTEM

Inventors: Ryan Lekivetz, Joseph Morgan, Bradley Jones, Caleb King

• TOOL FOR OPTIMAL SUPERSATURATED DESIGNS

Inventors: Matthew Galati, Brandon Reese

• RANGE OVERLAP QUERY RESPONSE SYSTEM FOR GRAPH DATA

Inventors: Matthew Galati, Brandon Reese

• RANGE OVERLAP QUERY RESPONSE SYSTEM FOR GRAPH DATA

Inventors: Henry Bequet, Eric Yang, Qing Gong, Kais Arfaoui, Ron Stogner, Partha Dutta

• AUTOMATED MESSAGE-BASED JOB FLOW RESOURCE COORDINATION IN CONTAINER-SUPPORTED MANY TASK COMPUTING

Inventors: Xiaozhuo Cheng, Xu Yang, Xiaolong Li

• SPEECH AUDIO PRE-PROCESSING SEGMENTATION

Inventors: Henry Bequet, Ron Stogner

• AUTOMATED MESSAGE-BASED JOB FLOW RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN CONTAINER-SUPPORTED MANY TASK COMPUTING

Inventor: Xu Yang

• DYNAMIC MODEL SELECTION IN SPEECH-TO-TEXT PROCESSING

Inventors: Xu Chen, Jorge Silva, Brett Wujek

• DISTRIBUTABLE EVENT PREDICTION AND MACHINE LEARNING RECOGNITION SYSTEM

Inventors: Robert Chu, Wenjie Bao, Glenn Clingroth

• AUTOMATED COMPUTER-BASED MODEL DEVELOPMENT, DEPLOYMENT, AND MANAGEMENT

Inventors: Oleg Golovidov, Brett Wujek, Patrick Koch, Rajendra Singh

• HYPERPARAMETER TUNING SYSTEM RESULTS VIEWER

Inventors: Yue Qi, Jeff Miller, Tom Mutdosch, Rory MacKenzie, Iain Jackson, Peter Eastwood,
Ryan Gillespie, Michael Ames, Andrew Knotts, Wayne Thompson

• ADVANCED DETECTION OF RARE EVENTS AND CORRESPONDING INTERACTIVE GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE

Inventors: Henry Bequet, Ron Stogner, Eric Yang, Qing Gong, Partha Dutta, Kais Arfaoui

• PER TASK ROUTINE DISTRIBUTED RESOLVER

Inventors: Hamza Ghadyali, Kedar Prabhudesai, Reza Nazari, Bahar Biller, Afshin Oroojlooy, Alex Phelps,
Jonathan Walker, Xunlei Wu, Maggie Du, Davood Hajinezhad, Varunraj Valsaraj, Jorge Silva,
Jinxin Yi

• REAL-TIME SPATIAL AND GROUP MONITORING AND OPTIMIZATION

Inventors: Hamza Ghadyali, Kedar Prabhudesai, Reza Nazari, Bahar Biller, Afshin Oroojlooy, Alex Phelps,
Jonathan Walker, Xunlei Wu, Maggie Du, Davood Hajinezhad, Varunraj Valsaraj, Jorge Silva,
Jinxin Yi

• REAL-TIME SPATIAL AND GROUP MONITORING AND OPTIMIZATION

Inventors: Hamza Ghadyali, Kedar Prabhudesai, Jonathan Walker, Xunlei Wu, Maggie Du, Bahar Biller,
Reza Nazari, Afshin Oroojlooy, Alex Phelps, Davood Hajinezhad, Varunraj Valsaraj, Jorge Silva,
Jinxin Yi

• REAL-TIME CONCEALED OBJECT TRACKING

Inventors: Scott Kolodzieski, Vince Deters, Shu Huang, Robert Levey

• EVENT STREAM PROCESSING CLUSTER MANAGER

Inventors: Joseph Morgan, Yeng Saanchi, Laura Lancaster, Christopher Gotwalt, Caleb King,
Ryan Lekivetz

• OPTIMIZATION UNDER DISALLOWED COMBINATIONS

Inventors: Xinmin Wu, Yingjian Wang, Xiangqian Hu

• NEURAL NETWORK TRAINING SYSTEM

Inventor: Claire Cates

• GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE AND DEBUGGER SYSTEM FOR SELECTING AND TESTING ALTERATIONS TO SOURCE CODE FOR SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS

Inventors: Xu Chen, Xinmin Wu

• SEMI-SUPERVISED CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

Inventors: Krishnan PR, Prasad Pawar

• VISUALIZING HIGH CARDINALITY CATEGORICAL DATA

Inventors: Henry Bequet, Ron Stogner, Eric Yang, Qing Gong, Partha Dutta, Kais Arfaoui

• EXCHANGE OF DATA OBJECTS BETWEEN TASK ROUTINES VIA SHARED MEMORY SPACE

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