Those details mattered because I would eventually face people who wanted to pretend that possessing a copy of my invention was the same as owning it.
It wasn't.
The underlying technology became known in our research circle as VelaFlow.
The name came from a joke Pei-chen made while watching me struggle to explain a diagram.
She said the channels looked like little sails.
I laughed.
Then used the word vela, which reminded me of sails and movement, as a temporary project label.
The name stayed.
VelaFlow was a passive thermal-management architecture designed to transport heat away from compact electronic modules through a carefully controlled internal structure.
It wasn't a magical machine.
It didn't eliminate the laws of thermodynamics.
It couldn't replace every conventional cooling system.
And it certainly couldn't make medical devices invulnerable to failure.
But early testing suggested it might offer useful performance advantages in specific applications where size, power consumption, and reliability were important.
One promising area involved portable medical electronics.
Another involved industrial sensor systems.
A third involved battery-management modules used in environments where additional cooling equipment increased complexity.
I was excited.
Professor Lin was cautious.
“Naomi,” she said after one successful test, “one good result is encouraging.”
I nodded.
“But?”
She smiled.
“But now we try to make it fail.”
I laughed.
Then we did.
We tested different conditions.
Repeated thermal cycles.
Manufacturing variation.
Environmental exposure.
And operating scenarios designed to reveal weaknesses.
Some prototypes failed.
Others degraded.
A few results were promising enough to justify further development.
Over time, the data became more consistent.
The invention attracted interest.
At first, only from researchers.
Then from engineers working in industry.