ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,601,851, issued on April 14, was assigned to UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA (Winnipeg, Canada).

"Systems and methods for in-situ characterization of permafrost sites" was invented by Pooneh Maghoul (Winnipeg, Canada), Hongwei Liu (Winnipeg, Canada), Guillaume Mantelet (Winnipeg, Canada) and Ahmed Shalaby (Winnipeg, Canada).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of quantifying a plurality of parameters of a subsurface structure comprising a region of interest, the method comprising the steps of: with at least one vibratory source, emitting an input wave signal into the subsurface structure to cause generation of seismic wave signals in the subsu...