The second annual University of Utah Innovation Awards recognized researchers across campus striving to transform their academic research into marketable, impactful products.

The Oct. 28 event, hosted by the U’s Technology Licensing Office at the Alumni House, highlighted the recipients of the eight Innovation Awards and recognized those who patented technologies, received commercialization-specific grants (the Ascender Grant and SBIR/STTR programs) and participated in the I-Corps program in fiscal year 2024.

“Tonight, we celebrate your incredible innovations and the impacts they’ve had. We celebrate our investigators and inventors. And we celebrate the patents and startups that are coming out of this great institution—and the work that goes along with them,” Vice President for Research Erin Rothwell said. “By working together across campus and across disciplines, we bring more knowledge to the table and make more breakthroughs. And by bridging your groundbreaking work to our community, state, country and beyond, we have the power to drive meaningful change and improve lives on a global scale.”

Jan Kubanek, an associate professor of biomedical engineering, was honored as Founder of the Year for his company Spire Therapeutic, which is developing a device, called DIADEM, that shows great promise in treating depression and chronic pain using ultrasound.

“There are thousands of people who have depression or pain so severe, they cannot get out of bed. You drive through downtown Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. There are people living in tents like dogs, not like people. That’s a really big issue and challenge for mankind,” said Kubanek. “We have developed technology that we believe is practical enough and will be affordable enough that allow us to reset and repair the deep brain structures involved in disorders like pain, depression, schizophrenia and many of these disorders that are currently intractable. In fact, about one in three people are resistant to current treatments. It’s just millions and millions of people, and many of those cannot be with us here because of those constraints.”

Other honorees include:

Startup of the Year: 3 Helix, a company founded by  by Yang Li and Michael Yu, professors in the U’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. The company eveloped a series of proprietary collagen hybridizing peptides that directly target the damaged collagen molecule, the major component of nearly every human tissue, with an essential role in supporting cell growth and tissue formation.

Innovator of the Year: Roger Altizer, associate professor with joint appointments in Population Health Sciences and Entertainment Arts & Engineering. He is also director of digital medicine at the Center for Medical Innovation

Breakthrough of the Year: the Utah Bionic Leg, developed by mechanical engineering professor Tommaso Lenzi and his team in the HGN Lab, is motorized prosthetic for lower-limb amputees uses motors, processors and advanced artificial intelligence to give users greater power and control, enabling them to walk, stand, sit and navigate stairs with ease. The technology is now licensed to Ottobock, a global leader in the prosthetics industry.

Investigator on the Rise: Justin English, assistant professor of biochemistry whose lab focuses on understanding how cells interpret and respond to information in their environment in human health and disease.

Lifetime Achievement: Carl Wittwer, professor emeritus of pathology, the medical director of Immunologic Flow Cytometry at Associated Regional and University Pathologists, or ARUP, and co-founder of BioFire Diagnostics

Undergraduate:  Morgan Doane who developed an AI-enabled platform that revolutionizes how student course feedback is analyzed and used to enhance teaching quality.

Graduate student:  Michael Adkins, an engineering graduate student in the Utah HeuroRobotics Lab who is an also pursuing an M.D. His research has led to patents and studies that demonstrate commercial viability and immediate clinical impact.

Learn more about 2024’s Innovation Awards recipients

Other success for 2024

Patents issued

U research community members were issued 23 patents in the fiscal year, 11 of them to first-time patent holders. The patents represent numerous collaborations between departments on campus and institutions around the world.

Each person named on a patent received a personalized U patent mug with the patent they were issued, and first-time patent recipients took home a special travel mug to celebrate the milestone.

Ascender Grant recipients

The Ascender Grant is one of the ways the Technology Licensing Office advances technologies for the U. The grant helps inventors bridge the funding gap between research and commercialization by providing support for technology development, proof of concept and additional investment. On Monday, we recognized five PI’s who completed their Ascender Grant milestones in the fiscal year:

Robert Hitchcock
Matthew Rondina
Jesse Rowley
Jan Kubanek
Massood Tabib-Azar

Learn how to apply for the Ascender Grant

I-Corps teams

The University of Utah is proud to be part of I-Corps Hub West and support our teams of faculty and students as they progress through the program and learn more about entrepreneurship. The following teams successfully completed regional I-Corps programming and are working toward Nationals.

Sethera
Karsten Eastman
Vahe Bandarian

EnduraCure
Grant Musgrave

EAS Sensing
Mary Jeppson
Bobby Mohanty

NOVUS-AT
Dhruv Patel
Marc Porter

Interested in I-Corps? Learn more

SBIR/STTR recipients

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs are the nation’s largest source of early-stage, high-risk funding for startups and small businesses. These federal programs support the development of cutting-edge technologies and help startups bridge the funding gap needed to bring innovations to market.

The following PIs received SBIR/STTR funding in FY24:

Florian Solzbacher
Commercial translation of high-density carbon fiber electrode arrays for multi-modal analysis of neural microcircuits – SBIR NIH, Phase 2

Hamid Ghandehari
Topical Eyedrops Increasing Lysyl Oxidase Activity to Control Myopia – SBIR NIH, Phase 1

Andrew Zayachkivsky
Temperature-Controlled Recording System for Wireless Data Acquisition from Immature Rodents – SBIR NIH, Phase 2

Rebecca Simmons
Implementation of support tools to promote safety in the prescribing of oral contraceptives – SBIR NIH, Phase 2

Steve Blair
High density chronic optogenetic interface for primate brains – SBIR NIH, Phase 2

Edward Cazalas
Radiation-Resistant Stepper Motor – SBIR DOE, Phase 1

Shinduk Lee
Ultra Wideband Fall Detection and Prediction Solution for People Living with Dementia – SBIR NIH, Phase 2

Gabor Marth
A state-of-the-art web platform for collaborative, longitudinal genome diagnostics – SBIR NIH, Phase 2

Berardi Sensale-Rodriguez and Rajesh Menon
Development of Novel Lens Technology for Next Generation Laser Manufacturing – NSF, PFI-TT

Mark Mahan
Restoration of muscular function following direct muscle neurotization – STTR NIH, Phase 1

Jake Abbott
The development of the 3D Resident Object in Space Inspection (3DROSI) technology – STTR DOD, Phase 2

Jacob Hochhalter
Human-interpretable machine learning for certification and sustainment of fatigue-critical additively manufactured – STTR DOD, Phase 2

Jacob Hochhalter
Method development to correct inaccuracies in stress intensity factor models and improve reliability estimates – SBIR DOD, Phase 1

Innovation Ambassadors

TLO has tapped 3 researchers to serve as Innovation Ambassadors to their colleagues. These ambassadors are liaisons between our office, university departments and researchers across campus.

Bobby Mohanty
Jess Tate
Jay Kim

• Amanda Ashley Sr. director, marketing & communications, Technology Licensing Office