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.
Jan Kubanek. Credit: Harriet Richardson
"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.”
Click here to learn more about 2024’s Innovation Awards recipients.
Click here to learn more about the other success for 2024.
More honorees
MEDIA & PR CONTACTS
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Amanda Ashley
Sr. director, marketing & communications, Technology Licensing Office