Tables with up-and-coming inventions that include an environment-scanning robot and augmented reality goggles lined the UF Innovate Tech Licensing organization’s sixth annual Standing InnOvation event this week.
The event showcased innovative partners and their discoveries and celebrated innovators who have disclosed, licensed or optioned a technology during the prior fiscal year, which ended June 30.
Out of UF’s 16 colleges, 10 promoted new inventions around the building with interactive exhibits.
The event, hosted Wednesday, was called Standing InnOvation to recognize the work of the innovators and give them a standing ovation, as well as issue them a standing invitation to work with UF Innovate’s Tech Licensing, Sara Dagen, assistant director of communications for UF Innovate, said in an email.
This year’s gathering marks the first that colleges have been invited to showcase their inventions and the first where innovators working with UF Innovate during the recent fiscal year are given physical awards. It’s also the first year innovators received an issued U.S. patent for being on the honoree list.
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Innovator of the Year
UF Innovate based the decision on a researcher’s work over multiple years, selecting an individual who has made scientific contributions that have been licensed and sent to the marketplace, sometimes when the researcher has created a startup based on their findings.
Top honors went to Shannon Boye, professor and associate chief of the Division of Cellular and Molecular Therapy in the Department of Pediatrics at UF, as Innovator of the Year.
Boye graduated from UF with a doctorate degree in neuroscience in 2006. Her thesis research focused on developing viral vectors for treating retinal diseases, specifically GUCY2D Lieber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA1). LCA is a rare, genetic eye disorder that is present from birth and usually results in severe vision loss at an early age.
She continued her work with retinal diseases after graduation, eventually creating her own technologies with her husband, and licensing the treatment to big pharma as well as smaller companies.
When the pair realized the technology wasn’t becoming accessible to patients, they formed their own company, Atsena Therapeutics, which currently has ongoing clinical trials to evaluate a potential gene therapy product for one of the most common causes of blindness in children.
“We’ve had patients that were able to see a star for the first time and even see snowflakes for the first time,” Boye said. “So that’s the stuff – that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.”
Other awardees
Six other Inventions of the Year were also honored, one chosen by each of UF’s six licensing teams as having potential. Each received a trophy.
Smaller prizes were given to innovators working with UF Innovate this year: lapel pins for those who disclosed to the office, license plates for those who licensed a technology, certificates for those who have optioned a technology and individualized patent mugs for innovators who received an issued U.S. patent.
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The six inventions awarded included a variety of discoveries including the use of new therapies to improve cancer results, the role of bacteria in the progression of cancer or therapeutic responses and using artificial intelligence to determine the level of care patients will need in hospitals.
UF Innovate’s Tech Licensing was founded in 1985 and works with multiple innovators, investors and industry partners to increase the potential of UF’s innovations through commercialization. It connects researchers and investors to guide them through the commercialization process. During the current fiscal year, innovators at UF disclosed 300 technologies, licensed 118 and initiated the creation of 15 companies. Over 600 current UF researchers worked with the UF Innovate office in 2023.
The inventions honored along with their team are:
Engineering And Use of Methylated Variants of Plastoquinone as Synthetic Inhibitors of Photosynthesis
AG-Horticultural Sciences – Gilles Basset, Scott Latimer, Lauren Stutts
Aligning Patient Acuity with Resource Intensity after Major Surgery
EG-Biomedical Engineering – MD-Surgery, and MD-Medicine; Tyler Loftus, Azra Bihorac, Parisa Rashidi, Matthew Ruppert, Benjamin Shickel
A Transformer Impedance Balance Technique for Isolated Converters
EG-Electrical / Computer Eng – Shuo Wang, Qinghui Huang
Stereoregular Cyclic Polypropylene
LS-Chemistry – Adam Veige
Generation of a Defined Bacterial Consortium Enhancing Anti-PD-1 Mediated Anti-tumor Activity in NSCLC
MD-Medicine – Christian Jobin, Rachel Newsome
Generation Z Single Stranded AAV Serotype Vectors
MD-Pediatrics – Keyun Qing, Jakob Shoti, Arun Srivastava