The Fourth Annual Penn Center for Innovation’s Celebration of Innovation was held last month at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at Van Pelt Library. More than 150 Penn inventors and partners came together to celebrate Penn’s innovation achievements during fiscal year 2019. The keynote was given by Andrei Iancu, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office. He discussed the history of innovation at Penn, and the importance of inclusion and diversity. “We must make sure that more women and minorities are involved in the innovation ecosystem. Right now, only 12% of our patent awardees are women.” That said, during Fiscal Year 2019, 26% of Penn patent recipients were women. 

Award recipients at the event were:

Emerging Inventor of the Year: Susan Volk, associate professor of small animal surgery and faculty for the bioengineering graduate group at Penn Vet, for her novel method of suppressing the breast cancer metastasis.

Biomedical Device of the Year: Mark Yim, Asa Whitney Professor of Mechanical Engineering at SEAS and director of the GRASP Lab, for his steerable needle technology for non-invasive internal medical procedures.

Inventors of the Year: Penn Vet’s William Beltran, professor of ophthalmology, and Gustavo Aguirre, professor of medical genetics and ophthalmology, for their unparalleled approach to developing novel therapies for the treatment of inherited retinal disorders. 

Startup of the Year: Verix Health, a company that is developing a suite of actively steerable surgical devices enabling minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment of lesions in difficult-to-access anatomies. The company was founded by Dr. Yim and PCI Ventures; it is now headquartered in Philadelphia and Santa Clara, California.

Partner of the Year: Kairos Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Beverly Hills, California, that is focused on scientific discoveries. 

Deal of the Year: Linnaeus Therapeutics, a PCI UPstart biotech company engaged in the identification and development of small molecule agents for the treatment of cancer, for its partnership and collaboration with Penn Medicine and PCI. 

This article is related to the Penn Center for Innovation article.