UNeMed's annual Research Innovation Awards Banquet is the culmination of a week of activities that celebrate research and innovation at UNMC and UNO. The awards recognize faculty, students and staff that invented a new technology, licensed an invention or secured intellectual property rights during the previous fiscal year. UNeMed also presents Emerging Inventor, Lifetime Achievement, and Innovator of the Year awards as circumstances dictate. Finally, UNeMed also presents a “Most Promising New Invention” as an annual award. In 2018, the first Startup of the Year award was presented by UNeTech, the University’s incubator and accelerator program.
The 2023 Research Innovation Awards Banquet was held at the Hilton Omaha on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. Rebekah Gundry, PhD, was named the Emerging Inventor for her work in mass spectrometry and bioinformatics; Alexey Kamenskiy, PhD, Anastasia Desyatova, PhD, Ali Akbar Ahmadi and Jason MacTaggart, MD, won the Most Promising New Invention award; and Michael Wadman, MD, Thang Nguyen, PhD, and Wesley Zeger, DO, took home the Startup of the Year award.
Download the 2023 Innovation Awards Program here.
Innovation Awards Demo Day Past Events
Emerging Inventor
Rebekah Gundry, PhD, was the 2023 Emerging Inventor of the year, in recognition of her inventions and research accomplishments in the field of mass spectrometry, bioinformatics and the cell surfaceome.
Dr. Gundry is an inventor on eight new inventions submitted over the last five years. Her inventions include surface expressed proteins, unique to pancreatic beta cells, that could be used for developing targeted therapies, and a kit for isolating and analyzing glycans.
Dr. Gundry’s work focuses on developing and applying novel mass spectrometry-based technologies and bioinformatic tools to better understand cell surface glycoproteins and glycans.
One of her technologies, CellSurfer Platform, can be used to identify cell surface N-glycoproteins. Along with her CellSurfer platform she has also developed the Visual Inventory of Surface Proteins (VISUN) database, which is a catalog of experimentally verified surface proteins from a variety of cell and tissue types.
Combining CellSurfer and VISUN allows Dr. Gundry to identify surface glycoproteins that are unique to a specific cell type. These proteins represent potential targets for the development of biomarkers or for development of targeted therapeutics. Several pharmaceutical companies have expressed interest in collaborating with Dr. Gundry to explore the use of her CellSurfer and VISUN platforms for the development of therapeutics.
Most Promising New Invention
The Most Promising New Invention of 2023 was presented to a cross-campus collaboration of UNO engineers—Alexey Kamenskiy, PhD, Anastasia Desyatova, PhD, and Ali Akbar Ahmadi—and a UNMC clinician, Jason MacTaggart, MD
Their invention, "Optimized Vascular Stent," is an improvement for stents used in legs to treat patients with peripheral artery diseases. Their designs could lead to fewer patients needing repeat surgery, saving them from expensive hospital bills while improving their overall health.
Startup of the Year
The Startup of the Year award went to University Medical Devices and co-founders Michael Wadman, MD, Thang Nguyen, PhD, and Wesley Zeger, DO.
University Medical Devices is developing MicroWash, a fast, comfortable, and self-contained nasopharyngeal irrigation device designed to collect nasal samples—a dramatic improvement over the long swabs that gained notoriety during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
MicroWash was accepted into NMotion’s 2022 Growth Accelerator cohort and in the process of closing on a $1.5 million seed round.
2023 Innovation Awards Program
Award Winners
Special Awards
| 2023 | University Medical Devices | Startup of the Year |
| 2023 | Rebekah Gundry, PhD | Emerging Inventor |
| 2022 | Exavir Therapeutics | Startup of the Year |
| 2022 | Bin Duan, PhD | Emerging Inventor |
| 2021 | Ensign Pharmaceutical | Startup of the Year |
| 2021 | Hanjun Wang, MD | Innovator of the Year |
| 2020 | BreezMed | Startup of the Year |
| 2020 | COVID-19 Inventors | Innovators of the Year |
| 2019 | FutureAssure | Startup of the Year |
| 2019 | Benson Edagwa, Ph.D. | Emerging Inventor |
| 2019 | FutureAssure | Startup of the Year |
| 2018 | UNO Biomechanics Department | Innovator of the Year |
| 2018 | Centese, Inc. | Startup of the Year |
| 2017 | Donny Suh, M.D. | Emerging Inventor |
| 2016 | Irving Zucker, Ph.D. | Innovator of the Year |
| 2015 | Tammy Kielian, Ph.D. | Innovator of the Year |
| 2014 | Marius Florescu, M.D. | Emerging Inventor |
| 2013 | Howard Gendelman, M.D. | Innovator of the Year |
| 2012 | Tammy Kielian, Ph.D. | Emerging Inventor |
| 2011 | Jonathan Vennerstrom, Ph.D. | Lifetime Achievement |
| 2010 | Amarnath Natarajan, Ph.D. | Emerging Inventor |
| 2009 | Rodney Markin, M.D., Ph.D. | Lifetime Achievement |
| 2008 | Dong Wang, Ph.D. | Emerging Inventor |
| 2007 | Robert LeVeen, M.D. | Lifetime Achievement |
Most Promising New Invention
| 2023 | Alexey Kamenskiy, PhD; Anastasia Desyatova, PhD; Ali Akbar Ahmadi; Jason MacTaggart, MD | Optimized Vascular Stent |
| 2022 | Cody Anderson and Song-young Park, Ph.D. | System for Measuring Blood Pressure in Wearable Electronic Devices |
| 2021 | Brian Knarr, PhD; Travis Vanderheyden; Russell Buffum | Improved Self-Pacing Treadmill |
| 2020 | Joseph McMordie, M.D. and Daniel Sturdell, M.D. | Anterior Cervical Space Spreader |
| 2019 | Corey Hopkins, Ph.D. | PDE4B Selective Inhibitors |
| 2018 | Catherine Gebhart, Ph.D. and Varun Kehsarwani, Ph.D. | Multiplex assay for rapid detection of HSV1, HSV2, EBV and CNV by qPCR |
| 2017 | Jingwei Xie, Ph.D., Mark Carlson, M.D., Shixuan Chen, Ph.D. | Nanofiber Sponges for Hemostasis |
| 2016 | Joyce Solheim, Ph.D. and Tatiana Bronich, Ph.D. | Compositions for Modulated Release of Proteins and Methods of Use Thereof |
| 2015 | Michael Wadman, M.D., F.A.S.E.P. & Thang Nguyen, M.S.N., A.P.R.N., F.N.P.-C |
Emergency Medicine Care Portfolio: Wound Irrigation System & Oral Airway Management |
| 2014 | Jason MacTaggart, M.D. | Orthagonal AquaBlade |
| 2013 | Keshore Bidasee, Ph.D. | Targeted Glyoxalase-1 Gene Transfer to Prevent Cardiovascular and End- Organ Complications in Diabetes |
| 2012 | Gregory Oakley, Ph.D | Small Molecule in Vivo Inhibitors of the N-Terminal Protein Interacting Domain of RPA1 |
| 2011 | Babu Padanilam, Ph.D | Novel Target for the Treatment of Renal Fibrosis |
| 2010 | Stephen Bonasera, M.D., Ph.D. | Noninvasive Monitoring of Functional Behaviors in Ambulatory Human Populations |
| 2009 | Paul Dunman, Ph.D. | Novel Antibiotic Compounds |
| 2008 | Guangshun (Gus) Wang, Ph.D. | Anti-HIV Peptides and Methods of Use Thereof |
| 2008 | Janina Baranowska-Kortylewicz, Ph.D. | Sex Hormone Binding Globulin: New Target for Cancer Therapy |
