OMAHA, Nebraska (November 7, 2025)—UNeMed completed the first round of training for its new Innovation Ambassadors program, wrapping up an all-day workshop today that gave the 13-person cohort a deep dive into intellectual property, technology transfer and commercialization.
Officially announced and launched during the Innovation Awards ceremony last month, the Innovation Ambassadors program was created to help innovative faculty, staff and students who might have new inventions, discoveries or other ideas and don’t know where to turn or what to expect.
The 13 Ambassadors are an elite group of experienced faculty inventors empowered to act as mentors, advisers and advocates for colleagues who are unfamiliar or even skeptical of the innovation or technology transfer process.
UNeMed launched the Innovation Ambassador program to expand the visibility of technology commercialization and deepen the connections between researchers and UNeMed, said President and CEO Michael Dixon, PhD.
“Our first cohort of Ambassadors brings remarkable experience translating discoveries into real-world solutions. By activating this network of knowledgeable and engaged researchers, we aim to make the commercialization process more approachable, more connected, and ultimately more impactful for the entire research community.”
As a group, the Innovation Ambassadors have disclosed 249 inventions, applied for 199 patents—44 of which have issued—built five startup companies and have had 20 technologies licensed. They have also amassed more than $4 million in additional grants, sponsored research and funding.
With so much experience in the room, the Ambassadors workshop was expected to run as a short lecture program. The main goal was to provide a base understanding of all UNeMed actives and perhaps demystify some processes and decisions that come up along the path toward commercialization.
“The ambassadors were actually far more engaged than we expected,” said Nathan Hatch, PhD, the program director and a licensing specialist at UNeMed. “The second slide of a 50-slide presentation elicited 30-minutes of really good questions.”
UNeMed only covered about half of the intended program, so further training and additional workshops are planned, but the program has already yielded positive results, Dr. Hatch said.
“We had some great discussions that directed us toward some potential changes we can make to improve our operations,” he said. “This is just getting started and they’ve already demonstrated just how impactful we expect this program to be over the next few years.”
UNeMed’s Innovation Ambassadors are:
 | Hamid Band, MD, PhD |  | Bethany Lowndes, PhD, MPH |
 | Beth Beam, PhD, RN |  | Thanh Nguyen, PhD, MSN, FNP-C |
 | Gregory Bennett, DMD |  | Ryan Riskowski, PhD |
 | Benson Edagwa, PhD |  | Ka-Chun (Joseph) Siu, PhD |
 | Robin Gandhi, PhD |  | Paul Trippier, PhD |
 | Jason Johanning, MD, MS, FACS |  | Justin Weeks, PhD |
 | Brian Knarr, PhD |
