OMAHA, Nebraska (October 23, 2025)—UNeMed held its annual gala celebrating innovation and discovery at the University of Nebraska with its 18th annual Innovation Awards banquet Wednesday night at the Scott Conference Center on UNO’s Aksarben Campus.
The Awards ceremony represented the pinnacle of UNeMed’s Innovation Week, a series of events designed to inspire, support and recognize the many contributions of all University personnel who contributed to innovative ideas, new technologies or entrepreneurial ventures during the previous fiscal year.
The evening was highlighted by the presentation of several key awards and the unveiling of a new cohort of campus advisers, the Innovation Ambassadors.
UNeMed president and CEO Michael Dixon, PhD, unveiled 13 Innovation Ambassadors during the short ceremony, announcing the program as an elite group of University leaders and experienced faculty inventors empowered to act as mentors to colleagues unfamiliar or skeptical of the technology transfer and commercialization process. UNeMed also created the Innovation Ambassador program to advocate for the services, benefits, usefulness, necessity and professionalism of the University’s technology transfer and commercialization office, Dr. Dixon said.
The first cohort of Innovation Ambassadors are: Hamid Band, MD, PhD; Beth Beam, PhD, RN; Gregory Bennett, DMD; Benson Edagawa, PhD; Robin Gandhi, PhD; Jason Johanning, MD, MS, FACS; Brian Knarr, PhD; Bethany Lowndes, PhD; Thanh Nguyen, PhD, MSN, FNP-C; Ryan Riskowski, PhD; Ka-Chun (Joseph) Siu, PhD; Paul Trippier, PhD; and Justin Weeks, PhD.
The highlight of the evening was the Awards presentation. Patent awardees were presented commemorative plaques, licensees were presented with glass trophies and new invention submitters were rewarded with unique T-shirts and pennants. The T-shirts and pennants are only presented to inventors who submit new inventions. Inventors were also given lapel pins that can be affixed to their pennants to denote the number of inventions they have disclosed.
UNMC professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, Ashok Puri, delivers brief remarks in accepting the Emerging Inventor Award during UNeMed’s 2025 Innovation Awards ceremony on Oct. 22 at the Scott Conference Center in Omaha.
Ashok Puri, MBBS, MS, a professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at UNMC, was named the 2025 Emerging Inventor. His work focuses on using artificial intelligence to create more robust and accurate diagnostic tools for several medical conditions. He is also a co-founder of a startup company, Deep Heath Diagnostics, which is built on his innovative algorithms.
During his brief acceptance speech, Dr. Puri, who began his career as a clinician for more than 20 years, addressed his second act as a researcher, inventor and entrepreneur: “If there’s one message to clinicians I would share,” he said, “If I can do it, anyone also can.”
The Most Promising New Invention of 2025 was the Cardiac Cath Lab Mentor, developed by UNMC cardiologist Edward O’Leary, MD. A professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and the director of UNMC’s Cardiovascular Catheterization Laboratory, Dr. O’Leary’s invention is a software solution to help better train medical students on how to interpret coronary angiograms. His innovation is also the basis of a new startup company, Aprendo Cardiovascular Solutions.
UNMC cardiologist Edward O’Leary accepts the Most Promising New Invention award from UNeMed CEO and President Michael Dixon during UNeMed’s 2025 Innovation Awards ceremony on Oct. 22 at the Scott Conference Center in Omaha.
“This is not something I have done,” Dr. O’Leary said. “This is something we have done. It was truly a team effort.”
The Faculty Entrepreneur Award was presented to serial inventor Thanh Nguyen, PhD, for his work in building two growing startups: University Medical Devise and HemaGlobal. With more than 91 inventions to his credit and the most recent recipient of the prestigious President’s Excellence Award for Faculty Intellectual Property Innovation and Commercialization, Dr. Nguyen is a professor in UNMC’s Department of Emergency Medicine.
“Anyone who has been down the entrepreneur path knows this is a team sport,” Dr. Nguyen said. “I’d like to recognize Dr. Michael Wadman (Emergency Medicine Chair) for what he has done. Not only for his support, but also for building a culture of innovation that no one has ever seen before.”
University Medical Devices is currently selling a new nasal sample collection kit that eliminates the need for painful swabs that test for infectious diseases. HemaGlobal is marketing a new device that simplifies the process of successfully collecting a blood smear sample.
The Startup of the Year award was presented to Nimrod Bin-Nun, CEO of RespirAI, a company built on a collaboration between UNMC clinicians and UNO’s biomechanics department. RespirAI has secured more than $4.5 million in funding to help launch a wearable device company that hopes to solve the critical problem of detecting the sudden and potentially fatal flareup of symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
“After four years of collaboration and 20 years as an entrepreneur,” Bin-Nun said, “Nebraska, and Omaha specifically, is an amazing place to build a company.”
The 2025 Faculty Entrepreneur Award recipient, Thanh Nguyen, accepts his award with brief remarks during UNeMed’s 2025 Innovation Awards ceremony, on Oct. 22 at the Scott Conference Center in Omaha.
Finally, UNeMed presented Invest Nebraska with the Innovation Champion award for its tireless support in helping build the state’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and several University startups in the last 25 years.
The 2025 Innovation Awards was one of several events for Innovation Week, which began on Monday with a “Kickoff” event. Innovation Week continued Thursday evening with Idea Pub: Startup Showcase in the Forge Event Hall in the Omaha Catalyst building on Saddle Creek Road.
The showcase featured several pitch presentations highlighting Nebraska medical innovations that have become the basis for new startup companies.
A panel discussion with members of the National Institutes of Health had been planned for Friday but that has been postponed due to the ongoing government shutdown. The discussion was expected to cover how to secure federal SBIR/STTR grant funding. UNeMed will make an announcement when that event is rescheduled.
