UC Irvine (UCI) Beall Applied Innovation recently recognized innovative faculty at the fourth annual UCI Innovator Awards.
The UCI Innovator Awards, which was established with support from the Beall Family Foundation, recognizes UCI researchers and faculty who are working to promote commercialization of university innovations and intellectual property, with winners receiving a trophy and a cash award of $5,000.
Nominees also received special plaques, and both nominees and awardees received certificates of recognition from California State Senator Dave Min, who represents Orange County’s 37th State Senate District.
Errol Arkilic, UCI’s new chief innovation officer and executive director of Applied Innovation, kicked off the event by welcoming attendees, nominees and guest speakers. Speakers included UCI Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor and Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Statistics Hal Stern, Applied Innovation Board Chair Ken Beall and Vice Chancellor for Research and Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Pramod Khargonekar.
Khargonekar offered a few words on the importance of moving research from the lab to the public.
“It is here that we take insights and results obtained through our research and turn them into innovations, turn them into societally useful [and] impactful ideas, enterprises, industry collaborations, so that these research results go from the lab to the real world to make a positive difference to the lives of our community, our state, our nation and the world,” said Khargonekar.
Iryna Zenyuk from the Henry Samueli School of Engineering received the Emerging Innovation/Early Career Innovator of the Year award for her work in electrochemical engineering. She has pioneered novel approaches to electrochemical energy conversion and storage, including a technology to decarbonize Portland cement manufacturing, which can enable a higher degree of sustainability and lead to a reduction of the world’s carbon footprint.
“The U.S. will have to decarbonize by 2050,” said Zenyuk. “And the cement industry is such a big industry and such an energy-intensive process that we had to come up with some innovation in this area. I would like to thank my colleague from Civil Engineering, Mo Li, who joined me and invented this process with me and I’m really thankful for her contributions.”
The Entrepreneurial Leader of the Year award went to Daniele Piomelli from the School of Medicine for his innovative research on the body’s endocannabinoid system and how cannabinoids — compounds from the cannabis plant — can affect hunger, immune response, memory, metabolism and neurotransmission. He has also been involved in the formation and financing of more than five companies.
“I am speechless,” said Piomelli. “I think this award actually belongs to all the people that throughout the 20-plus years that I’ve been a faculty here at UC Irvine have been — in my lab and outside my lab — instrumental to the work you have so kindly highlighted today. These are my students and postdocs who have worked on the technologies that have given rise to the companies that were so kindly mentioned.”
Sunny Jiang from the School of Engineering received the Innovator of the Year award for her research in applied and environmental microbiology, including the invention of a portable pathogen analysis system, which is currently being optimized to test for SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater to track the disease in communities.
“It’s a humbling experience to be among all these talented colleagues,” said Jiang. “I think everybody else is equally deserving of this award.”
Learn more about the UCI Innovator Awards.
Main Image: Julie Kennedy
