by Agnes Lenagh, UNeMed
For UNeMed, Innovation Week provides an opportunity to expose the UNMC research community to technology transfer. UNeMed needs to demonstrate that anyone can be an inventor and offer ideas to improve health.
With Innovation Week just around the corner, we sat with UNeMed staffers and chatted about Innovation Week.
Michael Dixon, PhD
President and CEO
“Innovation allows us to live longer, healthier, more productive lives.” – Dixon
Q: What does Innovation Week mean to you?
A: It’s the one week each year where we get to shine a bright light on innovation and technology development here at UNMC. As research has grown, it is amazing to sit here in UNeMed and see 70, 80, or 90 new inventions come in each year. There are amazing technologies that have the potential to fundamentally improve the quality of healthcare not only in the US, but across the world!
Q: What is your favorite memory of Innovation Week?
A: Meeting Robert LeVeen and learning more about the humble beginnings of his discovery (LeVeen Needle Electrode) and how it was a disruptive technology that completely opened up a new field of interventional oncology.
Q: What one thing does everyone need to know about Innovation Week?
A: Innovation Week only lasts 5 days, but true innovation takes years to develop. New discoveries don’t often happen as a eureka moment. It is the relentless pursuit of new knowledge that leads to new discoveries and innovative solutions.
Q: Why is innovation so important?
A: Innovation is progress. In healthcare, innovation provides better devices, diagnostics and therapeutics. Innovation allows us to live longer, healthier, more productive lives.
Q: Which Innovation Week event are you looking forward to most? Why?
A: Demo Day. It will be the first time that UNMC has had this many active startup companies on campus, telling their story. The combination of entrepreneurs, faculty, students, venture capital and community members should provide for an exciting afternoon/evening.
Join us next time when we sit down with another UNeMed staff member.
