UNeMed's annual Research Innovation Awards 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 2024 Research Innovation Awards ceremony was held at the UNMC Catalyst building on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024. Jingwei Xie, PhD, was named the Innovator of the Year for his work in nanofibers; Elizabeth Beam, PhD, RN, Sarah Dunsmore, PhD, Brianna Parr, Bethany Lowndes, PhD, Andrew Walski and Brian Knarr, PhD, won the Most Promising New Invention award for the “Ruggedized Beam Helmet;” Brent Clark, PhD, and Lamonte Russell accepted the Innovation Champion award for their work with the Maverick Technology Venture Alliance; and Carecubes, Inc., took home the Startup of the Year award.
Download the 2024 Innovation Awards Program here.
Innovation Awards Demo Day Past Events
Innovator of the Year
Jingwei Xie, PhD, was the 2024 Innovator of the Year, in recognition of his development of novel nanofiber compositions and manufacturing methods. His nanofiber technologies can be used for wound healing, hemostasis, bone regeneration, drug delivery, and sample collection.
He aims to generate technologies that offer enhanced properties, biocompatibility, and versatility for use within patients.
Dr. Xie has submitted 36 inventions in the last 10 years, including five in the fiscal year ending in 2024. His inventions have resulted in eight issued United States patents, two exclusive license agreements, four option agreements, and two sponsored research agreements.
He was previously awarded the Most Promising New Invention of 2017 for his nanofiber sponges that were capable of rapidly absorbing blood and other fluids while retaining their overall shape and size. He was also listed among UNMC New Investigator honorees in 2015, named a UNMC Distinguished Scientist in 2020, and was presented the prestigious Chancellor Emeritus Harold M. Maurer, M.D., and Beverly Maurer Scientific Achievement Award in 2019.
Most Promising New Invention
The Most Promising New Invention of 2024 was presented to a cross-campus collaboration team led by Elizabeth Beam, PhD, RN, and Bethany Lowndes, PhD, MPH, who contracted with UNO’s Brian Knarr, PhD, and Andrew Walski in the Machine and Prototyping Core to design and prototype a powered air purifying respirator (PAPR) with the healthcare worker in mind: The Ruggedized Beam Helmet.
The lightweight PAPR helmet is all at once convenient to don and doff properly and easy to sanitize. With reduced fan noise and full-face visibility, the design goes far beyond improving user comfort and convenience to enhance performance and communication.
Imagining and developing a new medical device takes a village and this PAPR is no exception. The project has truly been a team effort with support from UNMC Design Thinking, UNeMed’s Back-o-the-Napkin Contest, Great Plains IDeA-CTR, UNeTech Institute, and the Nebraska Research Initiative.
Startup of the Year
The Startup of the Year award went to Carecubes, Inc.
Carecubes was created through the work between UNMC’s world-renown infectious disease team and a San Francisco-based research and development lab, Otherlab. The original designs were initially created in a response to concerns related to Ebola outbreaks in Africa. But the recent COVID-19 pandemic sparked the creation of Carecubes as a path to commercialize the new technology for wider use. The Carecube now provides a better way to treat patients with highly infectious diseases, particularly for care providers that work in areas that lack the kind facilities found at UNMC or other major medical centers.
The Carecube is a portable and rapidly deployable negative pressure isolation unit. The Carecube helps reduce the need and use of personal protective equipment while also helping enhance patient care and experience.
The Carecube can be rapidly deployed, setting up in less than 20 minutes. Some key features of the Carecube include lean-in glove walls and “pass-throughs. The glove walls allow for rapid and improved patient access. The “Pass Throughs” provide a safe and easy route delivering food, personal items, and equipment into the unit without breaking airborne isolation precautions.
The UNMC researchers that helped create, design, and test the Carecube device were Mara Jana Broadhurst, MD, PhD; James Lawler, MD, MPH; David Brett-Major, MD, MPH; and Christopher Kratochvil, MD. Drs. Broadhurst, Lawler, and Brett-Major continue to serve as advisers to Carecubes, Inc.
Faculty Entrepreneur
The first-ever Faculty Entrepreneur award went to Breanna Hetland, PhD, RN.
She earned the distinction in recognition of her trailblazing efforts to advance translational research both within and outside the University walls.
Dr. Hetland landed at UNMC in 2017, and immediately showed her entrepreneurial and innovative abilities. She submitted an invention disclosure for a software solution that would enable and promote more robust patient and family engagement during acute hospitalizations.
Over the previous seven years, Dr. Hetland has continued to compete for or receive highly competitive grants and awards including the Harriet H. Werley New Investigator Award from the Midwest Nursing Research Society; the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and Innovators; the Judges Award in the Digital Tools category of the Equalize Pitch Competition; and a Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the NIH.
Called “Family Room,” Dr. Hetland’s software application helps patients and families make informed decisions during hospitalization. The Family Room app—which Dr. Hetland and her co-founder, Greg Nelson, refer to as a “nurse in your pocket”—is initiating clinical trials this winter.
Innovation Champion
The Maverick Technology Venture Alliance is a student-led business strategy program housed within the UNeTech Institute, the University’s startup incubator. Under the supervision of Lamonte Russell (right) and Brent Clark, PhD, the Maverick Technology Venture Alliance builds business strategies for inventions that come from faculty and staff of the University of Nebraska System.
Students work with inventors to conduct a wide variety of business analyses; apply entrepreneurship theory to the latest University inventions; and publish reports that help define what a startup “could” be for any particular invention.
Over the past three years, the Maverick Technology Venture Alliance has produced a total of 56 Strategy Reports; facilitated the creation of nine start-ups; and completed several customer discovery projects, resulting in numerous new contacts and leads for UNeTech. The organization engaged with the community through various investor, entrepreneur, and inventor events while implementing numerous process improvements and developing the MTVA Strategy Playbook. These accomplishments demonstrate MTVA’s ongoing commitment to driving startup activities and strengthening connections within the innovation ecosystem.
2024 Innovation Awards Program
Award Winners
Special Awards
| 2024 | Maverick Technology Venture Alliance | Innovation Champion |
| 2024 | Breanna Hetland, PhD, RN | Faculty Entrepreneur |
| 2024 | Jingwei Xie, PhD | Innovator of the Year |
| 2024 | Carecubes, Inc. | Startup of the Year |
| 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, PhD | 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, MD | Emerging Inventor |
| 2016 | Irving Zucker, PhD | Innovator of the Year |
| 2015 | Tammy Kielian, PhD | Innovator of the Year |
| 2014 | Marius Florescu, MD | Emerging Inventor |
| 2013 | Howard Gendelman, MD | Innovator of the Year |
| 2012 | Tammy Kielian, PhD | Emerging Inventor |
| 2011 | Jonathan Vennerstrom, PhD | Lifetime Achievement |
| 2010 | Amarnath Natarajan, PhD | Emerging Inventor |
| 2009 | Rodney Markin, MD, PhD | Lifetime Achievement |
| 2008 | Dong Wang, PhD | Emerging Inventor |
| 2007 | Robert LeVeen, MD | Lifetime Achievement |
Most Promising New Invention
| 2024 | Sarah Dunsmore, PhD; Brianna Parr; Elizabeth Beam, PhD, RN; Bethany Lowndes, PhD; Brian Knarr, PhD; Andrew Walski | Ruggedized Beam Helmet |
| 2023 | Alexey Kamenskiy, PhD; Anastasia Desyatova, PhD; Ali Akbar Ahmadi; Jason MacTaggart, MD | Optimized Vascular Stent |
| 2022 | Cody Anderson and Song-young Park, PhD | System for Measuring Blood Pressure in Wearable Electronic Devices |
| 2021 | Brian Knarr, PhD; Travis Vanderheyden; Russell Buffum | Improved Self-Pacing Treadmill |
| 2020 | Joseph McMordie, MD, and Daniel Sturdell, MD | Anterior Cervical Space Spreader |
| 2019 | Corey Hopkins, PhD | PDE4B Selective Inhibitors |
| 2018 | Catherine Gebhart, PhD, and Varun Kehsarwani, PhD | Multiplex assay for rapid detection of HSV1, HSV2, EBV and CNV by qPCR |
| 2017 | Jingwei Xie, PhD; Mark Carlson, MD; Shixuan Chen, PhD | Nanofiber Sponges for Hemostasis |
| 2016 | Joyce Solheim, PhD, and Tatiana Bronich, PhD | Compositions for Modulated Release of Proteins and Methods of Use Thereof |
| 2015 | Michael Wadman, MD, FASEP, and Thang Nguyen, MSN, APRN, FNP-C |
Emergency Medicine Care Portfolio: Wound Irrigation System & Oral Airway Management |
| 2014 | Jason MacTaggart, MD | Orthagonal AquaBlade |
| 2013 | Keshore Bidasee, PhD | Targeted Glyoxalase-1 Gene Transfer to Prevent Cardiovascular and End- Organ Complications in Diabetes |
| 2012 | Gregory Oakley, PhD | Small Molecule in Vivo Inhibitors of the N-Terminal Protein Interacting Domain of RPA1 |
| 2011 | Babu Padanilam, PhD | Novel Target for the Treatment of Renal Fibrosis |
| 2010 | Stephen Bonasera, MD, PhD | Noninvasive Monitoring of Functional Behaviors in Ambulatory Human Populations |
| 2009 | Paul Dunman, PhD | Novel Antibiotic Compounds |
| 2008 | Guangshun (Gus) Wang, PhD | Anti-HIV Peptides and Methods of Use Thereof |
| 2008 | Janina Baranowska-Kortylewicz, PhD | Sex Hormone Binding Globulin: New Target for Cancer Therapy |
