by Charles Litton, UNeMed | December 23, 2024
It’s that time again where we look back at 2024. In keeping with tradition, here’s look at some of our more popular and important stories, events and happenings during the previous year:
1. Idea Pub: Morning Edition
The initial launch—and continued success—of our new monthly networking event, Idea Pub: Morning Edition, was UNeMed’s most popular and consistent hot spot on this site. We created Morning Edition as a way to help University innovators and entrepreneurs connect and collaborate with colleagues and experts from the venture and startup community. Perhaps it’s a testament to Tyler Scherr’s tireless work on the event, but its popularity remained strong. Each Morning Edition featured a short, 10- to 15-minute talk from a community partner involved in the local innovation ecosystem. Drawing the most attention were the articles that announced the new series and offered sneak-peek tours of UNMC’s new Catalyst building, which was which still under construction at the time. In fact, four of UNeMed’s top 10 news stories and eight of the top 20 were all related to Idea Pub coverage.
2. Innovation Week
The Innovation Awards, and the week of events leading up to it, remain a top driver of traffic. Coverage of both the 2023 and 2024 Innovation Awards were top stories, and few things garnered more clicks and downloads than the Innovation Awards programs.
3. Parkinson’s treatment licensed to COYA
In a year filled with success stories, announcing a new partnership was among the first. Brokering licensing agreements is among our chief goals, but joining forces with COYA Therapeutics, was more than just checking a box. The UNMC innovation involved new approach to treating several neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s, a perfect fit for COYA’s existing portfolio of experimental treatments. COYA recently announced that plans for their Parkinson’s treatment will soon advance to Phase I testing.
4. MIRA clears FDA
The good news continued in February 2024 with Virtual Incision’s welcome news that their surgical robotics platform, MIRA, was now approved for human use in adult patients undergoing colectomy procedures. Two decades in the making, with more than 200 patents under the bridge, one of Nebraska’s most successful collaborations was finally clear to begin realizing its potential. Laparoscopic procedures will now be more possible and more accessible for complicated procedures and more remote areas…including low-Earth orbit.
5. Boot Camp 2024
Our technology transfer boot camp remains one of UNeMed’s most popular offerings. We still plan to expand the intensive commercialization training sessions once we move into our new space in the UNMC Catalyst facility sometime next year.
6. Top 100 US Patents…again
News about the University of Nebraska’s high-success rate at securing Unites States patents is becoming and equally popular and routine. In March we announced that Nebraska landed 78th among global institutions for issued U.S. Patents, our the seventh consecutive year in the top 100. All told, inventors in the University system accrued 46 U.S. patents, which was go enough for 55th among domestic institutions, ninth among Big Ten schools.
7. Top innovator featured
We don’t often get a chance to take a deep dive with our inventors, so the feature about one of UNMC’s most prolific innovators was a welcome break from tradition: Not just for us, but for readers as well. This piece featuring the insights and motivations of Janina Baranowska-Kortylewicz, PhD, was a fascinating piece that remains a popular stop on the site, even though it originally published eight months ago.
8. MicroWash Investment
Yet a third piece of good news landed in February last year with the announcement that a startup built around a UNMC innovation had just landed a $1.6 million seed funding round. University Medical Devices announced it would use the investments to get its cornerstone device “into the hands of the clinicians.” True to their word, earlier this month, UMD announced the successful commercialization with the official launch of MicroWash.
9. Nursing innovations
It should be no secret that many of the most innovative people in our orbit have at least one thing in common: Nursing. For example, the innovator behind the aforementioned MicroWash, Thang Nguyen, PhD, is a nurse in UNMC/Nebraska Medicine emergency medicine department. He has submitted a record 80-plus inventions over the years. But this hugely popular feature about our innovative friends in the College of Nursing was not only a nod to the incredible ingenuity of nurses, but also long overdue recognition for women in STEM. As a side note, we didn’t set out to focus on nursing. That all the subjects featured in the article turned out to be from the College of Nursing was, in hindsight, a predictable coincidence. But we have several more stories to tell about innovative women in STEM from all over our Omaha campuses at UNMC and UNO, so stay tuned!
10. 2024 Annual Report
The release of our annual report has become a fitting mainstay of popularity on this annual list of highlights.
Classics:
Several posts from previous years remain popular and relevant, particularly those that focus on day-to-day operations and legal issues associated with intellectual property.
