OMAHA, Nebraska (March 12, 2025)—A startup based on an innovation from a pair of UNMC’s most prolific inventors will headline the next “Idea Pub: Morning Edition” on Thursday, March 27, 2025.
The March installment will also be the first to be held in the new Catalyst space on the western edge of campus, on Saddle Creek Road. Free coffee and doughnuts will be provided, along with facility tours on a first-come, first-served basis. Parking will be available along 46th Street.
The event is set for 9-11 a.m. in the event center on the north end of the building. John Neubaum, co-founder of HemaGlobal, will be the featured speaker. Neubaum is also a design engineer at RD Tool and Engineering.
HemaGlobal an Omaha startup built around an invention borne from UNMC’s innovative emergency medicine department. Department chair Michael Wadman, MD, and nurse Thang Nguyen, PhD, collaborated to create a device called “RapidSmear.” It is a portable device that allows clinical staff to quickly and easily prepare blood and bone marrow samples for microscopic examination.
Listed on more than 150 total inventions, Drs. Thang and Wadman received UNeMed’s 2015 Most Promising New Invention award for a portfolio of devices currently in development. They are also co-founders of UNeMed’s 2023 Startup of the Year, University Medical Devices, which has launched a new nasal sample collection device, MicroWash.
Catalyst joins UNeMed as sponsor for the event and will offer complimentary facility tours once presentations are complete.
UNeMed, the technology transfer and commercialization office for UNMC and UNO, created Morning Edition to help University innovators and entrepreneurs connect and collaborate with colleagues and experts from the venture capital and startup communities.
Morning Edition will also regularly feature “Office Hours” with UNeMed staff and Charlie Cuddy, who co-founded the Nebraska Startup Academy and MOVE Venture Capital. Office Hours creates the opportunity for faculty, students and staff to have one-on-one time with MOVE or UNeMed professionals to discuss new technologies or startup potential.
MOVE is a pre-seed and seed venture capital firm focused on investing in Nebraska technology startup companies. The Nebraska Startup Academy is a mentoring program for startup founders, investors and the local entrepreneurial community with the aim of building Nebraska into “an innovation hub in the Midwest.”
Morning Edition will be held on the final Thursday of every month and will continue to feature guest speakers from the Omaha entrepreneurial ecosystem. The event will provide UNMC and UNO innovators an opportunity to build new partnerships and allies that can help develop their innovative ideas and discoveries into products that help people.
The event is free and open to all, and complimentary coffee and doughnuts will be provided as long as supplies last.
Future planned dates and speakers are:
- April 24: Automated Assessments/NE Innovation Labs
- May 29: Grasshopper Health
- June 26: Aprendo Cardiovascular Solutions
- July 31: Wearable Algorithms
- Aug. 28: PinkSteady
- Sep. 25: Deep Health Diagnostics
- Oct. 30: UNO NCITE
Morning Edition is part of UNeMed’s “Idea Pub,” a suite of entrepreneurial networking events that includes “Innovations & Libations” and “Startup Showcase.”
