The Penn Center for Innovation held its 7th annual Celebration of Innovation at the Singh Center for Nanotechnology last fall to celebrate Penn researchers and innovators named as inventors on patents issued to Penn this past fiscal year and to honor a select number of significant commercialization achievements.
Craig Carnaroli, Penn’s Senior Executive Vice President, provided an inspiring keynote speech highlighting the origins of PCI, the progression of technology innovation at Penn and its central role and critical importance in helping to drive Philadelphia’s innovation ecosystem.
The awards ceremony was moderated by John Swartley, MBA, PhD, Associate Vice Provost for Research and PCI’s Managing Director. Special award winners honored at the event included:
- Deal of the Year: Innervace, in recognition of the close of its successful $40M Series A funding round, accepted by company co-founders D. Kacy Cullen, PhD, and Doug Smith, PhD, on behalf of the company
- Startup of the Year: Capstan Therapeutics, in recognition of its world-class team of Penn faculty innovators uniting with the goal of developing new types of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy combined with mRNA technology approaches, accepted by company co-founder Haig Aghajanian, PhD, on behalf of the company
- Paul D. Sehnert Memorial Partner of the Year Award: Osage University Partners, for its longstanding partnership with Penn, accepted by OUP partners Kirsten Leute and Marc Singer on behalf of the firm
- Emerging Inventor of the Year Award: Ping Wang, PhD, DABCC, FAAC, in recognition of her groundbreaking work in point-of-care diagnostics, accepted on her behalf by PCI’s Viviane Martin, PhD
- Inventor of the Year Award: Dan Huh, PhD, in recognition of his extraordinary innovations in the development and commercialization of novel bioengineering tools
PCI would like to thank those who were able to join us at the ceremony and congratulate all the inventors and Penn creators for their hard work, dedication, and commitment to innovation.
