On December 6th, the Penn Center for Innovation held its 7th annual Celebration of Innovation at the Singh Center of Nanotechnology to celebrate Penn researchers and innovators who were named as inventors on patents issued to Penn this past fiscal year and highlight significant commercialization achievements.
Craig Carnaroli, Senior Executive Vice President, University of Pennsylvania, provided an inspiring keynote speech highlighting the origins of PCI, the progression of technology innovation at Penn and its importance in driving Philadelphia’s innovation ecosystem.
The awards ceremony followed moderated by John Swartley, MBA, PhD, Associate Vice Provost for Research and PCI’s Managing Director. Winners were:
- Deal of the Year: Innervace in recognition of its successful Series A funding, accepted by 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 Medicine faculty uniting with the goal of developing a new type of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy that incorporates mRNA, accepted by Haig Aghajanian, PhD, on behalf of the company
- Paul D. Sehnert Memorial Partner of the Year Award: Osage University Partners for its ongoing partnership with Penn, accepted by Kirsten Leute and Marc Singer on behalf of Osage
- 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 Viviane Martin, PhD
- Inventor of the Year Award: Dan Huh, PhD, in recognition of extraordinary innovations in bioengineering tools
PCI would like to thank everyone for joining us at the ceremony and congratulate the inventors and faculty for their hard work, dedication, and commitment to innovation.
