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Innovations

College of Engineering at The University of Texas at San Antonio Online Magazine

On a Roll

On a Roll

Sos Agaian has been innovating for the past 17 years, and his reputation is growing right alongside UTSA on its path to Tier One.

Sos Agaian, Peter T. Flawn Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is on a roll. Not only was he named The University of Texas at San Antonio’s 2014 Innovator of the Year, he was also recognized this fall by The San Antonio Business Journal in their Tech Flash Titan Awards. “To quote Margaret Mead, ‘I learned the value of hard work by working hard,’” said Agaian. “You can only live your dream by working smarter and harder than you should. I hope now I can encourage more students on two key things - to work on real-life practical problems and to be the best that they can.”

The UTSA Office of Commercialization and Innovation (OIC) recognized Agaian as UTSA’s 2014 Innovator of the Year at the university’s second annual Innovation Awards luncheon, which was held in October. The UTSA Innovation Awards program recognizes UTSA researchers who have contributed to the university’s entrepreneurial ecosystem by securing patents and/or commercial licenses to protect, develop and market their discoveries. Agaian is currently researching image enhancement for use in computer-aided cancer detection. To date, Agaian and his colleagues have developed an algorithm that:

While at UTSA, Agaian’s research has led overall to 26 invention disclosures, 17 patent applications filed, two patents issued and three technologies licensed. Over the last year alone, his research led to six invention disclosures, three provisional patent applications filed, two full patent applications fi led and three technology licenses. Additionally, the licensee of his technology provided more than $100,000 in sponsored research funding to his laboratory, and it hired one of Agaian’s doctoral students following graduation.

“He is a genuinely good person, and a good partner,” said Subashini Asokan, Technology Licensing Associate for the OCI. “He brings this passion and charisma into every meeting he has with a student, peer, potential client, or investor–he always puts his best foot forward.”

In addition to his startups, patents, and disclosures, Agaian has been published more than 450 times, with each article bearing the UTSA name and logo. This is remarkable because when he arrived in 1997, few citations made mention of the university–now, there are more than 500 citations from UTSA annually.

“You can only live your dream by working smart and harder than you should. I hope now I can encourage more students on two key things - to work on real-life practical problems and to be the best that they can.”
-Sos Agaian, UTSA Peter T. Flawn Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

“In the past, it was hard to get citations,” said Agaian. “But I could see my citations go up as the university’s reputation grew - there was a direct correlation. Now, people see the UTSA name and say, ‘Oh, UTSA, I have heard of them, that is a good university.’ My work has been recognized by earning fellowships and awards, and it was all earned right here at UTSA.”

In addition to being named Innovator of the Year, Agaian was also recognized this fall by The San Antonio Business Journal in their Tech Flash Titan Awards. According to the Business Journal, these awards recognize outstanding people, businesses and organizations in various sectors of San Antonio’s growing technology industry.

Tony Quesada, editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Business Journal says that by recognizing the exceptional leaders in this field, these awards will work in concert with other efforts underway in the business community to foster a greater awareness and understanding of how much San Antonio’s tech sector is growing and contributing to the city’s economy.

“I was not at all surprised when I heard that Dr. Agaian won the SABJ Tech Researcher Award,” said Mauli Agrawal, vice president for research at UTSA. “He is an outstanding innovator who applies his deep knowledge of the field to address real world problems with very elegant engineering solutions.”

 

 


 

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