REDKE announces 2023 Innovator of the Year, awards innovation honors

DECEMBER 13, 2023 — The UTSA Division of Research, Economic Development, and Knowledge Enterprise recognized nearly two dozen researchers this year for making a substantive impact to the university’s research and development ecosystem through their discoveries and inventions.

At a recent celebration, the Office of Commercialization and Innovation (OCI) honored these inventors for receiving patents and having licensing activity in 2023, for participating in the National Science Foundation’s rigorous I-Corps^TM program and for their induction to the National Academy of Inventors.

Among them, UTSA named biomedical engineer Teja Guda ’08 as its 2023 Innovator of the Year. Guda, who spent most of his life in Bombay, India, moved to San Antonio to pursue his doctoral degree. Now a faculty member in biomedical and chemical engineering who holds the Jacobson Distinguished Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, his research and development programs focus on the role of the extracellular matrix and its mechanics in directing the engineering and regeneration of tissues.

“UTSA is home to a robust research and development ecosystem that is fueled by intellectual curiosity, an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to develop novel solutions for society’s pressing challenges,” said JoAnn Browning, UTSA interim vice president for Research, Economic Development and Knowledge Enterprise. “The innovation taking place at UTSA is phenomenal. Our investigators are developing cutting-edge technologies and groundbreaking techniques that have the potential to redefine their fields.”

“UTSA is home to a robust research and development ecosystem that is fueled by intellectual curiosity, an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to develop novel solutions for society’s pressing challenges.”

Prior to the pandemic, Guda’s work focused on trauma to bones and muscle suffered by members of the military in combat. Although that research program continues today, more recently, his work has shifted to the trauma that can be incurred when patients are airlifted and how to keep them stable while they are transported stateside for treatment.

“During the pandemic, we saw the need for recovery related to going on a ventilator,” Guda said. “The endotracheal tube that is used all the time to keep your breathing pipes open is a hard plastic tube that gets pushed down your throat. After a while your throat turns to mush.”

Teja Guda

Guda and his team have been working on functional maintenance and drug delivery methods of the upper airway to help patients return to a better quality of life more quickly. Guda has seven patents pending and two that have been awarded for his inventions. This year, he worked with UTSA entrepreneur-in-residence Kellen Ragsdale to form a company, First Flight Partners LLC, to begin commercializing some of these technologies.

Guda’s work has been published in more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and 130 peer-reviewed conference abstracts. He is supported by nearly $27 million in sponsored projects funding with $23 million going directly to him as principal investigator.

“Faculty typically think about research, teaching and service as the academic trifecta,” Guda said. “I’m very excited about being recognized with this award because it doesn’t fit in any one of those categories. This transcends all three. This recognizes a passion, rather than a requirement.”

Issued Intellectual Property: Patents

This year, UTSA recognized inventors who together garnered 14 issued patents including:

Sos Agaian

11,615,559 Methods and systems for human imperceptible computerized color transfer

>> Includes systems and methods for color transfer.

Sos Agaian

11,645,835 Hypercomplex deep learning methods, architectures, and apparatus for multimodal small, medium, and large-scale data representation, analysis, and applications

>> The present invention(s) relate to deep learning networks or graphs.

Sos Agaian, Shreyas Kamath & Kalasa Mohandas

11450087 System and method for multimedia analytic processing and display

>> This includes automated binarization, segmentation, and enhancement using bioinspired-based morphology schemes.

Banglin Chen, Ruibiao Lin & Yanshu Shi

11708379 Mechanochemical synthesis of metal-organic frameworks for molecular sieving and compositions and methods of use thereof

>> Methods of using metal-organic frameworks in the separation of two or more molecules from each other.

Kim-Kwang Choo

11516658 Efficient and secure distributed signing protocol for mobile devices in wireless networks

>> The invention relates to an efficient and secure two-party distributed signing protocol for the identity-based signature scheme described in the IEEE P1363 standard.

Bing Dong

11,545,830 Systems and methods of hierarchical forecasting of solar photovoltaic energy production

>> A photovoltaic system can include multiple photovoltaic power inverters that convert sunlight to power.

Bing Dong & Zhaoxuan Li

11,522,487 Building and building cluster energy management and optimization system and method

>> Various ways for optimizing energy management.

Bing Dong & Amin Mirakh

11,436,691 Systems and methods of managing energy cost of a building

>> Measurements of energy usage including details of power consumption can be stored for power usage devices.

Waldemar Gorski, Stanton McHardy, Travis Menard & Doug P. Hanson

11492331 Redox substrates for leukocyte esterase

>> Substances or compounds that are used to detect leukocyte esterase, an enzyme produced by white blood cells through a redox reduction-oxidation reaction.

Robert Lyle Hood & Forhad Akhter

11624050 Microneedle array electroporation system for cell transfection

>> The design, fabrication, and characterization of a new system made of a parallel set of nanopore microneedles for cell transfection through controlled nanoelectroporation and electrophoretic insertion of genetic materials.

Amir Jafari

11,448,103 Electromagnetic soft actuators

>> Devices that use electromagnetic principles to generate motion or mechanical forces in a flexible and compliant manner.

Tongping Liu, Hongyu Liu, Sam Albert Silvestro & Tianyi Liu

11593483 Guarder: An efficient heap allocator with strongest and tunable security

>> Memory allocation techniques may provide improved security and performance.

Tongping Liu, Hongyu Liu & Sam Albert Silvestro

11599445 Watcher: Precise and fully automatic on-site failure diagnosis

>> Techniques that overcome issues of existing systems and general challenges of in-production software failure diagnosis.

Anson Joo Leng Ong, Teja Guda & Solaleh Miar

11,433,423 Electroactive materials comprising a piezoelectric polymer and a conducting polymer

>> Materials that can generate electricity, made from a type of polymer that can change shape when electricity is applied and another polymer that conducts electricity.

Licensing Activity

The following innovators had optioned or licensed technology during 2023:

Robert Lyle Hood, Alejandro Medina-Montemayor & Saketh Ram Peri

EmergenceMed LLC for developing a device that clears a patient’s airway in emergency situations.

Teja Guda, Anson Joo Leng Ong & Solaleh Miar

First Flight Partners LLC for developing an electrosensitive drug delivery method for better dosage control.

NAI Membership

Additionally, three UTSA faculty members were invited to join the UTSA Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors this year. They include:

• Robert Lyle Hood, Mechanical Engineering
• Chiung-Yu Hung, Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
• Jose Lopez-Ribot, Molecular Microbiology and Immunology

JoAnne Browning presents at the 11th Annual Innovation Awards.

NSF I-Corps Recognition

Several faculty and staff members, students and industry mentors participated in the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps™ program. This accelerator takes a mentored research team through the customer discovery process so participants can better understand what is needed in the marketplace and what a business will need to do to be successful.

To date, UTSA has sent 20 teams to the national I-Corps cohort including this year’s teams:

Intelligent Behavior Analytics, AI-Driven Prediction and Monitoring to Support Caregivers of Patients with Autism 

Co-led by Adel Alaeddini and Leslie Neely with Katherine Cantrell and Julian Carvajal as co-entrepreneurial leads. Robert Graham was the industry mentor.

Secure & Trustworthy AI: Pioneering Fair and Unbiased AI Solutions

Led by Peyman Najafirad. Gonzalo De La Torre Parra was the entrepreneurial lead and Brandon Wherry was entrepreneurial assistant. Al Kari served as industry mentor.

OCI works with faculty to facilitate technology transfer and commercialization and to establish and strengthen university-industry partnerships. The team manages a portfolio of over 350 technologies, primarily in cyber, biosciences and medical devices, and advanced materials. In FY 2023, it filed 36 patent applications and prosecuted 14 patents to issuance. Additionally, it received 35 technology disclosures and two licenses/options.

At a recent event honoring the researchers, REDKE welcomed keynote speaker Rene Dominguez, president and chief operations officer of the Texas Research and Technology Foundation, the parent company of VelocityTX. This rapidly growing organization supports commercialization and entrepreneurial development, strengthening and supporting the nation’s military missions, and serving as a driver of the life sciences innovation ecosystem in San Antonio.

“With each passing year, the UTSA innovation ecosystem surges,” said Christine Burke, OCI director. “From the transformative team-based mentoring offered by our local Venture Mentoring Service and our regular participation in the NSF I-Corps program to our New Venture Incubator and state-of-the-art wet lab start-up space, UTSA provides essential resources that enable inventors and start-ups to flourish.”

"This year’s awards recognize the inspirations and applied dreams of our research community. Their novel ideas and inventions serve as the fuel that will continue to make economies grow, processes more efficient, people healthier and lives better,” said Rod McSherry, UTSA associate vice president for Innovation and Economic Development.

UTSA is a Tier One research university and a Hispanic Serving Institution specializing in cyber, health, fundamental futures, and social-economic transformation. With an emphasis on transdisciplinary collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship, UTSA is leveraging its research and development capabilities to benefit the San Antonio community and the world beyond.