UW News

March 12, 2009

Inventors of the Year nominations due March 30

Nominations for the sixth annual UW Medicine Inventors of the Year Awards are now being accepted. The awards celebrate inventors who have turned their ideas into health care products or tools that benefit the public.


Last year the award was expanded to two categories. The Inventor of the Year Award recognizes a well-established investigator who has taken new science into a successful commercial venture. The Emerging Inventor of the Year Award is given to a promising young academic in academia whose work has or may eventually lead to products to improve health care.


The 2008 recipients were:


Inventor of the Year: Irwin Bernstein, UW professor of pediatrics and director of the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, for his discovery of a protein, CD33, found on the surface of most acute myeloid leukemia cells. He translated the discovery into the development of Mylotarg, a drug widely used for treating acute myeloid leukemia and the first FDA-approved antibody-targeted chemotherapeutic agent.


Emerging Inventor of the Year: Tueng Shen, UW assistant professor of ophthalmology and director of the UW Medicine Refractive Surgery Center; and Babak Parviz, UW assistant professor of electrical engineering and associate director of the Microscale Life Sciences Center, shared the award for developing an active contact lens that can wirelessly communicate important information about the health of the eye and the whole patient.


If you wish to make a nomination to recognize your faculty’s outstanding contributions, please forward the nominee’s curriculum vitae and a letter of nomination that specifically addresses their accomplishments and contributions as an inventor to the Office of Research and Graduate Education (Box 356340) or to John Slattery, vice dean for research and graduate education, at jts@u.washington.edu by March 30.


A selection committee chaired by Fred Silverstein, of Frazier Healthcare Ventures, will review the nominations and the department chair of the selected nominees will be notified.


The awards of inventor and emerging inventor of the year will be presented at an evening ceremony given by UW Medicine and its partners in the Seattle biomedical community at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in October.


For more information, contact John Slattery at jts@u.washington.edu or 206-543-6116.