NOTE: Innovation Celebration 2020 on April 2 has been canceled
For the past decade, the MSU Innovation Center has been honoring faculty and students who advance their research, technology or business venture in a way that positively impacts the world.
The tenth annual MSU Innovation Celebration will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, April 2 at the Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center. The event highlights MSU researchers and students who reported an invention, licensed a technology or were awarded patents during the academic year. Learn more about the celebration here.
“The MSU Innovation Center has hosted this event for the past ten years to celebrate faculty and students at MSU who make the extra effort to drive their innovation into a real-world application that people can use to make their lives healthier, easier and better,” said Charles Hasemann, assistant vice president for Innovation and Economic Development. “We believe this deserves our recognition and appreciation every day, and we make a special effort at this annual event.”
Five innovators will be honored with the top awards:
Jeffrey Rojek and Jeremy Wilson: Corporate Connector Award, A-CAPP
Rojek and Wilson’s collaboration with corporations at the Center for Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection aims to minimize the illegal production, distribution and use of counterfeit products, technology, intellectual property and more.
Federica Brandizzi: Innovator of the Year
Brandizzi’s lab is working on the technology to soften the walls of plant cells to allow them to grow bigger in the field, maximizing on the space needed for crops.
James Kelly: Tech Transfer Achievement
Kelly has developed roughly 50 varieties of dry beans, helping bean growers and bean seed producers and boosting the Michigan bean industry.
Mi Zhang: Innovation of the Year
Zhang and his team are working to make smarter hearing aids by developing an AI-based algorithm to identify which noises to keep and compressing that data instantly so the audio syncs with the source.
In addition to the top awardees, six student startups will be honored at the Innovation Celebration.
Traverse Jurcisin and Josh Murray: Founders of Phenologic
Phenologic’s Poseidon is a smart fertilizer/irrigation management system for professional growers/farmers.
Brendan Wang and Jake Roach: Founders of CAPNOS
CAPNOS’s Zero provides a similar experience to vaping, but without the smoke and nicotine.
Josh Cooper, Alaina Warburton and Morgan Livingston: Founders of SKOOP
SKOOP’s signage allows for high traffic businesses to turn their empty wall space into digital signage.
Amanda Miner: Founder of INFKNIT Apparel
INFKNIT creates reversible, sustainable clothing. Their reversible dress can be worn in eight different ways due to a patent-pending looping mechanism.
Perry Dajheonna, Olivia Miller and Jackie Smythe: Founders of Unicoils
Unicoils is an all-natural hair care product line, featuring shampoo, conditioner, whipped shea butter, vanilla lip balm, Curl Refresh Spray, curl cream and hair growth vitamin drops.
Koya Volk Saito and Hosni Berker: Founders of Wellness
Wellness’s Smart Journal is an app designed for mental health professionals that increases productivity in therapy and allows the professional to send information to the patient.
Hasemann explained one of the most enjoyable parts of the MSU Innovation Center is The Hatch – MSU’s incubator for student entrepreneurs and their emerging companies.
“Like our faculty innovators, these remarkable students are working to launch their companies on top of earning a degree from MSU. I love the student entrepreneurship programs because they give our students a chance to learn a different set of skills than they will get from their major course of study,” Hasemann added. “The entrepreneurial mindset that they adopt here will serve them well in whatever career they pursue.”
Eleven faculty exhibitors will attend the event to showcase their technologies or startups.
Bjoern Hamburger: Biosynthesis of chemicaly dirversified non-natural terpene product
This technology allows for more terpene products to be created biologically, including new or diverse drugs, fragrances, agrochemicals, antibacterial chemicals and more.
James Klausner: Scalable, high-temperature thermochemical energy storage system
This invention is a scalable, high-temperature thermochemical energy storage system capable of converting electrical energy to thermochemical energy for storage and later usage as a source of power generation.
Jeff Nanzer: Advanced radar applications
Nanzer's research is making advances focused on distributed arrays, radar and remote sensing, millimeter-wave systems, antennas, electromagnetics, and microwave photonics.
Art Weber and Wen Li: Inter-ocular pressure monitoring device
Weber and Li are developing a non-invasive method to provide continuous monitoring of inter-ocular pressure (IOP), which is a potential advance for the diagnosis and prevention of glaucoma.
Connie Sung: Training interventions (ASSET and EPASS)
Sung’s research aims to design, develop and evaluate the effectiveness of two manualized training interventions (ASSET and EPASS). These aim to improve the work-related social skills and employment readiness of transition-age youth with autism, intellectual and developmental disabilities
Karen Liby: Role of inflammation in cancer
Liby’s lab is working to understand the role of inflammation in cancer and is developing new drugs for the prevention or treatment of cancer and other chronic diseases.
Madonna Benjamin: Sows in motion technology
Benjamin’s Sows in motion technology allows for sows to freely walk under the system device and analyze and predict their reproductive potential, body condition and locomotion.
Qi Hua Fan: Scion Plasma
Scion Plasma is developing technologies to provide advanced plasma sources and plasma modeling software for materials processing.
Vijay Baragi and Xuefei Huang: IASO
IASO is using novel mutants of bacteriophage Q-beta to deliver tumor associated carbohydrate antigens to the immune system and to boost the immune responses, with an end goal of developing cancer vaccines.
Keith Evans: Great Lakes Crystal Technologies
The mission of Great Lakes Crystal Technologies is to be the leading provider of advanced single crystal diamond materials for non-gemstone applications.