The Early Career Innovator Award, sponsored by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education, helps kick off the 175th anniversary of the university this month by recognizing its early career faculty members for engaging in technology transfer and commercialization activities.
“Throughout its history, UW–Madison researchers have produced transformative discoveries within a culture that fosters bringing those discoveries to the market,” says Steve Ackerman, vice chancellor for research and graduate education. “Recognizing early career faculty for their contributions to the commercialization of technology out of UW-Madison is a great way to celebrate our historical achievements in entrepreneurship while also looking forward to the promise of future innovation to come from the efforts of faculty such as these awardees.”
The awardees were selected by OVCRGE from a list of finalists provided by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Awardees receive $50K in funding. Each has had multiple disclosures and inventions accepted for commercialization.
“These awardees and their inventions present exciting solutions to known important problems,” Ackerman says. “These innovators are committed to the Wisconsin Idea by translating scientific findings into applications, products and services that can change the world.”
Early Career Innovators
Guelay Bilen-Rosas
Guelay Bilen-Rosas, associate professor of anesthesiology in the School of Medicine and Public Health, earned a top prize in the 2021 Equalize pitch competition hosted by Washington University in St. Louis and in doing so, encouraged other female faculty to pursue entrepreneurship. Bilen-Rosas’ research focuses on airway management and physiology.
“Breathing complications in healthcare arise because of our inability to measure ventilation directly, continuously and quantitatively so that healthcare workers can intervene proactively in a patient-centric manner to avoid respiratory failure,” Bilen-Rosas says. “My research has developed a non-invasive airflow sensor that utilizes ultrasound waves to quantify airflow velocities across the breathing pathway and outputs clinical breathing metrics.”
This technology will allow for objective, real-time and accurate monitoring of non-intubated patients who are recovering from surgery, undergoing sedation or healing in the ICU in critical conditions. “Our patients will have the confidence of safety that this device will be their ‘data-voice’ that they may no longer have in their most critical time of their life,” says Bilen-Rosas.
Bilen-Rosas is the CEO and co-founder of Ayrflo Innovation Labs, a company developing a real-time, noninvasive, fully automated breathing monitoring patch to detect breathing patterns in patients.