Two MME faculty win NUtech Ventures Innovator awards

Two teams from the mechanical and materials engineering department were honored with two of the five awards presented at the 2016 NUtech Ventures Innovator Celebration on Nov. 1 at Nebraska Innovation Campus. 

The Breakthrough Innovation of the Year award went to Jinsong Huang, professor of mechanical and materials engineering, and postdoc research associates Haotong Wei and Wei Wei for developing improved X-ray detectors based on a perovskite material that are expected to reduce the X-ray dose required for medical imaging, security and quality control applications, greatly enhancing the efficacy and safety of those techniques.

The Startup Company of the Year award went to Virtual Incision, a privately held medical device company focused on developing an advanced, miniaturized robot for general surgery abdominal procedures. Virtual Incision was founded on University of Nebraska-licensed technology by faculty members Shane Farritor, professor of mechanical engineering at Nebraska, and Dmitry Oleynikov, chief of minimally invasive surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

NUtech Ventures is the university’s intellectual property and technology commercialization unit. NUtech’s mission is to facilitate the commercialization and practical use of innovations generated through Nebraska research activities to promote economic development and improve quality of life.