Doug Hockstad: Welcome to the seventh annual Invention to Impact Awards. It's been a difficult year for all of us for so many reasons, but it's all the more reason that we celebrate the inventions and the work that's going on in our ecosystem.

Betsy Cantwell: This I-Squared award ceremony looks a little bit different than our normal ceremonies. We're doing it virtually, but we have learned a lot about how to celebrate virtually and we're convinced that you all and we will be as proud of this ceremony as we are of any that we've conducted in the past.

Doug Hockstad: This event, and this year, this website, is celebrating and acknowledging all of our inventors, all of our entrepreneurs, and everyone in the ecosystem that makes this happen.

Betsy Cantwell: Commercialization, what we're celebrating today in the seventh I-2 award ceremony, is a huge component of the impact of the research that we conduct at the University of Arizona. Tech Launch Arizona, or TLA as we call it, has the responsibility, and bears that responsibility very well, to take the intellectual assets that we create at the University of Arizona and turn them to the greatest good. Every day our researchers not only do incredible research and not only teach incredible amounts of knowledge, but we deliver that into the world. We create new inventions, we create new companies, we create economic value.

Doug Hockstad: I’m really excited to introduce to you this year's honorees. Our Inventor of the Year is Jim Schwiegerling. Jim has created a trifocal interocular lens and that has already had an impact on over 500,000 patients, including himself. Carol Stewart is our awardee for Campus Collaboration. Carol's been here for less than two years and in that time has already had a lot of impact on the ecosystem and on our work commercializing technologies. Our Startup of the Year is neuro ID. Neuro-ID has had rapid growth and has had a lot of impact just in the last year. Our Student Innovator of the Year is Vinodh Subramaniam. Vinodh has launched a startup based on technology he created inside the university that will help reduce patient no shows in the healthcare industry. We really wanted to celebrate all of our commercialization partners. Our commercialization partners have a large impact on what we do by helping us work with our inventors, helping us with our startups, and connecting us to people in the ecosystem. And finally, our David N. Allen award is going to Fletcher McCusker. Fletcher is well-deserving of this award having had so much impact and so much interaction with everything that the university is doing and in particular, what TLA is doing.

Betsy Cantwell: We're here this year to celebrate our awardees and the amazing innovation that they've delivered across the state of Arizona, but I also want to point out a couple of facts. Tech Launch Arizona, which is our technology transfer arm, has in 2020 delivered 19 new startups into our ecosystem and over a hundred since 2012. That accomplishment and its impact on the economy of the region and of the state of Arizona is remarkable. Each of our 19 new startups in 2020 alone has immense possibilities for having impact in the world. Finally, I just want to express my gratitude to everybody who's participating, to the work that you've done, to the value that you deliver to our region, and to the way that you represent our university.

Doug Hockstad: I’d like to thank all of you for helping us honor our awardees and I'd like all of you that are interested to reach out to us to join this ecosystem and help create impact from the inventions and the work of the researchers at the University of Arizona.