Nebraska’s Shane Farritor is the inaugural winner of the College of Nebraska system’s mental property award.
The School IP Innovation and Commercialization Award, one of many President’s Excellence Awards, was created to honor NU college who’ve developed and nurtured mental property from idea to licensing or startup enterprise.
Farritor, the David and Nancy Lederer Professor of Engineering, is chief expertise officer of Digital Incision, a Nebraska-based startup that he co-founded with Dmitry Oleynikov, former College of Nebraska Medical Middle professor of surgical procedure. The duo’s aim is to commercialize miniature surgical robots they developed collectively.
The robots might be inserted via a tiny incision in a affected person’s navel to carry out minimally invasive surgical procedure, considerably lowering the affected person’s ache and restoration time. As a result of they’re much smaller and less complicated than present surgical robots — that are massive and performance outdoors the physique — Digital Incision’s merchandise could possibly be utilized in smaller hospitals by extra surgeons, finally decreasing prices and making minimally invasive robotic surgical procedure accessible to extra sufferers.
“We created this new award as a result of it’s so vital to highlight the exceptional work that College of Nebraska college are doing to show their analysis breakthroughs into merchandise and companies that enhance Nebraskans’ lives and develop our economic system,” mentioned Ted Carter, NU president. “Commercialization will not be a easy or quick course of. It requires the very highest ranges of innovation, dedication and persistence.
“The groundbreaking work that Dr. Shane Farritor and his collaborators have executed via Digital Incision is really deserving of this recognition. Their efforts will change lives — precisely why the College of Nebraska exists.”
Farritor has secured greater than $100 million in enterprise capital to maneuver Digital Incision ahead, and has labored via an in depth regulatory course of to have the ability to carry out medical trials together with his firm’s product.
An preliminary goal for the expertise is colon resection, a process carried out about 400,000 occasions per yr in the US. The robots developed by Farritor and his staff have the potential to cut back the hospital keep of colon resection sufferers by a number of days every, saving thousands and thousands in affected person care prices and lowering affected person dangers related to prolonged in-hospital restoration.
Along with his success in commercialization, Farritor is a prolific researcher and extremely impactful college member throughout the Faculty of Engineering. He holds about 175 patents with 100 extra purposes pending, contributing impressively to the NU System’s top-100 worldwide rating in incomes patents for college analysis. He was inducted as a Fellow of the Nationwide Academy of Inventors — considered one of solely 10 Nebraskans to earn such an honor — and obtained the Prem S. Paul Innovator of the 12 months award from NUtech Ventures.
Farritor additionally contributes considerably to Nebraska’s innovation ecosystem. He employs some 25 graduates of the Faculty of Engineering at Digital Incision’s facility at Nebraska Innovation Campus, and led a imaginative and prescient to create the Nebraska Innovation Studio at Innovation Campus, a makerspace the place members of the college and broader neighborhood can work and share concepts.
“His robots are on the market doing surgical procedure by actual surgeons on sufferers in want,” mentioned Lance C. Pérez, dean of engineering and Omar H. Heins Professor of Electrical and Pc Engineering. “This isn’t solely a best-in-Nebraska effort, it’s a best-in the-world stage of effort.”
The FIPICA is accompanied by a $10,000 stipend. Farritor and different President’s Excellence Awards recipients might be honored at an occasion later this yr.
