Office for Research Announces Winners of the 2025 Rutgers Innovation Awards
Rutgers Office for Research is proud to announce the 2025 Rutgers Innovation Awards recipients.
In their second year, the Rutgers Innovation Awards (RIA) recognize researchers who have demonstrated excellence by developing a breakthrough idea, process, or technology that has the potential to benefit society and create economic value.
Nominated by their peers or themselves and reviewed by external experts, the 10 winners will be honored at the Rutgers Innovation Awards banquet, which will be held on Tuesday, October 7. The event will also recognize current Rutgers inventors who were issued U.S. patents during the fiscal year 2025 and innovators with non-patent intellectual property that did not receive the award in prior fiscal years and are either licensed with received revenue or licensed multiple times with or without revenue. The Office for Research will also celebrate its Technology Transfer Trainees who have completed their year-long appointment.
“The Rutgers Innovation Awards winners exemplify the important work our researchers are pursuing daily to solve the challenges of today and tomorrow,” said Michael E. Zwick, PhD, senior vice president for research at Rutgers. “I congratulate them all and look forward to celebrating and honoring their achievements at the banquet.”
“Congratulations to these research teams on their well-deserved awards,” said Deborah Perez Fernandez, PhD, MBA, executive director of Technology Transfer, the unit within the Office for Research that supports researchers throughout the tech transfer process. “The Technology Transfer team works hand-in-hand with Rutgers researchers on their commercialization and entrepreneurial journeys, and we are excited to see the impact these innovations will have on people’s lives.”
“We are thrilled to be able to highlight some of the amazing cutting-edge research and innovations coming out of Rutgers,” said Vince Smeraglia, JD, executive director of New Ventures, which helps researchers form and grow startups based on technologies developed at Rutgers. “We thank our external experts for their guidance and work on the challenging task of selecting just 10 winners, and to all the applicants for the Rutgers Innovation Awards.”
Teams of experts in each award field scored winners based on novelty, competitive advantage, impact, utility, socio-economic value of the innovation, and the significance of the problem solved.
Each Innovation Award winner will receive an award, and every team member will receive a certificate. Patent recipients and non-patent honorees will receive plaques. For more information, click here.
|
Award |
Name |
Research Team |
Rutgers CLU |
School |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Undergraduate Student Innovation Award |
Samantha Fernandes |
Samantha Fernandes Myungsik Yoo |
Rutgers-New Brunswick |
School of Arts and Sciences |
|
Graduate Student Innovation Award |
Muhammad Khizar Anjum |
Muhammad Khizar Anjum |
Rutgers-New Brunswick |
School of Engineering |
|
Postdoctoral Fellow Innovation Award |
Tao Yin |
Tao Yin Metin Yesiltepe Sanjay Kisan Metkar Luciano D’Adamio |
Rutgers Health |
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School |
|
Early Career Innovator Award |
Diana Vargas-Gold |
Diana Vargas-Gold |
Rutgers-Newark/Rutgers Health |
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (Public Health Research Institute) |
|
Rutgers Startup Award |
NovoPedics, Inc |
Michael Dunn Charles J. Gatt, Jr. |
Rutgers-New Brunswick/Rutgers Health |
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School |
|
Social Innovation Award |
Woojin Jung |
Woojin Jung |
Rutgers-New Brunswick |
School of Social Work |
|
Artificial Intelligence / Digital Innovation Award |
Partho Sengupta |
Partho Sengupta Naveena Yanamala |
Rutgers-New Brunswick/Rutgers Health |
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School |
|
Physical Sciences & Engineering Innovation Award |
Huixin He |
Huixin He Zhiyuan Zhang Junjie Ouyang |
Rutgers-Newark |
School of Arts and Sciences-Newark |
|
Health Sciences / Biomedical Innovation Award |
Selvakumar Subbian |
Selvakumar Subbian Salvatore Marras Anshika Narang Christopher VInnard |
Rutgers-Newark/Rutgers Health |
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (Public Health Research Institute) |
|
Agriculture Innovation Award |
Eric Lam |
Eric Lam |
Rutgers-New Brunswick |
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences |
|
Patent Recipients FY25 |
Non-Patent Honorees FY25 |
Technology Transfer Trainees FY25 |
|---|---|---|
|
David Alland |
Rebecca Brody |
Vaidehi Apte |
|
Glenn Amatucci |
Joel Caplan |
Usha Ganapathi |
|
Eva Andrei |
Danielle Dick |
Gia Carignan |
|
Steven Andrei |
Susan Edmond |
Lu Chen |
|
Wadih Arap |
Ellen Frede |
Lauren Lerew |
|
Xiaoli Bai |
Lawrence Golbe |
Grace Liu |
|
Joseph Benevenia |
Jessica Gomes |
Alexandra Logerfo |
|
Stacy Bonos |
Edwin Haas |
Jess Malcolm |
|
Roman Brukh |
Leslie Kennedy |
Rishi Rao |
|
Fuat Celik |
Nkechi Mbadugha |
Mayra Romero |
|
Suzie Chen |
Matthew McQuillan |
Jay Shah |
|
Alok Choudhary |
Pamela Ohman Strickland |
Jiayu Shen |
|
Angela Coe |
Theodore Petti |
Riya Shinde |
|
Francisco Diez-Garias |
Diane Radler |
Jennifer Sun |
|
G. Charles Dismukes |
Vaishali Singhal |
|
|
Richard Ebright |
Emmy Tiderington |
|
|
Yon Ebright |
Jennifer Tomesko |
|
|
Joel Freundlich |
Riva Touger-Decker |
|
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John Gilleran |
|
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Alan Goldman |
|
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Andrew Gow |
|
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Bruce Haffty |
|
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Umer Hassan |
|
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Huixin He |
|
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|
Longqin Hu |
|
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Mehdi Javanmard |
|
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|
Shengkan Jin |
|
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Sudarsun Kannan |
|
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Bernard Kear |
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Spencer Kimball |
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Kathryn Kingsley |
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Joachim Kohn |
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Pradeep Kumar |
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Edmond LaVoie |
|
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Ki-Bum Lee |
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Guohong Li |
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Dongfang Liu |
|
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Sheldon Lin |
|
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Jenny Lockard |
|
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Yicheng Lu |
|
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Jennifer Lynch |
|
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Minh Ma |
|
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Salvatore Marras |
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William Meyer |
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Naftaly Minsky |
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Matthew Neiditch |
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Nikhat Parveen |
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Renata Pasqualini |
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Athina Petropulu |
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Daniel Pilch |
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Abraham Pinter |
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Jedediah Pixley |
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Irene Plitz |
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Dipankar Raychaudhuri |
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Richard Riman |
|
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Amariliz Rivera |
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Rene Schloss |
|
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Partho Sengupta |
|
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Jerry Shan |
|
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Jonathan Singer |
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Mark Siracusa |
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Yuanxiang Tao |
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Stephen Tse |
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David Vanderbilt |
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Michael Vives |
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James White |
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Linda Wu Sung |
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Chaoyang Xue |
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Martin Yarmush |
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Lei Yu |
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