UGA faculty and graduate students were recognized for outstanding research and scholarship at the 36th Annual Research Awards Banquet, sponsored by the University of Georgia Research Foundation in April. The recipients of the Inventor of the Year and Academic Entrepreneur of the Year awards were recognized specifically for contributions related to their activities with Innovation Gateway.

Jerry Johnson, Professor Emeritus in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, was recognized as the 2015 Inventor of the Year for his work in developing or co-developing more than 40 new small grains crop varieties, primarily wheat, for farmers in the southeastern U.S. He led the successful small grains breeding program at UGA for 38 years. Johnson’s research focuses particularly on the development of new, high-yielding wheat varieties that resist economically important diseases and pests in the Southeast, such as rust, scab and Hessian fly. He continues to release approximately two new wheat varieties each year, and the total gross license revenue generated by the commercialization of his varieties totals nearly $3.5 million. Beyond this, Johnson was instrumental in establishing the Sungrains Group, a cooperative small grains breeding program with several other land-grant universities that gives private industry a “one stop shop” for elite new varieties.

Steven Stice, D.W. Brooks Distinguished Professor, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, and Director of the Regenerative Bioscience Center, has led industry and academic research teams in the area of pluripotent stem cells for over 20 years. Prior to joining the University of Georgia, Stice worked for a Fortune 500 company and then was a co-founder and served as both CSO and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, the only U.S. company currently in human clinical trials using human pluripotent stem cells. His entrepreneurial spirit continued at UGA, where he co-founded four startup companies: Prolinia, Cytogenesis, which later merged with what is now ViaCyte; ArunA Biomedical; and SciStem. ArunA was the first company to commercialize a product derived from human pluripotent stem cells, and the company has developed stem cells that were used to facilitate approval of Pfizer’s current cognitive enhancing pharmaceuticals. SciStem is an orthopedic stem cell company. Stice continues to play a vital role in promoting entrepreneurship in the Athens and Georgia bioscience communities.