When Ashley Galanti was a junior in high school, her brother, Joey, suffered an epileptic seizure at home. “When Joey came out of it, he was like, ‘Who are you? Where am I?’ He didn’t recognize us for another five to 10 minutes. As we drove him to the hospital, he kept saying, I don’t want to go to baseball practice.’ But he hadn’t played baseball in five years.”
Galanti has witnessed Joey and their mother, who also has epilepsy, suffer multiple seizures. Still, Joey’s temporary memory loss was an especially traumatic event for her family—and a spur to action. It inspired Galanti to embark on a multi-year entrepreneurial journey to help reduce seizure impact.
With this dream, Galanti entered the University of Georgia as an undergraduate in 2018, double majoring in electrical engineering in the College of Engineering and journalism in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
In 2022, she entered UGA’s biomedical engineering doctoral program and founded a startup company, AMG Detection, for which she holds 100% equity. She aims to develop a wearable smart wristband with a semiconductor chip that can detect nine pre-seizure compounds released as gases from the skin.
“This sensor will warn people of seizures 10 to 45 minutes in advance and give them time to reach a safe place or take preventive measures such as rescue medication,” Galanti said.
The current prototype of Galanti’s patented device will enter clinical trials at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., later this year. The final product, to be integrated with vital health sensors and emergency contact information, will be called “The Joey,” after her brother.
Galanti’s education has become a key example of how research—by a student, faculty, or staff member at UGA—can be transformed into commercially viable products with the help of university support. Her business ideas have been sharpened and refined by UGA’s comprehensive entrepreneurial ecosystem, the Innovation District.
Established in 2019, the Innovation District aims to drive innovation and entrepreneurship by providing UGA stakeholders with essential resources to commercialize discoveries and ideas. It integrates campus programs offering entrepreneurship coaching and mentorship, accelerator services for early-stage business ideas, training and tools for small businesses, pitch decks and co-working spaces, offices for startups, and community-building activities for entrepreneurs.
Innovation Gateway, formed a decade ago and one of the cornerstones of the Innovation District, helps faculty and staff protect their intellectual property and bring it to the marketplace, assisting in patent application and approval to protect and license technology, or, if they prefer, guide them in starting their own company through training, mentorship, and funding assistance.
“If you have enough motivation and passion, the university can help you make your ideas come to life,” Galanti said.
Many UGA researchers are developing businesses to translate scholarly advances into new impactful devices. WenZhan Song’s research has led to Intelligent Dots, which uses seismic sensing technology to assist in senior care, hospitals, pediatrics, and veterinary medicine. Hitesh Handa, one of the university’s most prolific innovators, has led the creation of Nytricx, which develops medical device coatings that release nitric oxide to prevent infections and blood clots.
This research-to-market pipeline, along with recent university investments, will expand UGA’s capacity for biomedical research and healthcare improvements. Preliminary work has begun on the $100 million Medical Education and Research Building, which will serve the new UGA School of Medicine, expected to enroll its first students in 2026. The medical school is projected to generate between $1.8 and $2.3 billion in economic impact on the state by 2040.
The University of Georgia ranks No. 1 among U.S. universities for the number of products brought to market based on its research, according to the annual survey by AUTM. It has ranked first or second in this measure for nine consecutive years.
‘Everything’s out there, but you must be motivated to find it’
Galanti’s pathway as an inventor-entrepreneur began in a high school AP physics class. Students were assigned a project to create a solution to help treat a disease. Galanti created a mouthguard to protect people during seizures from shattering their teeth, biting or swallowing their tongue and suffocating.
But her idea had a flaw.
“When I got feedback at an engineering science fair, I realized that no one had time to place the mouthguard in their mouth once a seizure began,” she said.
For her next step, Galanti designed a device with two components: a mouthguard and case to be attached to a dog’s collar. She began working with seizure-alert dogs trained to detect—out of 532 chemical compounds emitted through human skin—those compounds that indicate an imminent seizure. She trained dogs to push the case’s button when they smell pre-seizure gas, activating a buzzer and opening a mechanical latch that revealed the mouthguard.
As a freshman at UGA, Galanti won a slot in the Idea Accelerator Program, a four-week boot camp managed by the Terry College of Business, pitching her device to experienced entrepreneurs, who expressed reservations about its commercial potential.
“Seizure-alert dogs cost over $40,000 and can have up to a 10-year wait list,” she said. “But I want to provide care to more people. So, I needed another option for seizure detection.”
After completing her bachelor’s degree in December 2022, she earned a graduate certificate from the entrepreneurship program in Terry College, which offers classes in managing startups and identifying customers and markets. She interviewed people with epilepsy, epilepsy organizations, and medical professionals to learn about their needs.
“I learned that I needed to drop the mouth guard component and focus on engineering a sensor for seizure prediction,” she said.
While Galanti continued work on her sensor, she was accepted into the National Science Foundation I-Corps. This eight-week program at Innovation Gateway guides academic inventors through the commercialization process. I-Corps offers hands-on entrepreneurial training, equipping participants with skills in customer discovery and business development. In November 2022, she started her company with assistance from UGA’s Business Law Clinic.
Galanti focused her Ph.D. studies on developing her sensor under the guidance of advisors Mark Haidekker and Ramaraja Ramasamy, professors in the College of Engineering. They helped her build a prototype and steered her to research grants. Now, she is preparing for her post-doctorate life, searching for venture capital, and angel investors.
“Everything’s out there, but you must be motivated to find it,” she said. “The first place to start is Innovation Gateway.”
Entrepreneurial training at Innovation Gateway
UGA researchers have also developed a new non-invasive sensor for continuous vital sign monitoring that can be managed without touching wires or patients. This AI-powered sensor, which uses technology originally designed for earthquake detection, captures tiny physiological signals of heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, and body movement.
“Our technology is engagement-free and maintenance-free,” said WenZhan Song, Georgia Power Mickey A. Brown Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Currently, you rely on wires on the body for vital sign monitoring, but we remove that barrier.”
Song co-founded a startup company, Intelligent Dots, to provide non-touch monitors for senior care, hospitals, pediatrics, and veterinary medicine. BedDot, one of the company’s applications, includes a seismic sensor mounted on a patient’s bedframe to collect real-time bed seismogram (BSG) signals, which measure micro-vibrations driven by heart movement, respiration, and blood pressure changes.
Intelligent Dots uses advanced systems to identify and track minuscule vibrations from bedframes, chairs, or other physical platforms.
“We are capturing and processing tiny signals and removing noise,” Song said. “It is a significant engineering challenge to make [a smart] system that makes inference calculations of complex signals in real time without errors.”
While developing this technology, Song participated in Innovation Gateway programming such as I-Corps, which helped him better understand market needs for his lab advances. He learned business canvassing fundamentals and interviewed senior care facility owners and operators.
“The training helped us to understand that innovation is different from application,” said Song, winner of the 2025 Lamar Dodd Creative Research Award and recognized for Internet of Things breakthroughs that enable real-time, non-intrusive health and activity monitoring for humans, animals, machines, and infrastructures. “Given a technology, does it meet a real market need? We learned to adapt and pivot on connecting innovation to market opportunities.”
With help from Gateway, Intelligent Dots successfully applied for support from the Georgia FAST Grant program, which aids researchers in gaining Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants from the state of Georgia. Through this program, Intelligent Dots was awarded a Phase 0 grant to support a grant-writing consultant for a SBIR/STTR application. Intelligent Dots also received support from the GRA Venture Fund from the Georgia Research Alliance as a UGA spin-off company.
A comprehensive support network for entrepreneurs
For years, Innovation Gateway has nurtured Hitesh Handa’s career as a scientist-inventor and co-founder of the startup company Nytricx Inc., with associate professor Elizabeth Brisbois.
“In the beginning, I had no idea how to register a company, and Innovation Gateway helped me get started,” said Handa, associate professor, Distinguished Faculty Fellow in the College of Engineering, and one of UGA’s 2025 Regents’ Entrepreneurs.
Nytricx is developing a coating that releases nitric oxide, a naturally occurring gas that can prevent infections and blood clots sometimes caused by implanted medical devices. Thousands of patients in nursing homes and hospitals annually suffer from these dangerous conditions.
Handa’s coating research has led to eight issued patents and more than 35 pending applications. Innovation Gateway aids UGA researchers by conducting literature searches, providing legal guidance on intellectual property, and filing for patents.
“We are not experts in patentability,” Handa said. “But Gateway has the right specialists who help us navigate the process and ensure everything progresses seamlessly.”
Gateway provided Handa with grant-writing advice, nominated him for awards, and connected him with potential funding sources. In the past two years, his work has received $5 million in federal funding to accelerate commercialization. As director of the Biointerface Translation & Engineering Center (BTEC), Handa and his colleagues help foster interdisciplinary collaboration on research projects for next-generation medical technologies.
Handa’s success demonstrates that entrepreneurial activities can complement academic research. UGA has become a national leader in encouraging faculty and students to pursue technology transfer and commercialization alongside traditional academic research, with Innovation Gateway playing a crucial supporting role.
In the past, Handa noted, some faculty viewed patents and technology transfer as outside the scope of a professor’s responsibilities. With thoughtful planning, however, it can contribute to professional growth. Colleges and departments, he added, are increasingly open to embracing this concept.
Handa’s laboratory has published more than 120 papers, received $15 million in federal research grant funding, and graduated 15 Ph.D. students. His graduate students participate in patent filings and gain practical experience in translational research.
“My graduate students are gaining experience not only in fundamental research but also in industry-specific tasks that align with the careers they may pursue after graduation,” Handa said.
Named UGA Entrepreneur of the Year in 2021, Handa is a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), serving on UGA’s NAI chapter executive board, and participates in industry events including the Georgia Life Sciences Summit. Handa is also a receipient of UGA’s early career Fred C. Davison Award in 2019 and mid-career Creative Research Medal in 2024.
Handa is training students in entrepreneurial thinking while improving Georgia’s biomedical employment sector.
“Multiple people are already working for our company,” he said. “We are creating jobs in Georgia and that helps the state’s economy.”
