Entrepreneur of the Year – Research Awards

Prashant Doshi

akatki on March 19, 2025

Entrepreneur of the Year 2025

Prashant Doshi, professor in the School of Computing, is transforming artificial intelligence research into real-world applications through his work on human-robot collaboration and inverse reinforcement learning. His research has broad implications across industries, including agriculture, where he is developing AI-driven collaborative robots (cobots) to streamline produce processing operations. To bring this technology to market, Doshi co-founded InversAI, a company focused on commercializing AI-powered automation. Under his leadership, the company secured grants from the Georgia Research Alliance and NSF Small Business Technology Transfer, funding the first application of AI-driven cobots in onion sorting and enabling onsite trials of the technology in Georgia’s onion processing sheds. By bridging academic research and industry, Doshi exemplifies the successful transition of university-based innovation into practical, scalable technologies. His work continues to push the boundaries of AI-driven robotics, shaping the future of intelligent automation and expanding its role in commercial and industrial settings.

John Gibbs

akatki on March 13, 2024

Entrepreneur of the Year 2024

John Gibbs, associate professor of theatre and film studies, specializes in 3D computer modeling and animation and artificial intelligence (AI) in the creative arts. Gibbs is co-founder of Artimatic, Inc., a company that applies machine learning and AI to help digital artists realize their creative vision. Gibbs is a named inventor on the underlying, patent-protected technology licensed to Artimatic through a Georgia Startup License, which streamlines the licensing process for eligible companies seeking to commercialize UGA-developed intellectual property. skiNNer, Artimatic’s first product, has the potential to revolutionize computer animation, speeding up tedious and time-consuming weighting processes. The company is developing a suite of products to address other time-intensive tasks in digital arts. Artimatic has garnered startup funding from both the National Science Foundation and the Georgia Research Alliance to develop its products designed to streamline tasks in the creative arts. Gibbs carries his innovation and educational drive to the wider public via his YouTube channel, “Dr. Know-it-all.”

Puliyur MohanKumar

slquinlan on April 6, 2023

Entrepreneur of the Year 2023

Puliyur MohanKumar’s translational research, in collaboration with Sheba MohanKumar and Yen-Jun Chuang, led to five invention disclosures and multiple patent filings focused on nanoparticle technology use in clinical settings. A professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, MohanKumar formed the company, SG Endocrine Research, with Sheba MohanKumar to pursue commercial development of this technology. Its lead product is a non-surgical spaying/neutering technology, dubbed “Gonads Be Gone,” that is administered intravenously and causes complete inactivation of the gonads in two weeks. After preclinical validation, the technology has proven 100% effective in studies done with male and female cats. Under MohanKumar’s leadership, the company is also developing nanoparticle-based technologies to facilitate non-invasive imaging of brain neurotransmitters, a prostate cancer therapy and other applications. SG Endocrine Research licensed the nanoparticle technology under the Georgia Startup License program. The company has received Phase 1 STTR funding from the National Institutes of Health and is in active discussions with potential commercial partners.

Kevin McCully

jennbryant on April 11, 2022

Entrepreneur of the Year 2022

Kevin McCully’s research has helped further the understanding of peripheral arterial disease, or PAD, through the use of near-infrared spectroscopy to measure blood flow and mitochondrial function in skeletal muscle. His work has led to one issued patent and multiple pending applications. Along with collaborators Jonathan Murrow and Kent Nilsson—both faculty members in the Augusta University/UGA Medical Partnership—in 2014 McCully co-founded the biotechnology company InfraredRX to help move these technologies to the clinical space. InfraredRX produces an all-in-one, noninvasive device to help measure and guide treatment for PAD—an “early version of the Star Trek tricorder,” as McCully has described it. The company has been awarded grants from the Georgia Research Alliance, as well as over $1.5 million in STTR grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, to develop its product. InfraredRX recently became one of the first tenants of UGA’s Delta Innovation Hub.

Yajun Yan

ovprweb on April 2, 2018

Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2018

Yajun Yan, associate professor in the College of Engineering, leads UGA’s research in microbial production of biofuels and high-value chemicals. His work has led to six issued U.S. patents and several pending patent applications. In 2014, he and his colleague, Yuheng Lin, co-founded BiotecEra Inc., which is developing and commercializing innovative microbial technologies to achieve sustainable, economically viable and eco-friendly production of industrially valuable pharmaceuticals and commodity chemicals. Located in the UGA Innovation Gateway incubator, BiotecEra Inc. has secured state funding through the Georgia Research Alliance, federal funding through the Small Business Innovation Research program and private funding from an angel investor. His research also formed the basis for a second startup, HGG Research LLC, which is developing methods to synthesize various natural compounds in probiotic strains. Since joining the UGA faculty in 2010, he has been an advocate for entrepreneurism among faculty colleagues while leading the Biosynthetic Engineering and Biocatalysis Laboratory.

Biao He

ovprweb on April 14, 2017

Entrepreneur of the Year 2020

Biao He, GRA Distinguished Investigator and the Fred C. Davison Distinguished University Chair in Veterinary Medicine, is a renowned virologist and vaccine developer who has founded numerous biotechnology companies to develop new vaccines. His UGA research has led to four issued U.S. patents and 19 foreign patents. He’s work on the virus known as PIV5, which has an excellent safety profile, has been translated into vaccines and treatments for deadly infections such as rabies, tuberculosis and HIV. University of Georgia earned the patent for the PIV5 vaccine platform that He developed, and many companies have since licensed it. The Georgia Research Alliance-funded startup company CyanVac is developing vaccines against several animal and human diseases based on He’s research. More recently, he founded Blue Lake Biotechnology, Inc., to develop PIV5-based vaccines for human disease with an initial focus on respiratory syncytial virus. In 2019, Blue Lake secured private investment of $6 million to fund RSV vaccine development.

Previous Award

Inventor of the Year Award 2017

Valentine Nzengung

ovprweb on March 22, 2016

Regents’ Entrepreneur 2024

Valentine Nzengung, professor of environmental geochemistry in the Department of Geology, researches and develops new technologies for the cleanup of contaminated water, sediment, and soils. For more than two decades, he has been a trailblazer in sustainable, environmental remediation technologies capable of instantly neutralizing bulk explosives, bomb fillers, improvised explosive devices, chemical warfare materiel, and other explosive remnants of wars. His company, MuniRem Environmental, LLC, works with authorized partners to carry out a wide range of environmental remediation projects globally. MuniRem worked with the U.S. Navy to safely salvage the Confederate ironclad gunboat CSS Georgia from the Savannah River in the mid-2010s, helping to mitigate ordnance still intact and containing explosive black powder after more than 150 years. Utilizing MuniRem, each shell was rendered inert, ensuring the safety of the artifacts for further examination and preservation efforts. Nzengung is a former UGA Entrepreneur of the Year and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Richard B. Meagher

on February 23, 2016

Entrepreneur of the Year Award

Richard Meagher, Distinguished Research Professor of Genetics, is a plant molecular geneticist whose research has sparked worldwide interest and media attention. Widely noted for his creativity, innovation and perseverance, Meagher was the first scientist to engineer plants to take up toxins from the soil, a field now known as phytoremediation. He established himself as a leading authority on the plant cytoskeleton and,more recently, on monoclonal antibody production. UGA recognized Meagher’s research accomplishments in 2001, when he received the Lamar Dodd Award for an outstanding body of research in the sciences, and again in 2004, when he received the Inventor’s Award for his patents and other contributions to thebiotech industry in Georgia. During his tenure at UGA, Meagher has founded several biotechnology companies based on research in his laboratory. In addition to his outstanding research, Meagher has been a devoted teacher and mentor as well as a leader in bringing new technologies to research and service facilities at UGA.

Previous Awards

Distinguished Research Professor 2007
Inventor’s Award 2004
Lamar Dodd Award 2001

Steven Stice

on February 18, 2016

Academic Entrepreneur of the Year 2015

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 cofounder and served as both CSO and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, the only US 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. Most recently, Stice helped recruit VICapsys, Inc. into the UGA BioBusiness Center. Stice continually plays a vital role in promoting entrepreneurship in the Athens and Georgia bioscience community.

Previous Award

Inventor’s Award 2005

Robert Woods

mterrazas on February 18, 2016

Distinguished Research Professor 2024

Robert J. Woods, professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, has received international recognition for his innovative research in glycoscience—the chemical biology and biomedical impact of complex carbohydrates (glycans) covering surfaces of cells and viruses. His work is transformational, applying expertise in molecular structures and computational modeling to understand glycan structure and function. By integrating experimental data with molecular dynamics calculations, Woods has illustrated that the space occupied by glycans in both the HIV envelope protein and SARS-CoV-2 spike protein modulates immune recognition and can help guide vaccine design. He developed a web environment for building complex glycans that allows users to computationally explore the molecular dynamics of glycans and their interactions with other biomolecules. Woods launched the company, Lectenz Bio, funded by National Institutes of Health grants and contracts, to produce reagents and platforms for the glycoscience community, and recently founded Oak House, Athens’ first distillery.