STC.UNM hosted its sixth annual Creative Awards ceremony on Monday to honor students and faculty who have been issued patents or copyrights within the past year.
"What we're celebrating here tonight is one of the things that make public research universities great," said Julia Fulghum, vice president for research. "At its core, public research universities, driven by faculty and staff and students . have a huge impact on the community and the state."
Honorees of the ceremony received awards for achievements in fields including biomedical, mechanical engineering and computer science.
A total of 34 award recipients were recognized at this year's celebration for devotion to their work, which resulted in the issuance of 22 patents and copyrights this year.
More than 80 people gathered at the Science & Technology Park Rotunda, which was the largest showing the event has ever seen, said Denise Bissell, spokeswoman for STC.
"Our mission is to help faculty, students or staff who develop technology or inventions, protect their technologies and make sure they have patents or copyrights on them," Bissell said. "(And) also to help them commercialize those technologies by finding a company that might want to license their technology."
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STC is a nonprofit organization formed and owned by UNM, according to the ITS Web site. It was formed in 1995 by the regents to protect and transfer faculty inventions to the commercial marketplace.
Steve Brueck, director of the Center for High Technology Materials at UNM, is among the most prolific inventors at the University with more than 30 personal patents. On Monday, he was recognized for two patents issued over the past year.
"These are both ongoing projects that have been going on for quite some time," Brueck said. "They have generated a number of different publications, graduate students and things like that, but there is still a lot more work to be done both on a research perspective and also in commercialization and turning it into a reality."
This year's event included a guest presentation by Lyle A. Honke, who is a general partner of Tullis-Dickerson and Co.
Honke's presentation, titled "Venture Capital and Innovation: Chicken or Egg?," took a closer look at how inventors across the nation have dealt with innovations in their products, and how those innovations lead to the opportunity for products to be marketed.
"Good science leads to innovation," Honke said. "It's your insights. It's your observation. It's your light bulbs and your daydreaming that really set the stage for our investments. Innovation plus venture capital - or what I would call creative capital - really leads to new company formation, and my observation is that money follows the good science and innovation."
