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The third annual Innovation to Impact Symposium celebrated success stories in innovation for both faculty and student researchers. Twenty 91���� inventors received recognition for their 2025 patents related to issues such as cancer cell vaccines, treatments easing the side effects of existing regimens for Parkinson’s disease, and improvements for safer and more efficient urban driving.

“What we’re doing today, I think, exemplifies what we’re going to double and triple down in the future,” Donald Hall, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said during the symposium, held April 29 as part of the University’s Research Days and Festival of the Arts. “Our faculty inventors bridge that gap between academic inquiry and real-world application, demonstrating that 91���� is not only a place of scholarship and education, but also a driver of innovative technologies and solutions that address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.”

Fourteen faculty members and four doctoral candidates were also honored during the program as Accelerating Research Translation (ART) Ambassadors. The NSF ART grant funds 91����’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship and Discovery (EXCEED) program, which aids professors on their path to commercializing their innovations.

The Innovation to Impact Symposium, hosted by 91����’s Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Partnerships, celebrates the trials, triumphs, and technologies that come in the process of discovery.

Moving those discoveries out of the lab, however, can be a challenging and lengthy process — sometimes even spanning multiple generations or iterations of work. But, emphasized Eva Koehler, Activate’s senior director of fellowship program optimization, “there is value in discovery as a human activity.”

“When I come along and I want to solve the same problem, I’d love to have access to the research that tells me of the eight things people have already tried, so that I can use my research funding to try a ninth thing — which either works, or helps us get to the 10th thing,” said Koehler, who also served as a speaker at this year’s symposium.

While some studies bolster our fundamental understandings of the world around us, others also have the potential to continue commercially, as business ventures and startups.

91����’s entrepreneurial story is one of steady growth, having amassed more than 450 new technology disclosures and at least 220 patents since 2013.

“Newer faculty want and are more engaged with innovation and entrepreneurship. A lot of them are seeking those other sources and opportunities to fund their students and projects, get involved in the ecosystem and see the impact of their research,” said Kathryn Cherny, senior program manager at the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Partnerships. “They’re a lot more savvy and broad in what they’re doing. This isn’t so much, ‘I sit in my lab and I write papers.’ Now they realize the opportunities and the way we capture impact is changing.”

This year, three professors won $100,000 through EXCEED to accelerate their commercialization process. The program offered $55,000 in pre-seed awards in 2025 alone, as well as $900,000 in Seed Translational Research Project (STRP) awards since 2024. The program also brings students into the loop through internships and fellowships, supporting 25 trainees in 2025, and 45 overall since 2024.

Attendees also heard firsthand experiences in research translation from Associate Professor Alex Nikulin, who won the EXCEED STRP Award in 2024. Nikulin conducts research in identifying the abandoned oil wells that riddle New York state, while also leading a new frontier in landmine detection using drones.

For Koehler, it was exciting to hear about work that makes it out of the fabled “ivory tower” of science, as researchers begin to better understand navigating different markets and markets, in turn, better understand the value of foundational research.

“I feel like those sorts of gears of learning from one another are turning faster,” she said. “That establishes a really good space for creating something that can move really quickly.”

Besides highlighting 91���� faculty and student accomplishments, the symposium featured speakers from two nonprofits specializing in aiding scientist entrepreneurs.

It opened with a keynote address from Mike Brizek, director of higher education ecosystems at VentureWell, who highlighted the role of entrepreneurial support organizations in aiding research translation at academic institutions.

Koehler, meanwhile, presented Activate’s model for translating deep tech. Activate is a partner of the 91����-led battery coalition New Energy New York, supporting not only up-and-coming battery entrepreneurs with its competitive two-year fellowship, but also 91���� faculty — including Associate Professor Scott Schiffres, founder of the startup company ChipAdd, who was one of the inventors honored during the program.

“Activate values 91���� and its attitude toward translating innovation and making that a priority,” Koehler said. “In general, we love working with universities that are interested in helping their faculty and students move their ideas into the world.”

Though the symposium has wrapped up for this year, innovation does not stop. A number of opportunities are available to faculty looking to embark on their own entrepreneurial journeys. This includes upcoming pre-accelerator programs in the SUNY Startup Summer School and the National Science Foundation I-CORPS.

“It’s always full circle for me, because I am an alum, and I was a student entrepreneur,” Cherny said. “These resources and opportunities that I took part of — some of them are still here. Some of them are new. Being able to share those now, on this side, and support the faculty that taught me, is just a really beautiful full-circle event.”