BME helps U of A break invention record
Associate department head of biomedical engineering Philipp Gutruf is looking 10 years into the future of health care, inventing breakthrough medical devices that support personalized medicine.
In fiscal year 2025, faculty and researchers at the University of Arizona broke the record for the number of inventions reported in a single year. The 324 invention disclosures in FY 2025 beat the record of 307 set in 2024.
"We measure the university's inventiveness and engagement by invention disclosures," said Doug Hockstad, associate vice president of Tech Launch Arizona. "Each time an employee – whether they're a faculty member, researcher, graduate student or other staff member – comes to our team with an invention, they fill out a simple form, and that's when the commercialization process begins."
BME associate department head Philipp Gutruf helped break the record by developing wearable technologies that monitor health data. This year, Gutruf (with the support TLA) launched the startup Senphonix, which markets these technologies developed in the College of Engineering and BIO5 Institute. He developed the wearables in collaboration with Tucker Stewart, a senior research and development engineer who earned his PhD in biomedical engineering from the U of A in 2023; and Kevin Kasper, a doctoral candidate in biomedical engineering.
The U of A ranked 31st globally on the National Academy of Inventors' list of the top 100 universities granted utility patents, with 18% of those patents resulting from the work of College of Engineering affiliates.