Professor Aydogan Ozcan, UCLA’s Chancellor’s Professor of Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering and an associate director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and Thomas Lipkin, head of new ventures for the UCLA Technology Development Group, have been recognized by Biocom, the association representing the California life science community, with Life Science Catalyst Awards.
The awards, which celebrate up-and-coming entrepreneurs, academics, investors, corporate leaders and business advisers who are making a lasting and positive mark on Southern California’s life science industry and are under 40, were announced Sept. 14.
Biocom selected the 15 winners from a pool of nominees that included professionals from a wide range of life science organizations, including startups, publicly held biotech companies, universities and consultancies. The nominees were vetted by a committee that took into account several factors, including innovation, leadership and vision.
Ozcan leads research in photonics with applications to nano- and biotechnologies. These advances help put powerful, laboratory-level imaging, sensing and diagnostics technologies into portable, inexpensive, smartphone-based devices designed by computational techniques to address medical and public health needs, particularly in developing countries. Among his numerous honors, Ozcan received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2011, the U.S. government’s highest award for researchers at the outset of their careers.
Lipkin joined UCLA’s technology transfer office, then known as the Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research, in September 2012 and has since contributed to the campus’s entrepreneurial environment by building companies around UCLA’s intellectual property, serving as a resource to faculty members, aiding existing UCLA startups and helping secure additional funding for campus-wide technology commercialization through the UCLA Innovation Fund.