MU faculty did not invent the next Facebook during fiscal 2013.
They did better, some who benefited from the breakthroughs might say.
On May 1, the University of Missouri celebrated its entrepreneurial spirit through faculty inventions and business creations at a breakfast in the Reynolds Alumni Center’s Columns Room. Speaking at the event were Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin; Hank Foley, senior vice chancellor for research and graduate studies; and Steve Wyatt, vice provost for economic development.
Celebrated at the breakfast were businesses using MU technologies and faculty responsible for 23 patents for inventions of novel devices and innovative methods in fiscal 2013.
“It’s pretty exciting to see what happens in the future,” Wyatt said of MU’s entrepreneurial spirit.
Patients needing an organ transplant might soon thank four MU professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy for developing through cellular engineering a way to improve availability of human tissues and organs. The team filed the patent for the invention last year.
There are also a slew of MU technologies already on the market. An athlete who suffers a catastrophic cartilage tear in the knee might make a 100 percent recovery thanks to a faculty member’s invention that repairs damage to the meniscus.
A mother during a cesarean section undergoing complications that endanger her baby, but rectified by a fetal head device, might sing the praises of the two MU professors from the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health for indirectly saving her baby.
It’s all about perspective, or perception of value. Facebook or a baby’s life?
