Innovation of the Year Awards

The Innovation of the Year Awards celebrate Innovation at Morgan and recognize the innovative contributions of University faculty, staff, and students in a number of categories. These categories include: innovations in life, physical and information sciences; U.S. Patent awardees (selected from intellectual property disclosure submissions); and student, instructional and staff innovations. 

Award Categories

Intellectual Property Innovation Awards: These awards will recognize individuals who have created innovations in their respective research fields. Intellectual Property Disclosure (IPD) submissions to the OTT are considered for this award and evaluated on their potential benefit to society, the improvement over existing technology, and commercial potential. Three finalists will be selected from the pool of active IPDs in each of the following categories:

Life Science Innovation of the Year
Physical Science Innovation of the Year
Information Science Innovation of the Year

Morgan Community Innovators

Student Innovator of the Year: This student or group of students has developed, created, or implemented an innovation that has provided a positive impact on the university, community or State, or contributed to a new Morgan innovation.

Instructional Innovator of the Year: This faculty member has developed and/or effectively implemented an innovative approach to instruction or delivered innovative instructional content to improve student learning outcomes.

Staff Innovator of the Year: This individual has affected positive change within the Morgan infrastructure/ecosystem to increase efficiency and/or effectiveness of workplace systems or processes - generating increased productivity, lower cost or improved quality.

The student, instruction, and staff Innovator of the Year awards will be determined by nominee submissions to the Office of Technology Transfer, then selected based on award criteria guidelines.

Patent Awards: These innovation awards are presented to Morgan inventors that have been issued a U.S. Patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.