Alum Named Student Inventor of the Year at I-Squared Awards

Vinodh Subramanian, who earned his master's in SIE in 2019, was recognized as Student Inventor of the Year at the I-Squared Invention-to-Impact Awards for his work developing a system and launching a startup to help reduce patient no-shows in the health care industry. Subramanian's technology has been licensed to startup Hipokratiz LLC to bring it to the market.

"No-shows have been a pressing problem in the health care industry and every single year, every single private clinic or private practice loses about $150,000 per year in no-shows alone, this is on the one end. On the other end, we have patients that are not getting the care they need, because of various system and human inefficiencies," Subramanian said. "I was doing my master's under the systems and industrial engineering department where we study everything based on systems. So we see problems as systems, we tried to get to the root cause, and then we try to address all these root causes by creating systems, using systems thinking principles." 

The I-Squared Awards is hosted by Tech Launch Arizona to recognize innovators in the University of Arizona ecosystem. 

“Every day our researchers not only do incredible research and teach incredible amounts of knowledge, but we deliver that into the world when we create new inventions, we create new companies, and we create economic value," said Betsy Cantwell, senior vice president for research and innovation.

Along with videos and profiles of each honoree, the I-Squared website also carries on the TLA tradition of a startup and technology expo, with brief profiles from nine teams – working on innovations ranging from battery-free wearables to sensors for stroke diagnosis to autonomous vehicle enabling radar – who are in the process of developing and commercializing innovations developed at the university.