Florida Inventors Hall of Fame

Congratulations to University of Florida faculty members Nan-Yao Su and Janet Yamamoto for their selection to the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.

Dr. Su is an entomologist and the inventor of the Sentricon termite colony elimination system. Dr. Yamamoto is an immunologist who discovered the feline immunodeficiency virus and a vaccine to prevent it.

Su is the world authority on the behavioral ecology and control of subterranean termites. Subterranean termites cost U.S. consumers more than $1.5 billion annually to control, and are a primary concern for homeowners in Florida.

Su developed a monitoring/baiting procedure that enabled him to eliminate an entire colony of several million termites using less than 1 gram of insecticide. The procedure is now commercially available to the public under the tradename Sentricon and it has drastically reduced insecticide use in termite control.

This non-invasive baiting procedure is also ideal for environmentally sensitive historic sites such as the Statue of Liberty, the White House and the Alamo.

For his contribution to the development of this new technology, Su received the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture’s Honor Award for Individual Achievement in Research in 1996.

Dr. Yamamoto is a co-discoverer of the deadly feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV, and inventor of the first FIV vaccine. Now she’s applying what she’s learned in cats to develop a vaccine for the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, that causes AIDS.

Yamamoto and a colleague discovered FIV in 1986, then she spent years pursuing an effective vaccine to prevent the disease. UF holds joint patents on the vaccine, which is sold as Fel-O-Vax FIV®.

Yamamoto’s research into FIV eventually led to an understanding that the virus had many similarities to HIV, and her research over the last dozen years has focused on developing an effective HIV vaccine. Her vaccine work has been funded with more than $3.4 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health since 1989.

Licensing revenues from Dr. Yamamoto’s discoveries exceed $14 million and it is a testament to her dedication that she has donated most of her personal royalty income back into her research program.

Founded in 2013, the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame recognizes and commends Florida inventors whose achievements have advanced the quality of life for Floridians, the state and the nation. More information is available at www.FloridaInvents.org

A Celebration of Innovation

The University of Florida recently staged our Celebration of Innovation Startup Showcase, an event in which new companies in from life science, health care, and other cutting-edge technologies are provided a platform to interact with entrepreneurs, venture capitalist, and others from the business community. 

These companies were birthed from discoveries within the UF community.  At UF, our aim is the translate research to relevance, many times realized through the commercialization of intellectual property. 

UF remains an international leader when it comes to discovery and innovation. 

A recent survey released by the World Intellectual Property Organization showed that the University of Florida ranks 13th among all universities worldwide in international patent applications. 

As a public institution, a significant part of our mission is the translation of new knowledge gleaned through research into relevant impact in society. 

The University of Florida has long been recognized as one the best in the business when it comes to translating discovery into economic opportunity through startups.  The Gainesville area is now home to four NASDAQ listed biomedical technology companies.  The impact of UF, our research, and the fruits of that research are evident and obvious.  

Informatics Institute

As part of UF Preeminence, the university created the Informatics Institute to facilitate advances and interdisciplinary interactions in the fundamentals and application of data science.

In January, we will welcome Dr. George Michailidis as the institute’s director. Dr. Michailidis comes to us from the University of Michigan, where he is a tenured professor of statistics. Dr. Michailidis has enjoyed a remarkable career in academia since earning his Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA in 1996. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the American Statistical Association, and the International Statistical Institute. He serves as editor-in-chief of the Electronic Journal of Statistics, editor of the ASA-SIAM Series on Statistics and Applied Probability, and associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Theory and Methods, the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, the Technometrics, the Journal of Statistical Software, Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, and the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference. Please join me in welcoming George to the University of Florida.

As 2014 draws to a close, I cannot help but reflect on the remarkable privilege of being a part of the University of Florida community. As the preeminent research university in the state, we are positively impacting present and future generations in Florida and beyond through the knowledge, discoveries, and technologies created on our campus and in our facilities throughout the state and around the world. This is made possible through the support we enjoy from the state, but even more so through the remarkable talents and efforts of the faculty, students, and staff who are the heart and soul of the UF research enterprise. There is great satisfaction in knowing we are part of an institution that is making a difference for the state, the nation, and the planet.