Innovation Powered by
Our vision is to be a leader in innovation management that creates value for the University of Utah, its stakeholders and society.
The University of Utah ranks among the top 10 U.S. universities in several key research commercialization measures, based on data from the AUTM 2025 Annual Survey.
Research commercialization moves discoveries beyond the lab and into the world through products, treatments, services, licenses, and startups. The U’s performance is especially notable because it is achieving results comparable to larger research institutions while operating with a smaller research expenditure base, a sign of the strength and efficiency of Utah’s innovation ecosystem.
The U placed among the nation’s leaders in five key measures:
- No. 5 in invention disclosures: New discoveries submitted by faculty, researchers, and students for potential protection or commercialization.
- No. 5 in licenses executed: Agreements that allow external partners to use or commercialize university-developed technologies.
- No. 4 in copyright licenses: Licenses covering software, data, educational materials, creative works, and other tangible property.
- No. 9 in gross license income: Revenue from licensing activity, including royalties and equity-related returns.
- No. 3 in new licensed technologies: Technologies licensed to external partners for the first time.
A growing pipeline, built for impact
The survey results highlight both the U’s current performance and its potential for continued growth. The university’s research enterprise is expanding, creating a larger pipeline of discoveries with the potential to reach the marketplace and benefit the public.
As research activity grows, it can generate more ideas, invention disclosures, partnerships, licenses, and startups—strengthening the U’s ability to shape industries and improve lives.
“These benchmarks reflect the strength of the University of Utah’s innovation ecosystem and the faculty, researchers, and partners who help move discoveries toward real-world impact,” said Jason Young, senior director of commercialization.
The AUTM survey results add to a series of national recognitions for the University of Utah’s innovation ecosystem. The U has also recently been named among the top 100 universities globally for U.S. utility patents, No. 1 for producing unicorn founders, and recognized as one of the nation’s top universities for biomedical innovation. Together, these distinctions reflect growing momentum across the university’s innovation pipeline.
That impact can be seen in examples from the past year:
- Propelling clean energy: Geothermal Strategy Partners helps developers plan and build next-generation geothermal projects.
- Helping bones heal: The CoAptix S system keeps steady pressure on healing bones, helping reduce complications and support recovery.
- Cutting electronic waste: EnduraCure is developing flexible electronics materials that can be broken down so valuable parts can be recovered instead of discarded.
- Helping people avoid unhealthy air: Trace AQ’s Flow AQ app provides four-day forecasts and personalized alerts so people can plan around hazardous conditions.
- Improving EV charging: Grid Elevated’s IntelliCharge platform uses AI to balance charging demand, helping make EV infrastructure more reliable, efficient, and scalable.
- Fighting brain cancer: CaLycia Bioscience is developing engineered immune-cell therapies designed to target aggressive brain and spine cancers from within.
What the results mean for Utah
For faculty and researchers, the results point to more opportunities to translate discoveries into practical applications. For industry partners and investors, they signal access to a strong environment for bringing research discoveries to market. For the state, they demonstrate the University of Utah’s growing role in building Utah’s innovation economy.
As the U’s research enterprise expands, so does its capacity to turn discovery into public benefit, economic growth, and solutions to pressing challenges. The 2025 AUTM survey results show that the university’s commercialization efforts are already performing at a national level—and are positioned to make an even greater impact in the years ahead.
Chris Gibson was supposed to become a cardiothoracic surgeon. Instead, he built a company. At the U’s recent Startup Launchpad event, Recursion’s co-founder sat down for a fireside chat about how that pivot happened: what he saw under a microscope in a University of Utah lab, why he walked away from the med school, and what it actually took to turn a grad school insight into one of Utah’s most recognized life sciences companies.
Watch the full fireside chat above.
A Startup Story That Began Under a Microscope
Before Recursion became a biotech giant, it began with a graduate student, a microscope, and a problem that seemed too tedious to solve by hand.
Gibson was an MD/PhD student in Dr. Dean Li’s lab at the University of Utah when a research project landed on his plate: analyze thousands of images of human cells, hunting for differences between healthy and diseased states. The team was focused on actin stress fibers, the protein scaffolds that give cells their structure.
The task could have meant hours of manual counting. Instead, Gibson started looking for a better way.
“I’m too lazy to sit here and count these things,” he joked. So he started writing software to do it instead.
What started as a workaround quickly became a revelation. The computer wasn’t just faster than the human eye; it was catching patterns that researchers would have missed entirely. That realization became the founding idea of Recursion.
Turning Research Into a Company
Recursion launched in 2013 as a university spinout with a thesis that most people in pharma found either exciting or alarming: that drug discovery could be fundamentally reimagined using machine learning, automation, and data at scale. More than a decade later, Recursion is part of a growing TechBio field working to use automation, machine learning, and large-scale biological data to rethink how new medicines are discovered.
But the decision to build a company was not obvious.
Gibson had spent years training to become a cardiothoracic surgeon. Leaving that meant giving up a long, clearly mapped career in medicine and choosing something with no guarantee of success. At the fireside chat, he explained how he made peace with that: he ran the numbers on impact. A surgeon might help thousands of patients over a career. If Recursion worked, even with long odds, the reach could be orders of magnitude larger.
“I think a lot of people, when they think about risk, they think about the risk of doing a thing, but they don’t think about the risk of the other choice,” Gibson said. “What’s the risk of how I would feel if I never took that bet?”
For Gibson, the greater risk was not trying. The possibility of building something that could affect millions of lives made the uncertain path worth pursuing.
So he left the medical school track. Recursion was founded the following year.
The University as a Launchpad
Recursion didn’t succeed in a vacuum. Its story is also the story of an environment built to take research seriously as a source of commercial ideas.
Dr. Li’s lab was genuinely interdisciplinary: molecular biologists working alongside geneticists, physician-scientists, and engineers. That environment helped Gibson develop a habit he’d rely on for years: seeing biological problems as computational ones. The lab also taught him how to write grants, build a scientific case, and sell an idea that didn’t fit neatly into any existing category. Those weren’t glamorous skills, but they turned out to be exactly what Recursion needed early on.
The company’s first major check came from an NIH Small Business Innovation Research grant, not a VC. Gibson leaned on his dissertation research as proof of concept, which gave the young company just enough credibility to get in front of investors who were still figuring out how to evaluate something at the intersection of biology and software.
That kind of translation, from lab discovery to market opportunity, is central to the University of Utah’s innovation ecosystem. Through resources such as the Technology Licensing Office, researchers can explore invention disclosures, licensing pathways, startup formation, funding opportunities, and industry partnerships.
Building an Ecosystem for What Comes Next
Recursion did more than grow out of Utah’s innovation ecosystem. It helped strengthen it.
In 2020, Recursion and the University of Utah partnered to launch Altitude Lab, a life sciences and health care incubator designed to support early-stage startups with lab and office space, mentoring, funding, and entrepreneurial education.
That matters because great research ideas stall out all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with the science. Startups need lab space before they can afford it, mentors who’ve been through regulatory and fundraising hurdles, and introductions to investors who won’t hang up when you say “biology plus software.” The University of Utah’s ecosystem is designed to close those gaps.
Recursion is one example of what is possible when those pieces align.
Explore University of Utah Innovation & Partnerships
Breakthrough companies often begin with a researcher who notices something others overlook. At the University of Utah, those moments happen every day—in labs, clinics, classrooms, and collaborative spaces across campus.
Recursion licensed University of Utah intellectual property that resulted from federally funded research, offering one example of how university discoveries can move from the lab into real-world impact.
Have a discovery, technology, or research-based idea with commercial potential? Are you an entrepreneur or a company interested in partnering with the University of Utah? Connect with the Technology Licensing Office to explore licensing opportunities, startup support, research partnerships, and pathways for bringing university innovation to market.
To explore the U's Innovation ecosystem, learn more here.
Cure Innovation Index places the U No. 27 nationally, highlighting the university's growing strength in moving biomedical research toward startups, partnerships and real-world health impact
The University of Utah has been ranked No. 27 out of 243 U.S. research universities in the Cure Innovation Index, a national benchmark of biomedical innovation.
The ranking puts the U among the country’s top universities for moving biomedical research toward health care solutions, startups and industry partnerships. It also points to a bigger shift happening across the university: the U is getting faster and more deliberate about helping good ideas move out of the lab.
That momentum shows up in the numbers. While the U ranks roughly No. 47 nationally in annual research expenditures, it ranks 20 spots higher in the Cure Innovation Index. In other words, the university is punching above its weight, producing biomedical innovation outcomes that outpace what research spending alone might predict.
For the U, the ranking is more than a badge of recognition. It is a sign that years of investment in research, entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, and industry partnerships are starting to show up nationally.
President Taylor Randall has often framed this work as part of higher education’s “third evolution”: taking learning and knowledge beyond campus to improve lives and change the world. He has also called for the university to pick up its “clock speed,” helping research reach markets and communities more quickly.
The Cure ranking suggests that clock speed is increasing, especially in biomedical innovation.
Measuring the path from discovery to impact
The Cure Innovation Index evaluates how well universities move biomedical research toward real-world health solutions. The index uses 25 indicators across three areas: Research Capabilities, Entrepreneurial Readiness, and Market Translation.
The University of Utah ranked No. 29 in Entrepreneurial Readiness, No. 34 in Market Translation, and No. 53 in Research Capabilities.
Those strengths matter because biomedical breakthroughs rarely move forward on science alone. A promising device, diagnostic, therapeutic, or digital health tool often needs clinical insight, regulatory guidance, industry connections, early funding, and a team that knows how to navigate the path from idea to use.
Cure’s broader report, based on a survey of 3,395 biomedical researchers, found that many discoveries stall because researchers lack such support. That is where the U’s ranking becomes significant: its strongest performance came in the categories that measure the systems around the science, not just the science itself.
“This recognition reflects something we see every day at the University of Utah: a research community focused on real world impact,” said Erin Rothwell, vice president for research. “Our faculty, students and partners are not only asking important questions; they are building ideas that can improve lives, strengthen Utah’s economy and contribute to innovative healthcare solutions that change lives.”
A connected innovation ecosystem
The ranking reflects years of work to build a more connected innovation ecosystem at the U - one that links research, clinical expertise, technology commercialization, entrepreneurship, and industry engagement. The university's innovation ecosystem brings together resources across campus to help ideas move from discovery toward use.
Through resources such as the Technology Licensing Office, Center for Medical Innovation, Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute and Doman Innovation Studio, the university supports innovators at multiple stages. Students can test early ideas. Faculty can explore the commercial potential of new discoveries. Researchers and entrepreneurs can connect with mentors, investors, industry partners, and commercialization pathways.
That ecosystem is also shaped by Utah's broader innovation economy. The university reports $781.9 million in FY2025 research funding and $1.6 billion in statewide economic output from research. It is home to a top-10 entrepreneurship program and has been ranked No. 1 nationally for likelihood of producing unicorn startup founders.
Together, those strengths give the U a distinctive role: a flagship research university with the scale, partnerships and entrepreneurial culture to help ideas move quickly from campus into the marketplace.
“Biomedical innovation takes clear pathways, trusted partners and strong support systems,” said Jason Young, senior director of commercialization. “At the University of Utah, those connections help promising ideas move toward patients, companies and communities. This ranking reflects the strength of that approach and the national momentum behind it.”
Momentum with a purpose
The Cure Innovation Index gives the U an external marker for something already visible across campus: the university is building more ways for research to move.
For faculty and students, that means clearer paths from early ideas to patents, companies, partnerships and clinical use. For industry partners and investors, it means a stronger front door into the U’s biomedical research pipeline. For Utah, it means a flagship research university helping turn scientific strength into health solutions, companies and economic growth.
The U’s No. 27 national ranking is not the finish line. It is a signal that the university’s innovation engine is gaining speed and that more biomedical ideas developed here have a better chance of moving farther, faster.
