The Innovation Awards ceremony recognizes and congratulates university faculty, staff, and students who have received issued U.S. patents, trademarks and copyrights within the past year. Additionally, an outstanding inventor whose portfolio of technologies have generated significant commercialization activity, is selected as the Rainforest Innovation Fellow.

A 30-plus program is created to list each awardee and their technologies, and includes an in-depth feature on that year’s fellow. I work closely with the fellow to tell their “innovator’s journey” and explain their research areas. Pages are designed to illustrate the importance of research discoveries and their vast impact - sometimes through the development of a startup company or their impact on broader research initiatives such as the human genome project. Communicating the values of each fellow is equally important, many revolving around collaboration and the desire to do good for others through their research.