2025 WARF Innovation Award finalists

Six visionary teams. Two $10,000 prizes. Celebrating research that’s shaping the future: https://www.warf.org/invent/warf-innovation-awards/

This December, WARF will honor promising innovations from the UW–Madison that advance fields like quantum engineering, cancer immunotherapy and more.

Each fall the WARF Innovation Awards recognize some of the best inventions at UW-Madison.

WARF receives hundreds of new invention disclosures each year. Of these disclosures, the WARF Innovation Award finalists are considered exceptional in the following criteria:

Criteria

• Has potential for high long-term impact
• Presents an exciting solution to a known important problem
• Could produce broad benefits for humankind

Meet the 2025 WARF Innovation Award finalists:

Soybeans engineered for color and brain health
Hiroshi Maeda, Soyoung Jung, Ray Collier, Shawn Kaeppler and Heidi Kaeppler

Dynamic GPU scheduling boosts AI performance
Ming Liu

New light-extracting structure could boost quantum device performance
Mikhail Kats, Jennifer Choy and Minjeong Kim

Ecofriendly herbicide offers targeted weed control
Paige Henning, Benjamin B. Minkoff, Ph.D. and Michael Sussman

Targeted eye therapy could improve treatment for vision loss
David Gamm and Celia Bisbach

Recyclable protein degraders could boost cancer immunotherapy
Quanyin Hu and Peixin Liu