Santa Cruz Works Awarded UCSC 2023 Community Changemaker

Left to right: Andrea Pesce, Doug Erickson, Chancellor Larive, Nathan Westrup, Malina Long

On May 30, 2023, UC Santa Cruz held the inaugural Chancellor’s Innovation Impact Award Program dinner. This new program celebrates the university’s talented faculty, researchers, staff, students, and community partners for their outstanding contributions to innovation and creativity. The three award categories were:

Innovator of the Year

  • Russell Corbett-Detig and his team have developed a computational tool called UShER (Ultrafast Sample Placement on Existing tRees), which has become instrumental in the fight against COVID-19. UShER allows real-time tracking of SARS-CoV-2 and helps researchers identify new virus lineages.

  • Visualizing Abolition is the nation’s most ambitious and sustained art and prison abolition initiative. The project examines the ways people see and understand issues of mass incarceration, detention, and policing in the United States and abroad, challenging the prevailing social, economic, and political worldviews that prisons promote. The initiative was developed by Dr. Gina Dent and Dr. Rachel Nelson, with support from the Mellon Foundation.

Lifetime Achievement in Innovation

  • The Lifetime Achievement in Innovation award, which acknowledges a faculty member's influential and innovative contributions with long-term societal benefits, has been bestowed upon Research Professors Emeriti of Biomolecular Engineering, David Deamer and Mark Akeson. As the co-inventors of nanopore sequencing, their pioneering work has revolutionized DNA and RNA reading, significantly influencing our understanding of human genetics. Their award includes a $5,000 grant, which they can allocate to a division, department, or lab of their choice to bolster innovative research endeavors.

Community Changemaker

  • Santa Cruz Works (“SCWorks”) has been awarded the Community Changemaker award for their remarkable contributions to regional economic prosperity in the Santa Cruz region through innovation and entrepreneurship. SCWorks has significantly aided UC Santa Cruz by enhancing awareness of their research and its global impacts, expanding SCWorks's digital footprint during the pandemic, and connecting PPE-producing companies with the university. Their efforts have helped students and innovators develop entrepreneurial skills, evident in their instrumental role in establishing CruzHacks and supporting campus startups via SCWorks's accelerator program. More than half of the first cohort were UCSC startups. Now in its fifth cohort, the program has supported more than 50 companies in starting their businesses in Santa Cruz, many from UC Santa Cruz. They also played a vital role in bringing Launchpad '22 and Blue Innovation '22 to campus, events aimed at supporting research, businesses, and stakeholders interested in water management and ocean climate solutions.

    Acceptance Speech

    “At Santa Cruz Works, we support entrepreneurs as visionaries, as dreamers who dare to see a future yet unseen and then have the courage to shape it into reality. Our goal is to foster an environment where these visionaries thrive, where UCSC innovations transform into practical solutions that enhance the lives of our community members and ultimately, contribute to the betterment of the world.

    Our aim isn't just to dream about a better Santa Cruz; we strive to make it a reality. We work relentlessly towards creating opportunities, bolstering entrepreneurs, and nurturing the entire Monterey Bay to be a hotbed of innovation—a place where ideas are born, businesses are nurtured, and communities grow and thrive.

    This award belongs to every teacher, professor, mentor, every daring entrepreneur, every disruptive startup, and every individual innovator within our community. It is a tribute to the those who foster the dreamers who then transform their visions into reality to make a better world.

    At Santa Cruz Works, we pledge to continue fueling this community spirit, offering the tools, resources, funding, and mentorship to our region. We promise to serve as a conduit, linking UCSC's innovative leadership with our local community and beyond.

    So, here's to the dreamers, the doers, and the disrupters—the entrepreneurs of our communities”.

NOTE: While this award might name a particular individual, the accomplishments by SCWorks are the team efforts of many, including: Doug Erickson, Malina Long, Matthew Swinnerton, Mark Adams, Bob Cagle, Heather Putnam, Bonnie Lipscomb and the entire Santa Cruz tech ecosystem.

Doug EricksonUCSC, Chancellor’s Innovation Impact Award Program, Community Changemaker2 Comments