UC Santa Cruz Chancellor’s Innovation Impact Awards: 2023 Innovator of the Year Award Holger Schmidt, Distinguished Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering and Narinder Kapany Chair of Optoelectronics received the award for his work on highly sensitive devices called optofluidic chips. His research focuses on using the chips to detect biomarkers - molecules such as DNA or proteins - that alert scientists to the presence of disease. The chips are a crucial element of real-time diagnostic and disease-monitoring devices and have a 99.8 percent accuracy.