BERKELEY, CA (September 4, 2024) -- Today, Berkeley's own Dr. Ashok Gadgil (Ph.D. '79) was featured in the Bayh-Dole Coalition's second annual "Faces of American Innovation" report for his role in developing a powerful light-based water disinfector.
Dr. Gadgil and four other honorees will accept the Bayh-Dole Coalition's American Innovator Award on September 18 in Washington, D.C.
“I am greatly pleased and honored to receive this recognition. This award truly illustrates how the Bayh-Dole Act can benefit society. It empowers researchers receiving federal research funding to push the inventions to commercialization and societal impact,” said Gadgil, UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering and retired senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab)’s Energy Technologies Area. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
With the help of funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Dr. Gadgil developed and refined UV Waterworks -- a portable device that can purify about 4 gallons of water per minute. Berkeley Lab patented the early-stage technology to ensure the private sector had an incentive to commercialize it. Later, Gadgil helped found a company, WaterHealth International, which licensed the invention for further development.
"Dr. Gadgil's revolutionary work has helped provide millions of people around the world with access to clean, reliable drinking water," said Joseph P. Allen, executive director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition. "But without the Bayh-Dole Act, which granted universities the right to patent and license publicly funded discoveries made on their campuses, this literally life-saving innovation might not have been possible."
Full report: https://bayhdolecoalition.org/FOAI2024
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About the University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley, is consistently rated the world’s top public university. The flagship of the 10-campus University of California system, it was chartered in 1868 with a mission to excel in teaching, research and public service. Enrolling more than 42,000 undergraduate and graduate students, the campus has more than 1,500 full-time and 500 part-time faculty members in more than 130 academic departments that offer more than 350 degree programs. The faculty's outstanding research achievements and scholarship so far have led to 26 Nobel Prizes, and an additional 35 Nobel Prizes have been won by alumni.