Hong Hua, Invents Wearable Device to Help Patients with Central Vision Loss to See, Named TLA Inventor of the Year

On September 25, 2024, Tech Launch Arizona hosted its 2024 I-Squared Awards and Expo. Held at the Health Sciences Innovation Building at the University of Arizona, the annual event honors the university’s top inventors and startups, along with those people and organizations throughout the innovation ecosystem that support the commercialization of U of A inventions.  

"The University of Arizona is a place where we embrace grand challenges while driving social, cultural, and economic impact," said Interim Senior Vice President for Research Elliott Cheu. "I want to extend my gratitude to these entrepreneurial faculty, students, and partners whose innovation and entrepreneurship serve as shining examples of what we can achieve together." 

During the 12 years that TLA has been operating at the university, it has worked with over 3,000 invention disclosures, executed over 600 licenses for companies to bring university inventions to market, and launched over 140 startups.  

Along with awards presentations to the honorees below, the event included a strolling expo of over a dozen inventive, entrepreneurial faculty and student teams showcasing their impactful innovations and startups.  

“I-Squared is our biggest event of the year,” said TLA Associate Vice President Doug Hockstad. “While the year has brought its challenges, we’re so grateful to see so much engagement from faculty, researchers and students alike. Our honorees have all made great achievements and we’re excited to honor them. At the same time, we’re posed to grow our impact in the coming year, especially as we ramp up our Startup Wildcats team and our catalog of services to help cultivate undergraduate student entrepreneurs.” 

Inventor of the Year: Hong Hua, James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences 

The Inventor of the Year award honors a U of A innovator who has demonstrated a significant commitment to commercialization throughout their career, with a focus on activity in the past year. This year, Hong Hua, a professor at the James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences, received a great honor at the national level, as she was featured in the Bayh-Dole Coalition's 2024 "Faces of American Innovation" report and recognized along with four other innovators from across the nation at a special ceremony in Washington, D.C. on September 18, 2024. 

Hua's initial research into virtual and augmented reality, funded by a National Science Foundation grant, led to her creation of a compact, wearable eye-tracking device for late-stage ALS patients. The U of A patented the innovation, and that work attracted the attention of eSight Corporation. Building on her foundational work, Hua partnered with eSight to develop a device that allows people with central vision loss greatly improved eyesight and independence. Since launching the product in 2017, eSight has helped thousands of people with central vision loss to see. 

“This award really means a great deal to me,” Hua said. “And to me, it's not only an award for what I have done in the past … But it's more an inspiration for me to reflect and think about more about what I can do for people around me, for the community, and for society and develop technology that can help people.” 

Read the full TLA Article