The journey of transforming complex, high-level university research into practical, real-world solutions is a long and challenging process. However, the University of Washington’s CoMotion program has proven remarkably adept at helping academic innovators bridge this gap. Recently, CoMotion announced its latest cohort of ten groundbreaking startups that have successfully secured UW-licensed intellectual property over the past year. Spanning critical areas like healthcare, public education, and climate resilience, these new ventures join a rich legacy of entrepreneurship. Over the past three decades, CoMotion and its predecessor programs have championed 310 deep-tech companies, with more than a third remaining active today. Demonstrating strong investor confidence in UW’s intellectual pipeline, these active businesses have successfully secured $1.8 billion in funding over just the last five years.
Among the newly launched companies, several are focused on refining medical hardware and diagnostic procedures to improve patient comfort, safety, and clinical precision. CathConnect, co-founded by Joelle Tudor and Michael Malone, addresses a widely overlooked hospital hazard by introducing a urinary catheter designed to unplug safely if accidentally pulled, potentially preventing hundreds of thousands of traumatic injuries annually. In the realm of diagnostics, DetellaDx is utilizing advanced single-cell technology and artificial intelligence to catch early-stage cancers with unprecedented accuracy, specifically focusing first on women with genetic risks for ovarian cancer. Additionally, Prosthetic Fit 360, established by bioengineering alumnus Conor Lanahan, is employing advanced trilateration sensors to measure distances inside lower-limb prosthetics, promising to drastically improve comfort and structural fit for amputees.
A major theme in this year’s cohort is the strategic application of artificial intelligence to optimize human processes, ranging from classroom instruction to clinical communication. Colleague AI, developed by education professor Min Sun, provides K-12 teachers with intuitive AI integration and chatbot assistants to streamline lesson planning and administrative duties, backed by a massive federal research grant. Meanwhile, Bellevue-based KeenSight Health leverages artificial intelligence through its Clinical Intelligence Engine. Co-founded by clinical experts Ian Bennett, Misbah Keen, and Larry Mauksch, the setup analyzes doctor-patient conversations and cross-references medical records to give clinicians immediate, actionable feedback on their communication style, enriching the doctor-patient relationship.
Other innovators are utilizing technology to bring clinical-grade neurological monitoring and mental health tracking directly to patients in non-invasive ways. Nanosync Labs, led by mechanical engineering graduate Viggy Sakthivelpathi, has developed painless, wearable physical sensors that track sleep patterns and changes in brain pressure, helping clinicians spot neurological disorders and traumatic brain injuries early. For cognitive diagnostics, Precision Cognition Labs offers an online evaluation tool that identifies mild cognitive impairment and tracks memory decline over time. Established as a joint venture with the University of Groningen and co-founded by professor Andrea Stocco, this platform allows patients to easily perform mental wellness checks from home, bypassing the need for frequent, stressful, and expensive in-person appointments.
The final group of startups leverages data-driven insights to protect vulnerable populations, optimize drug discovery, and safeguard our environment. PEAR-Net Society provides a vital repository for medical professionals seeking to understand how certain medications, vaccines, or environmental pollutants might affect fetal development during pregnancy. By combining two legendary databases, including the famed Teratogen Information System, they empower doctors to make safer clinical decisions. In the lab, Copenhagen-based Skape Bio, co-founded by Chris Norn alongside Nobel laureate David Baker, applies artificial intelligence to design custom therapies targeting G protein-coupled receptors on cell membranes, opening doors for highly specialized new medicines.
Lastly, addressing the global ecological crisis, Climate Solutions International offers a software platform designed to help municipal governments map out the carbon footprints, overall costs, and climate resilience of their future infrastructure projects. Created by urban planning professor Jan Whittington, whose methodologies have already been utilized across hundreds of global cities, the startup was recently selected for CoMotion’s prestigious Climate Tech Incubator. Collectively, these ten startups represent a beautiful synthesis of academic rigor and empathetic, human-centered design. By taking complex ideas out of laboratories and classrooms and placing them directly into the hands of teachers, doctors, patients, and city planners, the University of Washington continues to prove that the best innovations are those that actively improve our daily lives.
