Power of Innovation: The Bayh-Dole Coalition’s Role in American Progress
Let’s highlight with IDiyas these incredible inventors and celebrate the Power of Innovation: The Bayh-Dole Coalition’s Role in American Progress. These innovators have transformed early-stage discoveries into commercial products that have positively impacted millions of lives worldwide, demonstrating the far-reaching potential of innovation to drive change on a global scale, transforming industries and improving lives across borders.
Ashok Jagannth Gadgil
Ashok Gadgil is the Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Chair Professor of Safe Water and Sanitation and a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley.
Since summer 2023, Gadgil is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School in CEE. Earlier, Gadgil held a concurrent appointment as a Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), where he also was a Division Director for 6 years.
Gadgil received the National Medal for Technology and Innovation in 2023– the highest US honor for outstanding contributions to technology and innovation.
His invention, the UV Waterworks, was designed to disinfect drinking water using UV light at a cost of less than two cents per person annually. Initially, Gadgil considered releasing the blueprint of the UV Waterworks for free. However, after consulting with licensing experts at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he realized that patenting the invention would allow companies to invest in its mass production and distribution, ensuring greater reach and impact.
The University of California filed the patent under the Bayh-Dole Act, and in 1996, WaterHealth International licensed the technology. This move was crucial, as the patent enabled commercial backing, resulting in the system serving over 26 million people in India and Africa by 2019.
In the mid-2000s, while the Darfur region of Sudan was enduring a genocide, Gadgil turned his attention to the challenges faced by refugees. Women were often attacked when they left camps to gather firewood, a dangerous task that was necessary for cooking.
Gadgil, working with his Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory team, designed the Berkeley-Darfur Stove. This eco-friendly biomass stove was engineered to use much less firewood than traditional methods, reducing the need for long and dangerous trips to collect fuel. Like his previous invention, Gadgil ensured the technology was patented through the Bayh-Dole Act, allowing it to be produced and distributed at scale. The University of California was assigned the patent for the stove in 2009, and by 2023, more than 61,500 stoves had been distributed, primarily in Africa.
Gadgil’s work highlights the importance of patenting innovations to ensure their scalability and availability to those in need. His patented technologies, including the UV Waterworks and the Berkeley-Darfur Stove, have collectively benefited more than 100 million people worldwide. The Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed universities to patent federally funded inventions, played a key role in enabling Gadgil to leverage his research for widespread humanitarian impact.
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About The Author
Angelina Kushnarova
Angelina Kushnarova (Sverediuk) was born in Ukraine. She graduated from Ternopil Medical University with a specialization in Medicine and completed an internship in Radiology at Lviv University. She worked as a Radiologist, while also working as a web developer.