Startup of the Year: Trace AQ
Trace AQ, a U spinout, delivers advanced forecasting and air quality solutions to provide accurate and reliable intelligence to communities, corporations and health care systems, targeting an issue especially prominent in Salt Lake City. These advanced forecasts allow Trace AQ’s customers to adjust their outdoor lifestyles around the times when local air quality will be the best, maintaining their respiratory health and safety.
The company started as a National Science Foundation project in the U’s Department of Chemical Engineering, with several of its team members focusing their research on wildfire behavior and smoke. Co-founded by atmospheric scientists Derek Mallia, Taylor (Kai) Wilmot — both from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Science along with Heather Holmes and Victor Gill, (the latter joining as the founding CEO), Trace AQ has translated the team’s academic insight in atmospheric modeling, air quality analysis and wildfire behavior into a successful commercial platform that directly improves the respiratory health of their clients.
A major cause of mortality
"Poor air quality is a major cause of mortality across the U.S. (>50,000), which exceeds that of all natural hazards (~500), combined,” says Mallia whose research centers on advancing the understanding of extreme air quality events to improve the predictability of these events. Much of the research Mallia, Holmes, and Wilmot has done at the U was used to develop a state-of-the-art air quality forecast system for North America. This model was commercialized as part of an existing NSF project (CREATE-AQI) and serves as the backbone of the forecast operations at Trace AQ. “The ultimate goal of this work,” says Mallia, “is to provide the public with timely and actionable air quality forecasts to reduce exposure to air pollution."
The spinout has also worked with the Venture Hub’s Energy Accelerator to build their business model, closing their $1.25 million seed round and moving their research beyond the lab into real-world applications. In commercializing their cutting-edge translational technology, Trace AQ has well-earned the Startup of the Year Award.
Founders of the Year: Vahe Bandarian and Karsten Eastman
Department of Chemistry’s faculty member Vahe Bandarian and associate researcher Karsten Eastman (Ph.D. ’23) co-founded the startup Sethera Therapeutics. Their PolyMacrocyclic Peptide (pMCP) Discovery Platform revolutionized peptide-based drug discovery. The Sethera platform generates conformationally constrained chains of amino acids that bind to biological targets in the body and regulate biological processes and treat diseases from there.
Sethera Therapeutics’ pMCP Discovery Platform is designed to engage multiple targets at once, and it allows the modulation of intricate biological pathways, coupling of complex functionalities and engineering of peptides for any target or indication. .
Federal scientific support
The duo’s work started with fundamental studies on enzymatic cross-linking in peptides — basic science that only led later to the applications they are now seeing through Sethera. It was research done with support from the National Institutes of Health, says Bandarian, professor of chemistry and associate provost for Mission-Aligned Planning at the U, “underscoring the role of the federal scientific support in discoveries. We formed the company to translate the scientific discoveries from my lab at the U towards hopefully significant societal impact.”
This platform, says Eastman who serves as Sethera’s CEO, “lets us build highly constrained peptides that can be engineered to engage complex biology, sometimes across multiple targets, while dialing in properties that matter for real therapeutics. The recognition means a lot because it underscores the University of Utah’s role in translating rigorous chemistry and biochemistry into tools that partners can use to tackle hard problems in human health.”
Bandarian and Eastman’s technology places their company in a unique position in drug discovery. They have both leveraged their many years of biochemical research on enzymatic transformations at the U to commercialize and translate their findings, ranking them among the most notable researchers of the year.
Lifetime Achievement Award: Bob Palais
Bob Palais, research professor in the Department of Mathematics at the U, has devoted decades of experience to his study of DNA melting analysis. His long-term efforts and work with the Wittwer Lab have led to the development of high-resolution melting methods for DNA analysis that provide a rapid, inexpensive means of mutation scanning, genotyping and sequence matching through the use of saturation dyes.
“I am surprised, moved and humbled to receive this recognition for what has always been a group effort and accomplishment,” said Palais at the awards event, before crediting a long list of colleagues and predecessors, teachers and graduate students, along with the Department of Mathematics where he is a faculty member.”
Innovation ecosystem
“On my very first of many hikes to this day with Carl Wittwer, Kirk Ririe and Randy Rasmussen,” said Palais to the appreciative crowd, “the discussion included something called an ‘invention disclosure’ dropped off [at] someplace called the university's Technology [Licensing] Office.” That auspicious “drop off” became a patent for a novel use of a DNA saturating dye that would revolutionize diagnostics of infectious disease and genetic variations.
On another hike up the same mountain a couple of years later, reported Palais, “I had the idea that led to my first patent with Carl Wittwer, U professor of pathology and a longtime colleague of Palais’.
Since these formative years, ARUP Labs in the U’s Research Park where much of Palais’ work was commercialized has performed 1.2 million genetic tests with the software he developed with Wittwer. Additionally, four million-plus designs have been simulated by the uMelt software he developed with data engineer Zach Dwight by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as universities and companies around the world.
“Orders of magnitude more high-resolution DNA melting analysis tests have been performed by the BioFire Diagnostics [now bioMérieux] platforms,” added Palais. "The rapid contact tracing these tests enabled made it possible to tamp down incipient epidemics like Ebola, preventing potential pandemics.”
“The Technology Licensing Office used to have a quote from me on a poster in the entry," concluded Palais, “expressing my immense appreciation and praise for the support you all provide for faculty and student inventors to facilitate entrepreneurial collaborations that has built a thriving regional technology innovation ecosystem. That gratitude has only grown stronger.”