Ryan Davis (LAW ’16) Honored for Veterans Tech Transfer Work

Pitt Law alumnus and technology transfer professional Ryan Davis (LAW ’16) has been awarded for his work with the Veterans Affairs (VA) Technology Transfer Program—a unit that determines which outcomes of veterans’ health-based research may have application or commercial potential in the real world.

Davis was selected as Rookie of the Year—an award for someone in a position for no more than three years. From his Washington, D.C., work site, he manages all VA tech transfer activity across a wide swath of the U.S., overseeing patent applications and looking for people within various industries to partner with VA researchers or further develop their ideas.

Recently, he filed patent applications and eventually licensed the technology for a skin-inspection device—a wireless camera with a flexible handle that transmits video to a smartphone app and allows someone to inspect the skin on the bottom of their foot, for example. The person can take video or snapshots and easily monitor their skin for diabetic ulcers or other wounds. A southern California start-up company called Habit Camera, headed by a combat-disabled Marine veteran, will roll out the product this spring.

Davis says his Pitt degree, a Juris Doctorate with a concentration in intellectual property law along with a certificate in health law, prepared him well for his profession.

“The concept behind it—taking cutting-edge technologies straight from the lab and the minds of brilliant researchers—and finding a way to get those technologies out into the world to improve the lives, and specifically the health, of the public, was one of the main reasons I actually decided to attend law school,” said Davis. He says he finds it fulfilling to be “one of the first sets of eyes on new technology.”

The award was presented by the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, a nationwide network of more than 300 labs and research centers.