May 15, 2006 – Utah’s cutting-edge technologies will be on display Wednesday May 17 as inventors, researchers, entrepreneurs and representatives of startup companies gather for the seventh annual Edison Showcase.

University of Utah President Michael K. Young will deliver the keynote address – titled “High Tech as a Driver for Utah”s Economy” – during the event’s noon luncheon.

The Edison Showcase will be held from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Sheraton City Centre Hotel, 150 W. 500 South in Salt Lake City. The event is hosted by the university’s Utah Engineering Experiment Station.

“The Utah community has a great history of innovation – TV, synthetic diamonds, artificial organs,” says Terry Chatwin, the experiment station’s director. “The goals of the Edison Showcase are to identify new, innovative technologies coming out of our universities and businesses, and to bring our state’s inventors together with our entrepreneurs and investors.”

State Science Advisor Greg Jones will welcome those attending the conference at 10 a.m. More than 40 of the best innovative technologies from universities, small businesses and laboratories in Utah and the Intermountain West will be on display from 10:10 a.m. to noon, and again from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

In addition to Young’s keynote address, the noon luncheon will feature:

• Presentation of the 2006 Pathfinder Award for a major leader in technology to Dinesh Patel, managing director of the vSpring Capital venture capital company and a founder of TheraTech Inc., which made drug-delivery patches worn on the skin and which was purchased by Watson Pharmaceuticals.


• Announcement of the winners of the fourth annual Stoel Rives Utah Innovation Awards, which recognize significant high-tech innovations and the Utah companies and laboratories that created them.


• Presentation of the Showcase Technology Awards, recognizing technologies with the greatest potential for commercialization among those displayed at the event.

Sponsors of this year’s Edison Showcase include the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, Stoel Rives LLP Attorneys at Law, Battelle, vSpring Capital, Grow Utah Ventures, Utah Manufacturing Extension Partnership, the University of Utah Technology Commercialization Office and Connect magazine, among others.

For more information, call the Utah Engineering Experiment Station at (801) 581-6348 or go to http://www.utah.edu/uees/Edison/Edison_home.html

A list of finalists for the Stoel Rives Utah innovation Awards is available at http://www.stoel.com/showrelease.aspx?Show=1898