SUNY Invests $400,000 in Quantum Sensors, AI Cancer Diagnostics and Burn-Scanning Tech

The State University of New York has announced its latest round of seed funding through the Technology Accelerator Fund, distributing 400,000 dollars to faculty inventors across five campuses in Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Stony Brook and Upstate Medical University. Chancellor John B. King Jr. unveiled the Class of 2026 awards, which span an unusually broad technical range: room-temperature quantum sensing, artificial intelligence for cancer biomarker prediction, lipid nanoparticle delivery of RNA therapeutics, gallium oxide semiconductors for electric vehicles and data centers, non-invasive cardiopulmonary monitoring, terahertz imaging of burn injuries, an oral therapy for circadian rhythm disorders, and a lung-targeted drug formulation for acute respiratory distress syndrome. The fund occupies a distinctive niche in the research financing landscape. It is designed to bridge the so-called valley of death between a laboratory discovery and a commercial product, supporting feasibility studies, prototyping and testing that demonstrate an innovation has genuine market potential before private investors or strategic partners commit larger sums.

The fund operates through a highly competitive process that weighs several explicit criteria, including the availability of intellectual property protection, marketability, commercial potential, technical feasibility and the breadth of a project’s impact. Since its launch in 2011, the program has invested more than 5.1 million dollars and advanced the commercial readiness of 99 innovations born at SUNY campuses. That seed money has catalyzed an additional 41 million dollars in follow-on investment from government agencies, industry licensees and early-stage investors, a leverage ratio that underscores why university systems increasingly treat translational funding as core infrastructure rather than a peripheral perk. Chancellor King framed the program in sweeping terms, describing SUNY as a national leader in interdisciplinary research that develops state-of-the-art technologies, saves lives, transforms industries and serves the public good. The Board of Trustees echoed the sentiment, noting that SUNY research uses revolutionary breakthroughs to fuel economies and empower communities throughout New York State and beyond.

Among the most technically ambitious awards is a project at the University at Albany led by Dr. Spyros Galis, who is building a scalable platform for quantum sensing and imaging that operates at room temperature. Current quantum photonic devices typically require cryogenic cooling to function properly, a constraint that has limited their widespread adoption since refrigeration hardware adds cost, bulk, complexity and substantial energy consumption to any deployment. By re-engineering quantum photonic platforms to work without cooling, the approach promises to reduce all of those barriers simultaneously, opening the door to real-world applications in sensing and imaging that would be impractical if each device needed a cryostat. Quantum sensors exploit delicate quantum states to measure physical quantities with extraordinary precision, and removing the thermal bottleneck is widely regarded as a prerequisite for moving such instruments out of specialized laboratories and into hospitals, factories and field instruments.

Also at Albany, Dr. Gary Saulnier is developing a product called CurrentView, a bedside monitoring system that provides real-time, non-invasive, three-dimensional monitoring of pulmonary perfusion and ventilation. The clinical target is the care of neonatal and pediatric patients with congenital heart disease and other cardiopulmonary conditions, populations in which complete, continuous data can be decisive for treatment quality. The system uses non-invasive electrical measurements to give caregivers a continuous assessment of lung function, drastically improving their ability to make data-informed decisions at the bedside. In intensive care settings for the smallest patients, where repeated imaging or invasive sampling carries real risk, a continuous non-invasive window into how blood and air are moving through the lungs represents a meaningful shift in the information available to clinicians during critical moments.

At Binghamton University, Dr. Nancy Guo has developed ClinSegAI, a secure artificial intelligence platform designed to predict molecular biomarkers directly from standard pathology imaging. Turnaround time for treatment decisions remains a major roadblock to efficient cancer care, because molecular characterization of a tumor often requires additional laboratory workflows that delay therapy. ClinSegAI applies machine learning to detect biomarkers within routine histopathology images, rapidly reducing the time needed to inform treatment decisions and marking what the university describes as a major improvement in the standard of care. Because the model works from images that pathologists already produce, it could in principle slot into existing clinical workflows rather than demanding new tissue collection, and the platform’s emphasis on security addresses the data governance concerns that frequently slow the adoption of medical AI systems.

Binghamton’s second award goes to Dr. John Fetse, who is conducting in vivo validation of engineered lipid nanoparticles for RNA therapeutic delivery. RNA therapeutics offer promising treatment avenues for a wide variety of diseases, but current lipid nanoparticle methods suffer from poor delivery efficiency and raise toxicity concerns that limit proper dosing. Fetse’s innovation incorporates amino acids directly into the lipid molecules themselves, a chemical modification that reduces toxicity risk while improving delivery rates. The approach matters because delivery remains the central bottleneck of the entire RNA medicine field: therapeutic RNA is fragile, quickly degraded, and must be escorted into the right cells in sufficient quantities for a meaningful dose while avoiding harmful accumulation elsewhere. Validating such formulations in living organisms is the essential step toward demonstrating that the chemistry performs outside the controlled conditions of cell culture.

The University at Buffalo is home to two projects that pair semiconductor engineering with human health. Dr. Uttam Singisetti is developing gallium oxide semiconductor transistors for electric vehicle and AI power applications, responding to surging demand from electrified transport and the data center boom for electronics that deliver electricity more efficiently. Gallium oxide is a wide-bandgap material, and transistors built from it can handle high voltages and switch power with less wasted energy than conventional silicon devices, improving performance while lowering costs. The second Buffalo project, led by Dr. Margarita L. Dubocovich, targets advanced phase circadian disorders, in which the body’s internal biological clock is misaligned with a person’s daily schedule or environment. Such misalignment elevates the risk of sleep disruption, cardiovascular disease, depression, cancer and chronic pain. Dubocovich is working toward a first-in-class, orally administered therapeutic that realigns the underlying clock mechanism and restores healthy rhythms, rather than merely masking symptoms with sedatives or stimulants.

At Stony Brook University, Dr. M. Hassan Arbab has developed a handheld, portable terahertz spectral imaging scanner for the diagnosis and triage of skin burns. Burn patients frequently undergo multiple reconstructive surgeries because current clinical techniques assess burn depth with only around 60 to 65 percent accuracy, forcing surgeons to make consequential decisions with incomplete information. Arbab’s device achieves 93 to 95 percent or better accuracy, a dramatic expansion of diagnostic capability that allows clinicians to determine which burns will heal on their own and which require intervention. Terahertz radiation sits between microwave and infrared frequencies and is sensitive to the water content and structural changes in tissue, which makes it well suited to distinguishing viable from non-viable skin without contact or ionizing radiation. Stony Brook President Andrea Goldsmith highlighted the device as an exemplar of the campus’s record of translating research breakthroughs into real-world medical diagnostics.

The final award supports Dr. Yamin Li at SUNY Upstate Medical University, who is developing a lung-targeting drug formulation for sepsis-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome, a life-threatening condition causing lung injury and breathing difficulty that affects roughly three million patients annually. Li’s formulation uses lipid nanoparticles engineered to target the lung, aiming to reduce mortality, shorten intensive care unit stays and decrease ventilator use for patients with the condition. The project addresses a critical unmet need, since treatment options for ARDS remain largely supportive. Campus leaders across the system framed the awards in similar terms: University at Albany President Havidán Rodríguez emphasized transforming promising ideas into real-world impact, Binghamton’s Anne D’Alleva pointed to safer and more effective treatments, Buffalo’s Caroline Attardo Genco cited the strength of the university’s innovation ecosystem in semiconductors and the life sciences, and Upstate’s Dr. Mantosh Dewan described the research mission as improving the human condition. Together, the nine projects illustrate how modest, well-targeted seed funding can push a diverse portfolio of early-stage technologies toward the market readiness that attracts the investors and partners needed to bring them to patients.

Subject of Research: SUNY Technology Accelerator Fund seed grants for commercializing university research technologies

Article Title: SUNY Chancellor King announces funding for groundbreaking technologies to improve lives and protect New Yorkers

Article References: SUNY Chancellor King announces funding for groundbreaking technologies to improve lives and protect New Yorkers. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

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Keywords: SUNY, Technology Accelerator Fund, quantum sensing, artificial intelligence, cancer diagnostics, lipid nanoparticles, RNA therapeutics, gallium oxide semiconductors, terahertz imaging, circadian rhythm disorders, ARDS, technology commercialization