We are proud to announce that two teams led by faculty in our department earned top awards in the 2025 Innovation Challenge hosted by the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM), in collaboration with MIT Hacking Medicine.
Held during the AAPM’s PainConnect 2025 meeting in Austin, Texas (April 2–6), the challenge invited innovators from around the world to present cutting-edge solutions aimed at transforming pain care. Six finalist teams competed in a live, Shark Tank-style pitch competition.
First Place – Soubhash Jain Award: Personalized Pain Treatment (PPT)
The PPT team, led by Ajay D. Wasan, MD, MSc, MA, Professor and Vice Chair for Pain Medicine and Co-Director of our Center for Innovation in Pain Care, received the top honor for developing patented machine learning algorithms that personalize pain interventions based on the multidimensional characteristics of each patient’s pain syndrome. The project team members included Indrani Halder, PhD, MBA, President, Fortuna Solutions, and Greg Cooper, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor and UPMC Endowed Chair, Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Pittsburgh.
People’s Choice – M.M. Sadie Award: Monarch Technologies, Inc.
The Monarch team, led by Trent D. Emerick, MD, MBA, FASA, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine and Bioengineering, and Program Director of our Pain Medicine Fellowship, was honored with the People’s Choice Award for their novel spinal cord stimulation solution, a fully expandable, collapsible, and retrievable hybrid lead that combines the minimally invasive approach of percutaneous leads with the stability of paddle leads. Additional team members were Youngjae Chun, PhD, Professor, and Vahid Behesti Seresht, Researcher and Graduate Student, both in the Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, as well as Gaurav Chauhan, MD, formerly a faculty member in our department.
Congratulations to Drs. Wasan and Emerick and their interdisciplinary teams!