Biohive’s 2026 Best of Biohive Awards Gala: Spotlighting Utah’s leaders in life sciences and healthcare innovation

BioHive

//Jan 20, 2026

Utah’s strategic advantage: Leading across the life sciences

Unlike many regional clusters that specialize in only one or two subsectors, Utah is one of the few markets in the U.S. with critical mass spanning all four subsegments of life sciences: medical devices, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals & therapeutics, and digital health & health IT.

2025 Best of BioHive award winners represented every category across Utah’s life sciences ecosystem. This convergence of sectors enables Utah companies to build integrated, cross-disciplinary solutions that reflect the future of medicine.

According to a study from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah Utah’s life sciences industry contributes over $22 billion annually to state GDP (5.1% of Utah’s GDP), supports more than 180,000 jobs, (2.7% of Utah’s workforce) and has seen 5.1% annual employment growth rate from 2012 to 2022, among the highest in the country. Another study by CBRE shows that the Salt Lake City Metropolitan Area makes up 1.4% of medtech talent in the U.S. despite accounting for only 0.0037% of the U.S. population.

Join us in celebrating the incredible impact of Utah’s life sciences companies & leaders in our home state, and beyond.

The Best of BioHive Awards Gala is happening on April 16th, 2026 from 6:00PM - 9:00PM. Join us at The Depot in Salt Lake City for a night of celebration, recognition and community.

Best of BioHive 2025

Last year BioHive debuted their awards ceremony on February 20th with a night of celebration, heartfelt moments and community impact. Read below to explore 2025 Best of BioHive winners and how their work impacts our local life sciences ecosystem, and beyond.

Researcher of the Year: Nusano

“Nusano is undertaking a very ambitious project in which we are developing one of the highest average power particle accelerators in the United States. Approximately 2 in 5 Americans will get diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime; here at Nusano we believe that supply chains shouldn’t determine what treatments patients get.” - Austin Cao, Director of Mechanical Engineering at Nusano

Storyteller of the Year: Recursion

“The energy that we created as a bunch of underdogs from Utah is something that I really want to sustain. So, I work to inform, engage and connect our employees so that they can do the best work of their lives. I have always wanted to connect people, and do so for something that is going to create good in the world.” - Katherine Matsumoto, Communications/Culture Fellow at Recursion

Mentor of the Year: Myriad Genetics

“I have engineers that are in their first year of engineering and some that have been doing it for over a decade and you just need to meet each one where they are at. A good mentor has to first and foremost listen to the fullness of the situation that they are helping out with. You can’t be too quick to answer until you really understand what the person you are helping is trying to navigate.” - Mark Szczepanski, Senior Software Engineering Manager at Myriad Genetics

Community Partner of the Year: Intermountain Healthcare

“I’ve always been passionate about improving the health of my community. I grew up in a family that volunteered and so I took that into my career. Being able to work at Intermountain Health, where our mission is helping people live the healthiest lives possible, everyday I get to think about how we can make people healthier and how we can make our community better.” - Lisa Nichols, VP of Community Health at Intermountain Health

Visionary of the Year: Halia Therapeutics

“It’s been a passion from the very earliest days of my life that I wanted to make a difference in this world. I want to make sure other people’s mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers are around longer to have relationships. And that’s really what motivates me, that’s what drives me.” - David Bearss, President/CEO at Halia Therapeutics

Customer Advocate of the Year: Extreme Motus

“Together, we [Sam Durst and Ryan Grassley] go on a lot of adventures to show how our product makes nature wheelchair accessible. With the wheelchair we can now go out together to places like skateparks and we are able to just have so much more fun together. I want Sam to be able to enjoy his life; the most important thing to me is to keep Sam laughing, keep Sam having adventures and inspire other people to go out there and have those same experiences.” - Ryan Grassley, Chief Marketing Officer at Extreme Motus

People First Award: Denali Therapeutics

“Denali’s mission is to defeat neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s and rare lysosomal storage disorders. The work is so meaningful because we have the potential to really change the lives of patients and their caregivers and families.” - Leah Frautschy, VP of Clinical Manufacturing at Denali Therapeutics

Patient Advocate of the Year: Blackrock Neurotech

“At Blackrock Neurotech we are developing brain-computer interfaces to restore function for patients with neurological diagnoses. The versatility of this technology is so exciting and has the potential to impact future patients and really the world in immeasurable and unimaginable ways.” - Shana Melby, Clinical Staff Engineer at Blackrock Neurotech

Community Impact Award: ARUP Laboratories

“ARUP deals with about 80,000 patient samples every day; we are one of the four largest reference laboratories in the country right here in our own backyard [Salt Lake City]. We are now influencing laboratory medicine for the better, for the entire country.” - Andy Theurer, CEO at ARUP Laboratories

Ecosystem Excellence Award: Altitude Lab

“We are a unique community where startup founders can collaborate with each other, can learn from each other in building the new future of healthcare innovation in our region. Utah has been known as an emerging life science hub for the past 20, 30 years, but there has been a lack of startup infrastructure and that’s what Altitude Lab was created to address, to lower the barrier of launching a healthcare startup in our region.” - Kapil Sharma, Director of Partner & Investor Relations at Altitude Lab

Women in Technology and Science Award: Seek Labs

“I’m very proud of our workforce; we have an incredible group of women at Seek Labs. 58% of our company are women and not only are they women who are passionate innovators and brilliant scientists, but they are also a group of people who are so focused on global health and actually realizing our company mission.” - Bridget Baldwin, Director of Communications at Seek Labs

Rookie of the Year: Wasatch BioLabs

“Our CEO, Chad Pollard, who came out of BYU, had some ideas of how to make a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease and as he was developing this, he decided to put together a company. We have developed and started to put together clinical laboratory certifications. To be able to help other people is the big passion among those that work for our company.” - Ryan Barney, Lab Manager at Wasatch BioLabs

University Student of the Year: Henry Crandall

“The idea for launching a BioHive student chapter came from looking around on campus here and seeing so many talented students, and then looking down in the valley and seeing a lot of really cool life science companies too, and it felt like there wasn’t a great connection between them. My research focuses on wearable health monitors and using electricity to monitor health in the body.” - Henry Crandall, PhD Candidate at University of Utah

BioHive Week

The Best of BioHive Awards Gala is one of ten industry events happening during this year’s BioHive Week: April 13th - 17th. BioHive Week is Utah’s annual celebration of life sciences and healthcare innovation, combining flagship events BioHive Live and the Best of BioHive Awards Gala with week-long community and partner-led programming.

Join the BioHive ecosystem in celebrating the hard work, innovation and community impacts made in the past year. Visit https://www.biohive.com/biohive-week/ to learn more about each event and register today.