UCSF Innovation Ventures (IV) is excited to announce the appointment of Dr. Aenor Sawyer as the Executive Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I & E)
We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Aenor Sawyer to her new role and look forward to her inspiring leadership in driving innovation and entrepreneurship at UCSF Innovation Ventures. Congratulations, Dr. Sawyer, on this well-deserved appointment!
About Dr. Sawyer
In her new role, she will lead the expansion of I&E opportunities for UCSF innovators and entrepreneurs and will help expand UCSF’s vibrant Innovation Ecosystem, leveraging key engagements with external affiliates. She is currently Director of IV’s Innovator Enrichment program and is Clinical Faculty in the UCSF Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.
Throughout her healthcare career, Dr. Sawyer has emphasized ‘frontline innovation’, with a focus on developing innovators and entrepreneurs, as well as translating innovative ‘ideas into impact’. Upon joining UCSF’s Innovation Ventures in 2022, she founded the Innovator Enrichment program to optimize the UCSF Innovator experience, environment, and ecosystem. She has personal experience as an inventor, advisor, and in company formation roles across several sectors, including novel biologic ligament repair, virtual tumor board, safe mobility device, health interoperability platform, multiparametric sensing patch, smart port, and AI-enabled remote patient monitoring.
With an interest in evolving technologies, Dr Sawyer co-founded and is co-Director of UCSF’s Center for Advanced 3D+Technology. She co-founded UCSF’s Center for Digital Health Innovation and Catalyst’s Digital Health track. Dr. Sawyer is Director of UC Space Health, advancing the benefits of space environment research for terrestrial applications. She serves on the UCSF/UCB Computational Precision Health Affiliate Faculty and the UCSF Research IT Executive Committee.
Her appreciation of external alliances led to the UCSF/Cisco partnership for the development of health interoperability technologies. She has a decade of experience on EABs of Scripps Research Translational Institute with Eric Topol and the Australian National Digital Health Initiative. She is the UC CITRIS Senior Health Advisor, and former Chief Health Innovation Officer for the NASA-based Translational Research Institute for Space Health.
Dr. Sawyer’s ‘frontline innovation” work is informed by her research and clinical care. Her research publications span fields of health innovation, osteoporosis, sports medicine, remote monitoring, computational health, and Space Medicine. She combines her experience as an Orthopaedic Surgeon, Physical Therapist, and Exercise Physiologist in her current clinical care of Skeletal Health patients. She completed her MD/MS at UC Davis, Orthopaedic Surgery Residency at Stanford, and Fellowships in Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine at Harvard Orthopaedic Surgery/Boston Children’s.