PAST 38 BY 38 RECIPIENTS
Rush Bartlett
"Until coming to Purdue I always thought I wanted to be an inventor. While at Purdue I was introduced to the word - Entrepreneur - and I was hooked. My time at Purdue prepared me to do everything I have been able to do since. I would have done my MBA and PhD at Purdue but at the time that wasn't allowed - so I had to do an MBA at Indiana University while completing my PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Purdue (in a total of four years for both degrees). At Purdue I had the opportunity to take the Biomedship graduate course and enter multiple new venture creation competitions, winning real money and gaining invaluable experience that spring boarded my entrepreneurial career. Without that Purdue STEM Innovation focused experience my career would easily be a decade behind where I am now. After Purdue my experience was recognized by Stanford where I was accepted to the prestigious Biodesign postdoctoral program and the rest is history."
Rush Bartlett | Biomedical Engineering
Entrepreneur / Executive / Lecturer / Consultant, Self /University of Texas / Stanford / Startup
Rush Bartlett is a five-time founder, serial entrepreneur, and corporate executive. He is transparent about his first
startup — LyoGo — which failed due to poor market adoption while he was a Purdue student. Since then, his next two
companies were acquired. Awair Inc., a device to make endotracheal tubes more comfortable to reduce delirium, was
acquired by Cook Medical in 2015 and Primo Lacto, a breastfeeding tool for mothers that has helped more than 100,000
premature infants, was acquired by Lansinoh Laboratories, in 2018. His fourth company, Vynca, is a technology-enabled
palliative care services company that supports patients with chronic or complex illness. Vynca currently employs close
to 150 people, has helped more than one million patients, and is used in hundreds of hospitals. His fifth venture,
Sluice AI, leverages the world-renowned Stanford Biodesign innovation process to empower individuals at dozens of
organizations globally, offering a scalable platform that transforms anyone into a master innovator, drawing from years
of experience in corporate consulting on needs-driven innovation. To date, he has been named as an inventor on more than
100 U.S. patents, including 32 that have already been issued and he is the author of Hidden Wombat: How Executives
Innovate that ended 2023 as #1 new release in Medical Technology Books on Amazon.
Through his management consulting practice since 2014, he has taught more than 5,000 employees at Fortune 500 companies
the needs-driven innovation process. He is also the Associate Director of Corporate Education at Stanford University's
Mussallem Center for Biodesign, where he completed a post-doctoral fellowship, and is a founding partner of 4i, the
Biodesign Alumni Angel Investing Cooperative. He is also a long time executive strategy consultant at Dexcom, board
member of Watershed Therapeutics, corporate strategy advisor for Noctrix Health, and former Chief Product Officer at
Lansinoh.
"Without that Purdue innovation-focused education, my career would easily be a decade behind. Before coming to Purdue I
never heard the word Entrepreneurship - I just thought what I wanted to be was an inventor," Bartlett said.