Tonight, March 20, two professors from the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering (COE) will receive Innovation Awards at the annual awards event hosted by the Pacific Coast Business Times. The event takes place at the Santa Barbara Hilton hotel.

Umesh Mishra, dean of the College of Engineering, professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, entrepreneur, and world-renowned expert on the semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) and its role in power electronics, will receive one Innovation Award. Cadense, a company co-founded by Tyler Susko, an associate teaching professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department (ME) whose startup company, will also receive an award for its innovation in creating  a shoe to aid people who experience foot drop.

Mishra, who became the eighth dean of the COE in 2023 after thirty-three years at UCSB, is a true innovator. He has co-founded two companies — Nitres, in 1996, the first to develop GaN-based LEDs and transistors. It was acquired by Cree, now Wolfspeed. Transphorm, his other company, was founded in 2007, specializes in GaN-based high-voltage power conversion applications, and has generated more than one thousand patents and applications. The company went public in 2020.

Mishra has brought that same innovative spirit to the dean’s office, generating new programs to benefit staff and faculty and continuing to serve as a friendly and approachable leader who is always ready to stop for a few words with faculty, students, or staff.

Just over a year ago, after nine years of design and testing, some in partnership with UCSB mechanical engineering associate professor Elliott Hawkes, Susko, who also serves as undergraduate vice chair and capstone instructor in the ME, co-founded Cadense with the intention of helping the millions of people in the United States who experience foot drop, an inability when walking to avoid scuffing the ground when bringing one foot forward through the air to take the next step.

Most people who experience the condition rely on a simple brace called an ankle foot orthosis, which locks the foot into a position right angled to the ankle, so that it cannot drop. Hawkes joined Susko, who worked on rehabilitative robots while pursuing his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to come up with an actual shoe that does the same thing, looks like an ordinary running show, and gets excellent results. Cadense and its innovative shoe are allowing users to step into a brand-new world of possibility.