Award for Innovation in Healthcare & Bioscience
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
Accepting nominations for local innovators for the 2025 awardee until March 17, 2025.
Nominations for national innovators for the 2025 award are now closed.
Honoring Leaders of Healthcare Innovation
The BioMedSA Award for Innovation in Healthcare and Bioscience celebrates local and national innovators in the healthcare and bioscience industry, including patient care, education, research and development, leadership, public policy and medical technology.
Event Details
September 9, 2025
5:30 – 7:00pm
Networking / Cocktails
7:00 – 8:00pm
Dinner & Award Presentation
8:00 – 9:00pm
Networking
Members: $200/person
Non-Members: $250/person
The Tobin Center for the Performing Arts
100 Auditorium Cir
San Antonio, TX 78205
2024 Innovation Award Remarks
San Antonio Medical Foundation
UT Health San Antonio
2025 BioMedSA Innovation Award Honoree
2025 BioMedSA Award for Innovation in Healthcare and Bioscience
Larry Schlesinger, M.D.
Championing the biomedical industry and its contributions to the lives of the citizens of San Antonio, BioMedSA has selected its 2025 Innovation in Healthcare and Bioscience Awardee. BioMedSA named Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) President/CEO and Professor Larry Schlesinger, M.D., as this year’s honoree. Positive disruptors are born of curiosity and vision, and as a physician-scientist Schlesinger brought both to Texas in 2017. He also brought little patience for incremental change, aiming to move science forward faster for the sake of patients and society.
2025 BioMedSA Lifetime Achievement Award
2025 BioMedSA Lifetime Achievement Award
George Hernández, J.D.
Championing leadership in and advancement of the biomedical industry throughout the region, BioMedSA has selected George B. Hernández, Jr., JD, the visionary former President and CEO of University Health as its 2025 Innovation in Healthcare and Bioscience Lifetime Achievement Awardee. BioMedSA recognizes his decades-long commitment to public health, community service, and health care innovation in South Texas and welcomes the community to celebrate Hernández at its annual awards dinner Sept. 9, 2025 at The Tobin Center for the Performing Arts.
2025 Sponsors
Presenting Sponsors
Diamond Sponsors
Gold Sponsor
Silver Sponsors
Corporate Sponsors
Broadway Bank
Higginbotham
Henry M. Jackson Foundation
Jefferson Bank
San Antonio Chamber of Commerce
The Health Cell
VelocityTX
Recipients
- 2025 – Larry Schlesinger, M.D., infectious disease researcher and organizational leader
- 2024 – Jason McLellan , Ph.D., structural biologist
- 2023 – Sunil Ahuja, M.D., infectious disease and immune system researcher
- 2021/2 – Robert Ward, Ph.D., serial biomaterials inventor and entrepreneur
- 2020 – Rena Bizios, Ph.D., research in cell-material interactions and biomedical engineering pioneer
- 2019 – Stephen Badylak, D.V.M., Ph.D., M.D., discovered the use of the extracellular matrix
- 2018 – Alan Peterson, Ph.D., ABPP, the nation’s foremost research leader in combat-related PTSD
- 2017 – Leonard Pinchuk, Ph.D., D.Sc. prolific biomaterials scientist and inventor
- 2016 – George E. Peoples, Jr., M.D., FACS, cancer immunotherapy pioneer
- 2015 – W.E. (William Esco) Moerner, Ph.D., Nobel Prize-winning chemist
- 2014 – Francisco G. Cigarroa, M.D., nationally-renowned pediatric transplant surgeon
- 2013 – Robert S. Langer, Sc.D., world-renowned engineer, inventor and entrepreneur in tissue engineering and biomaterials
- 2012 – Larry Miller, M.D., pioneer of leading intraosseous vascular access technology
- 2011 – Leroy Hood, M.D., Ph.D., biologist and inventor of numerous scientific instruments
- 2010 – C. Mauli Agrawal, Ph.D., founded biomedical engineering degree program at UTSA
- 2009 – Dean Kamen, internationally acclaimed inventor and founder of DEKA and FIRST
- 2008 – Robert Campbell, M.D., Melvin Smith, M.D., and Kaye Wilkins, M.D., pediatric orthopedic inventors
- 2007 – Karen Davis, Ph.D., children’s health assessment program
- 2006 – Julio Palmaz, M.D., inventor of the first commercially successful intravascular stent
Lifetime Achievement Award
- 2025 – George Hernandez, J.D., public health leadership
- 2023 – William Henrich, M.D., medical, institutional and community leadership
- 2018 – Basil A. Pruitt, Jr. M.D., one of the founding fathers of modern trauma and burn medicine
