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From the birthplace of Nike to pioneering zebrafish research, the University of Oregon has a long history of turning bold ideas into world-changing impact. For the past ten years, the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact has been helping to lead the next chapter in that tradition by accelerating research from the lab to marketplace. Same Oregon spirit. Only faster.
On Thursday, April 30, 2026, that ethos takes center stage at the tenth anniversary edition of Science Knight Out, “A Decade of Building Oregon’s Future,” a free public lecture at The John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts in downtown Eugene.
UO Vice President and Robert and Leona DeArmond Executive Director of the Knight Campus Bob Guldberg will reflect on the past decade of accelerated impact, made possible through two $500 million gifts from Penny and Phil Knight. Guldberg will offer insight into the present-day Knight Campus, which recently opened a second, 185,000-square-foot education and research facility near the intersection of Franklin Boulevard and Agate Street/Riverfront Parkway — and a look to the campus’ future of research, innovation and bioengineering-technical scientific training and its long-term impact on the state of Oregon and beyond. Two separate stories of technology moving from the lab into the world will anchor the night and bring to life the Knight Campus mission of Science Advancing Society.
The first belongs to bioengineering professor Paul Dalton and PhD student Iman von Briesen. The Bradshaw and Holzapfel Research Professor in Transformational Science and Mathematics, Dalton has spent years perfecting melt electrowriting, a 3D printing technology capable of building microscopic scaffolds that support cells as they grow into tissues and organs. Dalton will share one way his team has gotten their solutions to users — through VivoTex, a startup launched with Newberg, Ore.-based manufacturing company A-Dec and headquartered in the Knight Campus’ Papé Family Innovation Center.
Von Briesen will then share another way the Dalton lab has made this innovation accessible. A natural tinkerer with a propensity for hacking creative solutions, von Briesen helped bring melt electrowriting to labs around the world in an affordable and accessible way. This has also drawn researchers and practitioners from across the globe to Eugene and helped establish the Knight Campus as a growing hub of expertise for melt electrowriting.
The second story has a full-circle quality that feels distinctly Oregonian. Years ago, Kylie Williams saw a Science Knight Out lecture as an undergraduate student and was captivated by Bob Guldberg speaking about the power of regenerative medicine. That night helped set her on a path that eventually led to the Knight Campus, where she became the first graduate of the bioengineering PhD program and is now clinical engineering director at Penderia. Founded in Eugene, the medical device company was the first Oregon-based startup for its co-founder, Keat Ghee Ong.
Ong, a Knight Campus faculty member started his academic career as an electrical engineer at Michigan Technological University, but grew frustrated with the endless cycle of grants and papers expected of him as an academic faculty member. He relocated, sight-unseen, to the newly established Knight Campus based on the promise of getting discoveries from his lab to users faster.
When Ong arrived in Eugene in 2019 as one of the UO’s first bioengineering faculty members, the Knight Campus didn’t even have a building. Seven years later, through his startup, Ong is creating wireless, implantable sensors for surgeons performing ACL reconstructions.
Together, these five speakers tell the story of what the Knight Campus was built to do — create an ecosystem where undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, alumni and collaborators of all kinds can pursue bold ideas and get them out into the world faster.
Come be part of the tenth year of Science Knight Out and glimpse the future — where the next decade of discovery begins.
Science Knight Out, Thursday, April 30, 2026 | The Shedd Institute, 868 High Street, Eugene, OR | Free and open to the public | Doors open at 5 p.m. for community networking in the Nill Club Room | Lecture begins at 6 p.m. in the Jaqua Concert Hall | No tickets required, but we ask that you RSVP.
