When team Avisi recently stepped into an operating room at Penn, the setting was familiar. Years earlier, founder and CEO Rui Jing Jiang W’18 and her fellow student founders had stood in rooms like it to observe glaucoma surgeries while designing a new device to treat the degenerative eye disease. This time, she stepped in as the CEO of a fully formed, clinical stage medtech company: Avisi Technologies. Today, patients at Penn medicine are receiving treatment with VisiPlate, which she and her teammates first prototyped years ago as part of the Y-Prize Competition.
Back in 2017, Jiang and teammates Adarsh Battu W’18 and Brandon Kao SEAS’18 won the Y Prize, which challenges students to identify commercial applications for technologies developed at Penn. Their starting point was an ultrathin nanofilm created in Professor Igor Bargatin’s lab. Described as thin as a soap bubble but remarkably strong, the material provided the foundation for a new kind of eye implant.
“We had all experienced various eye conditions growing up,” said Jiang. “We thought, what if we could take this material and make smaller and safer implants that benefit eye health and vision?”
The team decided to focus on glaucoma, a leading cause of irreversible blindness. The disease damages the optic nerve as pressure builds inside the eye, often without early symptoms. Known treatments—like medications, laser procedures and surgery—can help control that pressure, but their effectiveness may be limited by challenges such as patient adherence, scarring or blockage. The team’s proposed implant device won the 2017 Y-Prize and $10,000 to advance the idea.
Winning the competition gave the founders an opening, but Jiang credits Penn’s wider ecosystem with helping them turn their idea into a company. Penn Medicine ophthalmologists, especially Dr. Eydie Miller-Ellis, allowed the students to observe surgeries, understand unmet needs, and learn the clinical workflow. The President’s Innovation Prize also provided crucial early funding.
Throughout their journey, the student founders drew on expertise across the University. Penn’s legal and intellectual property clinics helped them understand how to establish the company and license the technology. The Penn Health Tech Accelerator taught them about the healthcare market, while Venture Lab and Pennovation Works connected them with mentors and other entrepreneurs. And, at the Singh Center for Nanotechnology, they gained access to the facilities and technical expertise needed to refine the device.
“Being at Penn gave us a real advantage,” said Jiang. “We had access to so many resources that are critical to forming a medtech company. It gave us confidence.”
After graduating, Jiang chose to pursue Avisi full time, despite describing herself as “risk-averse.” But rather than betting on the technology alone, the team repeatedly tested its assumptions with surgeons, patients and other stakeholders.
“We were constantly pressure-testing it, considering all the angles for both patients and providers,” Jiang said. “We kept asking, would you use it?”
Her Wharton education, she added, helped the team look beyond the science and understand how the device could become a viable business.
Avisi has since progressed from prototypes and preclinical research to human studies. In a 15-patient pilot study in South Africa (called VITA), participants’ average eye pressure had fallen by 42.6 percent after 12 months. Nearly half were no longer using glaucoma medication, and no serious device related adverse events were reported. Two-year data from VITA are soon to be published at the 2026 American Academy of Ophthalmology Annual Meeting.
In 2025, the FDA authorized Avisi to begin a pivotal United States trial of VisiPlate. More recently, the company raised $12.8 million to support the study and further product development. That work has now brought Avisi back to Penn Medicine, where it is conducting part of the trial at the same facility where Jiang observed glaucoma surgeries as a student.
For Jiang, this homecoming gives the company’s success a meaningful human dimension. She is also returning to the Y-Prize as a judge in this year’s competition, giving back to the program that helped launch her career.
“It was really special to bring this technology back to Penn,” said Jiang. “We first met glaucoma patients in the same operating room all those years ago, and now we have the chance to bring them a new technology designed to help preserve their vision.”