Uploaded September 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Boris Kovatchev, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences
Transcript:
I am a mathematician by training and a scientist and inventor by trade.
The best part of my job is seeing a concept, an idea, to go all the way through and materialize in a technology, in a product that serves people's better health.
My name is Boris Kovatchev. I'm the director of the UVA Center for Diabetes Technology. I'm also a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Our center works on technologies for the treatment of diabetes. Our claim to fame is automated insulin delivery, also known as the artificial pancreas, which is a system that automates insulin delivery for people with diabetes, eliminating thousands of finger sticks and injections during their lifetime.
The story of the artificial pancreas started 15 years ago. In 2012, Charlottesville became the first city where people could go downtown to restaurants wearing a portable artificial pancreas system.
In 2019, we delivered what we promised, and the first commercial system came out at that time.
Now it is worn by 450,000 people around the world, helping those with diabetes live near-normal lives. The recent very generous gift of $100 million by Paul and Diane Manning to the University of Virginia is going to establish a biotechnology institute that will be unique and will make possible things that are currently considered impossible.
Boris Kovatchev, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences
Transcript:
I am a mathematician by training and a scientist and inventor by trade.
The best part of my job is seeing a concept, an idea, to go all the way through and materialize in a technology, in a product that serves people's better health.
My name is Boris Kovatchev. I'm the director of the UVA Center for Diabetes Technology. I'm also a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Our center works on technologies for the treatment of diabetes. Our claim to fame is automated insulin delivery, also known as the artificial pancreas, which is a system that automates insulin delivery for people with diabetes, eliminating thousands of finger sticks and injections during their lifetime.
The story of the artificial pancreas started 15 years ago. In 2012, Charlottesville became the first city where people could go downtown to restaurants wearing a portable artificial pancreas system.
In 2019, we delivered what we promised, and the first commercial system came out at that time.
Now it is worn by 450,000 people around the world, helping those with diabetes live near-normal lives. The recent very generous gift of $100 million by Paul and Diane Manning to the University of Virginia is going to establish a biotechnology institute that will be unique and will make possible things that are currently considered impossible.
