Philip Troyk Receives Innovative Research Award for Electronics Company

Robert A. Pritzker Endowed Chair in Engineering Philip R. Troyk has been awarded the Chicago Council on Science and Technology’s (C2ST) inaugural Innovative Research Award for his work with Sigenics, Inc., a company that specializes in customized electronic design, which Troyk founded in 2000.

The award is presented to an organization or individual that has had a significant impact on the advancement of research and discovery over the last two years and will continue to have a great impact on the field.

“Phil Troyk and Sigenics were nominated for the Innovative Research award by one of our board members. Given their far-reaching developments in Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and partnerships with the aircraft, commercial, and medical sectors, their winning the award was well deserved. Meeting Phil and the members on his team and in his lab was a fantastic insight into why Singenics is so successful—they were all passionate about and dedicated to what they do,” says Executive Director at C2ST Sasha Prokuda.

Sigenics was founded with the aim of developing silicon devices to aid in biomedical research and has grown to become a designer and supplier of customized electronic design for multiple markets, including aerospace, industrial, and military, with an emphasis on sole-source ASICs. As a unique Chicago-area MedTech resource, Sigenics can satisfy a need for providing innovative electronics for new MedTech devices.

“It is inspiring to work with Sigenics’ talented engineers, most of whom are Illinois Tech graduates. Our location in the Illinois Tech University Technology Park is a mutual benefit to Sigenics and the university. Being part of the emerging Chicago-area MedTech ecosystem is exciting, and we are enthused about enabling innovative MedTech developments,” says Troyk. 

Sigenics supplies ASICs to a range of medical projects, including Troyk’s work for which Illinois Tech leads an eight-institution team for developing a fully wireless brain-based visual prosthesis intended to provide artificial vision for people with profound blindness, which is currently undergoing a National Institutes of Health-funded clinical trial.

Troyk has received many prestigious awards for his research, including his recent receipt of the World Congress of Visual Prostheses’s Bartimaeus Award.

Image: (from left) Vice Provost for Research Fred Hickernell and Robert A. Pritzker Endowed Chair in Engineering Philip Troyk (credit: Paul Crisanti)