Young Alumni Achievement Award
This award recognizes an alumnus or alumna within 15 years of graduation who has excelled in his or her profession and has contributed to Arizona State University and/or the ASU Alumni Association and the community.
Vivek Kopparthi, co-founder and executive chairman of NeoLight — which launched a phototherapy treatment tool that has helped tens of thousands of infants around the world to survive neonatal jaundice—is the recipient of the 2023 Young Alumni Achievement Award.
NeoLight started as a dorm room idea at ASU and has grown into an international medical device company with markets in more than 90 countries, nine patents with more pending, and more than $20 million in capital from strategic investors.
NeoLight allows, for the first time, infants with jaundice and other issues to be treated at home instead of in hospitals and in parts of the world where treatment was previously unavailable.
It was while Kopparthi was at ASU that three fellow ASU students received more than $500,000 in awards and investments to design the phototherapy treatment tool that cures neonatal jaundice. Worldwide, jaundice is responsible for 10 infant deaths an hour.
Kopparthi has won numerous awards including the Forbes 30 under 30 super-achievers for healthcare, Times Now NRI of the year and the top 20 influential AZ millennials. He was the 2018 Young Alumni Award recipient at the W. P. Carey Alumni Hall of Fame, and is a volunteer judge for J. Orin Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative.
He is described as a deeply humble person who is an avid proponent of empathy-driven innovation, especially in healthcare. Raised in southern India by business-owning parents who taught him that entrepreneurship and engineering are forces for positive change in the world, he was driven to pursue a specialized business master’s at ASU.
In November 2022, NeoLight released the retinopathy-of-prematurity (ROP) check system designed to ensure all eligible babies in neonatal units get timely eye exams. The goal is using specialized technology to help eliminate ROP blindness worldwide.
Kopparthi also founded PriZm Therapeutics, which focuses on solving a rare endocrine condition that occurs in male newborns, causing severe challenges mentally and physically throughout their lifetime.
Prior to launching NeoLight, he has held leadership roles in organizations with over 100 employees, advised tech start-ups and has consulted with major corporations.