Fueling Utah’s next wave of innovators and life science leaders.
Meet Amanda Lematty: she’s building the platform that empowers an entire community of young innovators to turn ideas into real-world breakthroughs.
Amanda has carried her creativity to India, Nepal, Tanzania and here to Utah — fueling over 90 medical innovations along the way. As Program Manager for the University of Utah’s Bench to Bedside competition (B2B), Amanda brings her creative & technical expertise to the table, guiding hundreds of students in turning their early ideas into patents, startups, and solutions that matter.
From the Ground Up
Originally from South Carolina and trained at a dedicated art school, Amanda found her way into biomedical engineering when a medical device design project revealed how creativity and healthcare could merge.
“I wanted to find a way to bring that creative side into medicine,” Amanda explains. “It was the first time I saw how art (in the form of engineering) and healthcare could come together.”
That was the inception of her career in biomedical engineering. It was, however, a transformative summer in Tanzania that truly helped shape her perspective on innovation, and her career path. While helping repair hospital equipment and conducting research in Dar es Salaam, she met the only biomedical engineer at the city’s largest hospital—a facility the size of the University of Utah. “He emphasized how much impact comes from simple, practical devices, not just the big groundbreaking technologies,” Amanda recalls. “He said, ‘Most students think of the moon and stars, but the ground hasn’t been touched.’ That stuck with me — and it still impacts how I think about innovation today.”
Bench to Bedside: The Gamechanging Liaison between Students and Impact
Now serving as Program Manager for the University of Utah’s Bench to Bedside competition (B2B), Amanda is expanding her impact by helping students innovate.
“It’s insane to see how much students can do,” Amanda says. “We’ve had teams develop devices that are now in clinical trials or being used around the world.”
She has guided 90+ medical innovations from idea to impact. She’s assisted in helping teams with several notable projects including innovations like SoundPass that creates devices for traumatic brain injuries, improved laparoscopic tools from Bloom Surgical, and C-Blu’s blue light cancer screening methods for cervical cancer.
In 2024-2025 alone, B2B drew 31 teams and 140 students, awarding over $80,000 in milestone funding. To date, B2B’s program has engaged 1,845 student competitors across 408 teams, resulting in 233 patents filed, 120 companies formed, and $1.5 million in milestone funding awarded.
Contributing to the Community
For Amanda and the Center for Medical Innovation (CMI) team, Bench to Bedside is about giving students ownership of their ideas, equipping them with the resources to experiment, and fostering a community where innovation thrives. At the same time, the program creates opportunities for mentors, companies, and the broader Utah life sciences ecosystem to give back, share expertise, and be inspired by fresh perspectives. These efforts are propelling the next generation of healthcare innovators forward, ensuring that promising ideas don’t stop at the classroom or the lab. Amanda, the CMI team, and the participating students play an essential role in the BioHive ecosystem and the future of Utah’s life sciences.
With B2B picking up speed now leading up to the competition, see how you can be a part of it at: https://uofuhealth.utah.edu/center-for-medical-innovation/programs/bench-to-bedside
Whether to be a mentor, or enter the competition as a student from BYU, USU, or another University, Amanda invites you to be a part of B2B and see what impact you can have in the life science space!
