The efforts of Brigham Young University students helped the Provo school place 86th on the National Academy of Inventor’s top 100 list for most U.S. patents by universities.

Graduates or undergraduates were listed as co-founders on 10 of the 18 BYU patents issued in 2024, or 56%.

That type of student participation on patents isn’t normal — only 4% of STEM Ph.D. students nationwide even appear on patents, according to BYU. But it’s a reflection of the type of school BYU strives to be, said BYU Technology Transfer Director Dave Brown.

“For a school that does as much research as it does, BYU is far more focused on undergraduate students than most campuses,” Brown said. “Many of these inventors will have been undergrads when they got on a patent application. And so I think that’s quite unusual. Our professors really do work to mentor the students, so they don’t just want them to be in the lab watching them do things. They’re actually in there doing some inventing with them.”

Brown estimated BYU is in the top 10-12 schools, or better, for student inventors on the top 100 patent list.

Most of BYU’s 10 patents with students listed were developed by students in a STEM department, either engineering, life sciences, computing, math or science, according to Brown. Many of the inventions are medical devices; others are mechanical technology or acoustic technology.

Patents can take several years to become issued after they’re invented. Of the 2024 issued BYU patents, for instance, many were invented from 2018 to 2021, while one was invented as early as 2011.

That also means several students listed on the patents have since graduated.

Jacob Sheffield, the co-founder and CEO of Bloom Surgical, was a student co-inventor on three inventions in 2018 and one in 2020. Lance Hyatt also appears on four patents, and Kendall Seymour and Scott Cunnington are each attached to three.

And the decision to include somebody on a patent is not taken lightly, according to Brown.

“Sometimes it can be a gray area whether or not to include a student on a publication, but when a student’s included on a patent application, that’s real,” he said. “You can only be on a patent application if you’re actually an inventor, if you contributed to it. So this, to me, just speaks volumes about what the students are actually doing in our labs.”

BYU was one of three Utah schools to land on the top 100 list. The University of Utah was 58th, with 37 patents, while Utah State University was 91st, with 16 patents. Brown said the tech transfer departments at each school in the state is committed to getting technology from publications into their respective industries.

He views BYU as the most entrepreneurial school around, though.

“Our students are super entrepreneurial,” Brown said. “And students working the lab, when they come and talk to us about tech transfer, about getting their technology out into a startup company, they’re excited about it, and there really is a mission focus behind it, where they really want to serve the world with these inventions.”