Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world.

A slow clouding of the lens that turns faces into shadows and sunsets into smudges.

For most of human history, the only treatments were crude, risky, and largely out of reach. Millions of people simply went blind. Then, in 1981, a UCLA ophthalmologist named Dr. Patricia Bath asked a different question. What if you could use a laser, not a blade, to remove a cataract with precision? She spent years perfecting her invention: the Laserphaco Probe. A device that could vaporize a clouded lens, irrigate the eye, and prepare it for a new lens, faster and more safely than anything that had come before. In 1988, she received the patent, becoming the first African American female doctor to hold a medical patent in the United States. Her invention has since restored sight to people who had been blind for over thirty years. It has been adopted around the world. And it exists because a university researcher refused to accept that blindness from cataracts was inevitable.

Discovery becomes impact when a great idea, a great university, and the technology transfer system that connects them all come together.