It’s the final call to recognize the Seattle area’s boldest innovators — nominations for GeekWire’s 2026 Uncommon Thinkers Awards close this Friday. Help us select individuals who challenge conventional thinking, push boundaries and make an impact across the region.

Now in its fourth year, and in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners, the program aims to honor inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs who are transforming industries and driving positive change throughout the world.

Community nominations will be accepted through Friday, Sept. 18 at 11 a.m. PT, after which a panel of judges will select honorees. They’ll be celebrated on stage during a VIP reception at the annual GeekWire Gala on Dec. 10. Early-bird tickets available here.

Honorees are selected based on innovation, creativity and leadership and should have a track record of introducing novel ideas, technologies, or solutions that challenge the status quo. Nominees should also demonstrate a measurable and meaningful impact on their respective fields or industries, contributing to the betterment of society.

Do you know an Uncommon Thinker deserving of recognition? Fill out the nomination form today.

Read the GeekWire profiles of last year’s Uncommon Thinkers honorees:

• Anindya Roy’s journey from rural India to turning science fiction into drug candidates
• Chet Kittleson’s Tin Can is a calling, and a way to foster deeper connections for kids
• Brian Pinkard looks for impact, from flipping rocks to destroying forever chemicals
• Portal Space’s Jeff Thornburg plans to harness the heat of the sun in the cold of space
• Kiana Ehsani thrives on scrappy persistence at AI startup Vercept and in the outdoors
• Bluesky’s Jay Graber is planting the seeds for a decentralized digital world

Thanks to First Tech Federal Credit Union, the title sponsor of this year’s GeekWire Gala. For a recap of last year’s event, head here.

University of Washington Ph.D. student Malek Itani, who co-founded the AI-powered sound enhancement startup Hearvana, has been awarded the prestigious Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award for his groundbreaking work in “superhuman” hearing technology.

Selected as one of just three global recipients from a record pool of nominees, Itani was recognized for developing on-device AI algorithms that enable real-time target speech extraction, “sound bubbles,” and semantic hearing on low-power hearables like earbuds and hearing aids.

Itani’s award comes less than a year after he and Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering professor Shyam Gollakota co-founded Hearvana, a spinout aimed at commercializing their lab discoveries. The startup raised $6 million in pre-seed funding last fall to bring on-device acoustic intelligence to earbuds, hearing aids, and smart glasses.

By packing tiny, real-time neural networks onto low-power chips, the researchers hope to replace blunt noise cancellation with true semantic hearing — allowing users to filter out city traffic, amplify a single companion’s voice in a crowded room, or create a localized “sound bubble” on demand.

Itani’s work in the UW Mobile Intelligence Lab began with “acoustic swarms” — small, self-distributing robotic microphones that track and separate multiple speakers in a room. He and his collaborators then pivoted to personal audio devices, pioneering neural networks like IF-MLPNet and platforms like NeuralAids. These systems allow complex AI models to handle real-time sound separation directly on low-power wireless hearables without relying on heavy cloud compute or draining battery life.

“Malek has been a key part of every major contribution to the field of superhuman hearing in recent years,” Gollakota told the Allen School Blog. “He entered his Ph.D. with a background in RF and backscatter, but he rapidly mastered audio signal processing and deep learning, which is very impressive.”

“I feel like I’ve hit a niche that’s going to be so transformational, and it’s going to be in billions of devices,” Itani said. “It’s going to change the way we hear the world.”

Itani and his fellow Young Scholars will be formally recognized at the Marconi Awards Gala in San Francisco this November.