There’s synergy inside the Catalyst Omaha building, where innovators, startups and connectors dream big. Located in the EDGE District, next to UNMC’s Omaha campus, Catalyst emerged from the industrial shell of Omaha Steel Casting, which provided steel for Nebraska’s State Capitol in 1922 and produced artillery shells and amphibious landing craft during World War II.
Catalyst online
Explore Catalyst Omaha’s co‑working spaces and amenities at the Catalyst website.
Today, the mixed-use innovation hub, which opened in May 2025, provides co-working and leased space for bio- and health-tech startups, healthcare professionals, academics and entrepreneurs.
“Catalyst puts us right in the middle of the kind of people who want to work with our inventors; people who want to help us solve problems and make health care better,” said UNeMed CEO Michael Dixon, PhD.
As the tech acceleration office for UNMC and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, UNeMed develops partnerships with industrial leaders who can push innovations into the marketplace. Beyond UNeMed, Catalyst is home to a handful of startups, including:
- Automated Assessments — This startup is built around Vital-IT, a hand-held assessment tool invented by UNMC’s Jason Johanning, MD, that quantifies patient frailty prior to surgery. The device objectively predicts the potential for adverse outcomes for medical interventions, an alternative to previous approaches to pre-surgical risk screening, which included a physician’s “eyeball” test.
- VisionSync — A startup designed to commercialize UNMC’s strategic planning software after nearly a decade of internal use and refinement. The software, invented by Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, and David Padgett, allows users to plan, track and align the execution of their strategic plans, whether it’s tracking five goals or 500. For users, the software provides an accessible platform across an organization and the ability to assign accountability to each goal.
- RespirAI Medical — This team is developing an innovative AI-powered home monitoring platform to help manage chronic respiratory diseases, starting with COPD. Born from a cross-campus collaboration between UNO and UNMC, the startup has secured international funding to help move its ideas toward clinical trials. RespirAI was named UNeMed’s 2025 Startup of the Year.