University of Minnesota

Puffed rice – Alexander P. Anderson performed work leading to the discovery of "puffed rice", a starting point for a new breakfast cereal later advertised as "Food Shot From Guns".

Transistorized cardiac pacemaker – Earl Bakken founded Medtronic, where he developed the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker in 1957.

Green Revolution – Norman Borlaug was an agronomist who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution. Borlaug, often called "the father of the Green Revolution", is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. Borlaug was awarded multiple honors for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal.

ATP synthase – Paul D. Boyer elucidated the enzymatic mechanism for synthesis of the cellular "energy currency", adenosine triphosphate (ATP), leading to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1997.

Point-contact transistor – Walter Houser Brattain and John Bardeen, later joined by William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. For their invention, the trio was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.

Infusion pump – Henry Buchwald invented the world's first infusion port, peritoneovenous shunts, and specialty vascular catheters. He also invented the first implantable infusion pump, a precursor to implantable infusion pumps in use throughout the world today.

Photosynthesis – Melvin Calvin discovered the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham; for this, he won the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Ecology – Raymond Lindeman revolutionized ecology, primarily through his 1942 paper "Trophic Dynamic Aspect of Ecology", which described how energy and nutrients cycled through ecosystems.

Supercomputer – Seymour Cray designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades, and founded Cray Research, which built many of these machines.

Taconite – Edward Wilson Davis developed an engineering process to economically extract iron ore from hard taconite rocks, making taconite valuable as iron ore for the iron and steel industries.

Cosmic rays – Phyllis S. Freier discovered the presence of heavy nuclei in cosmic rays, proving the similarity between the Solar System and the rest of the galaxy.

U.S. aviation – Robert Rowe Gilruth led the development of flying qualities for airplanes, the use of rockets to achieve data at supersonic speeds, and the establishment of many of the nation's leading flight research and human space flight operations facilities.

Bone marrow transplant – Robert A. Good in 1968 performed the first successful human bone marrow transplant between persons who were not identical twins and is regarded as a founder of modern immunology. In 2018 Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton proclaimed August 24 as University of Minnesota Blood and Marrow Transplant Day.

Gore-Tex – Robert Gore invented Gore-Tex materials in 1969.

Disk drive – Reynold B. Johnson invented a method and machinery to score tests electronically.

K-rations – Ancel Keys developed the rations for the U.S. military and also conducted dietary studies: the Minnesota Starvation Study and the Seven Countries Study.

Synthetic rubber – Izaak Kolthoff developed the "cold process" for producing synthetic rubber, which he undertook under the U.S. synthetic rubber program during World War II.

Cyclotron – Ernest Lawrence won the Nobel Prize for Physics 1939 for inventing and developing the cyclotron.

Drosophila melanogaster – Edward Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995 for his work on the Drosophila bithorax complex of homeotic genes.

Cardiac surgery – C. Walton Lillehei pioneered open-heart surgery, as well as numerous techniques, equipment, and prostheses for cardiothoracic surgery.

POPmail – Mark P. McCahill led the development of the Gopher protocol, the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web; was involved in creating and codifying the standard for Uniform Resource Locators (URLs); and led the development of POPmail, one of the first e-mail clients, which had a foundational influence on later e-mail clients and the popularization of graphical user interfaces in Internet technologies more broadly.

MMPI – Starke R. Hathaway and J. C. McKinley created the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which was first published in 1943.

Zatocoding – Calvin Mooers developed a mechanical system using superimposed codes of descriptors for information retrieval called Zatocoding, 1948.

Atomic bomb – Edward P. Ney discovered cosmic ray heavy nuclei and solar proton events. After early work involving separating isotopes from uranium, he worked on the Manhattan Project.

Atomic bomb – Alfred O. C. Nier devised a method to isolate the isotopes of uranium, a critical discovery in the atomic age. Nier worked with Kellex Corporation in New York City on the design and development of efficient and effective mass spectrographs for use in the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb in World War II. He designed most of the spectrographs used for monitoring uranium separations during the war.

Atomic bomb – Frank Oppenheimer worked on uranium isotope separation in 1945 and joined the Manhattan Project.

Biotechnology – Ronald L. Phillips was the first to generate whole corn plants from cells grown in culture, which laid the foundation for, and sparked, a new industry using cell-culture methods to genetically modify corn plants and other cereals. The corn cell line most widely used for genetic modification of corn has greatly accelerated the improvement of corn as food, feed, and fuel.

Renewable energy – Lanny D. Schmidt designed a reactor to extract hydrogen from ethanol, offering the first real hope hydrogen could be a source of inexpensive and renewable energy.

Biomimetics – Otto Schmitt invented the Schmitt trigger, the cathode follower, the differential amplifier, and the chopper-stabilized amplifier.

NASA – Deke Slayton was one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts and became NASA's first chief of the Astronaut Office. He served as NASA's director of flight crew operations, making him responsible for crew assignments at NASA, from November 1963 until March 1972. At that time, he was granted medical clearance to fly and was assigned as the docking module pilot of the 1975 Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, at age 51 becoming the oldest person to fly in space at the time.

Bathythermograph – Athelstan Spilhaus fully developed the bathythermograph (BT) in 1938, an instrument he perfected that was of vital importance in World War II against the German U-boat. During the war, the BT became standard equipment on all U.S. Navy subs and vessels involved in antisubmarine warfare.

CDC 6600 – James Thornton developed the CDC 6600, the world's first supercomputer, designed with Seymour Cray.

Ziagen – Robert Vince worked on antiviral drug candidates at UMN, where he went on to develop carbocyclic nucleosides termed 'carbovirs.' This class of medicinal agents included the drug abacavir. Abacavir was commercialized by GlaxoSmithKline as Ziagen for the treatment of AIDS.

US3D – Graham Candler pioneered the future of hypersonics research with the development of the US3D CFD code which builds off of NASA's DPLR code, but uses unstructured grids and has many advanced numerical capabilities and physical models for multi-physics, highly coupled problems.

Heart-lung transplant - Norman Shumway paved the way in organ transplantation, being the first to perform an adult human to human heart transplant and a heart-lung transplant.