Presentation - “The Edison of Medicine: Robert Langer’s Quest to Solve Global Health Challenges using Biotechnology”

Dr. Robert Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. The journal Nature credits Langer as being the founder of tissue engineering. He served as Chairman of the FDA’s Science Board (its highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. His over 220 awards include both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the Charles Stark Draper Prize (considered the engineering Nobel Prize), Albany Medical Center Prize, the Wolf Prize for Chemistry, the Millennium Technology Prize, the Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), the Gairdner Prize and the Lemelson-MIT prize, for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” He recently was awarded the Dreyfus prize for Chemistry in Support of Human Health. He holds 34 honorary doctorates and is one of the very few individuals ever elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Langer has written over 1,450 articles, which have been cited nearly 300,000 times; his h-index of 267 is the highest of any engineer in history. He has more than 1,360 issued and pending patents worldwide, which have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies.