Breakthrough Medical Technologies:
A keynote by MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

presented in partnership with

and the EmTech@MIT 2009 Conference

BREAKTHROUGH MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES
The most cited engineer in history with over 750 issued or pending patents worldwide (licensed to 220 pharma, chemical, biotech, or medical device companies), Professor Robert Langer SCD '74  shares his decades of experience with the challenges that surround taking breakthrough technologies from the lab to the market.

Dr. Langer will share case studies and lessons learned focusing on:

• the process of and excitement that comes from discovery
• the challenge of acceptance from the scientific community and obtaining rights to your intellectual property
• the winding road to commercialization

Robert Langer SCD '74
David H. Koch Institute Professor
MIT Dept. of Chemical Engineering
MIT Langer Lab

Robert S. Langer is the David H. Koch Institute Professor (there are 14 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member). 

Dr. Langer has written approximately 1,050 articles.  He also has approximately 750 issued and pending patents worldwide.  Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 220 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.  He is the most cited engineer in history.

He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 - 2002 and as its Chairman from 1999 to 2002.

Dr. Langer has received over 170 major awards including the 2006 United States National Medal of Science; the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers and the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize.  He is the also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award; 72 recipients of this award have subsequently received a Nobel Prize. 

Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Dickson Prize for Science (2002), Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the Harvey Prize (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright), the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research (2004), the Dan David Prize in Materials Science (2005), the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2005), the largest prize in the U.S. for medical research, induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2006), the Max Planck Research Award (2008) and the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research (2008).

  In 1998, he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world’s largest prize for invention for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.”  In 1989 Dr. Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences.  He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction. 

Forbes Magazine (1999) and Bio World (1990) have named Dr. Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world.  Discover Magazine (2002) named him as one of the 20 most important people in this area.  Forbes Magazine (2002) selected Dr. Langer as one of the 15 innovators world wide who will reinvent our future.  Time Magazine and CNN (2001) named Dr. Langer as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America (America’s Best).  Parade Magazine (2004) selected Dr. Langer as one of 6 “Heroes whose research may save your life.”  Dr. Langer has received honorary doctorates from Harvard University, the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Yale University, the ETH (Switzerland), the Technion (Israel), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), the Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), the University of Liverpool (England), the University of Nottingham (England), Albany Medical College, the Pennsylvania State University, Northwestern University, Uppsala University (Sweden) and the University of California – San Francisco Medal.  

He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering.