The Health Science Center community is invited to attend The Presidential Distinguished Lecture at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 13 in the Health Science Center Auditorium.
Health Science Center President Francisco G. Cigarroa, M.D., will welcome the leading pioneer of modern biomedical engineering Robert S. Langer, Sc. D., to the Health Science Center as the featured speaker for the event. Dr. Langer will present “Biomaterials and How They Will Change Our Lives.”
The lecture will also be broadcast via video teleconference to the Harlingen and Laredo campuses. At the Regional Academic Health Center the lecture will be broadcast to Room 2.120 and in Laredo the lecture will be broadcast to Room 1.1006 in the D.D. Hachar Building.
Dr. Langer, the Kenneth J. Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has ushered in a new generation of drug-delivery systems and paved the way for the emergence of the field of tissue engineering.
While working as a postdoctoral fellow at Boston’s Children’s Hospital he developed a new plastic that used proteins to allow for the controlled release of drugs and chemicals into the body. At age 27, Dr. Langer filed for his first patent, which led to the launch of what is now a $20 billion-a-year U.S. industry that produces products like nicotine patches and coated cardiovascular stents. Today Dr. Langer has more than 500 issued or pending patents worldwide, one of which was cited as one of 20 outstanding patents in the United States.
Dr. Langer has received more than 120 major awards. He has received the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers and the world’s most prestigious engineering prize, from the National Academy of Engineering. He is also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award. He has also received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world’s largest prize for invention.
Dr. Langer is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of a few people who have been elected to all three United States National Academies and is the youngest person ever to receive this distinction.
Forbes Magazine has named Dr. Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world and selected him as one of the 15 innovators world wide who will reinvent our future. Time Magazine and CNN have named him as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America.
The lecture will be followed by a reception in the foyer.
