Robert Langer
David H. Koch Institute Professor, MIT
Abstract
There are numerous new technologies being developed that may impact the future of medicine. For example, new drug delivery technologies including microparticles, nanoparticles and nanotechnology promise to create new treatments for cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. Nanotechnology may also be useful in delivering DNA and siRNA as well. Approaches involving polymers, microchips, and lipids will be examined.
NOTE CHANGE IN DATE: June 19, 2019, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT
>> Register to attend
Free and open to the public
Read Professor Langer's June 2019 article in Scientific American, "How Nanotech Powers Precision Medicine"
Biography
Dr. Robert Langer is an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); there are 10 Institute Professors at MIT, and being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member.
He has written over 1,450 articles, which have been cited over 285,000 times; his h-index of 265 is the highest of any engineer in history. He has more than 1,350 issued and pending patents worldwide. His patents have licensed or sublicensed to over 350 companies.
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 holds 34 honorary doctorates, including honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale. Langer 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.
ABOUT THE MIT.nano PERSPECTIVES SERIES
“There is plenty of room at the bottom”, an idea introduced by Richard Feynman in 1959. Ever since, developments in nanoscale science and technology have lead to rapid interdisciplinary advancements in the fields of materials, devices, biotechnology and instrumentations. MIT.nano is pleased to offer a new seminar series, organized by assistant professor Farnaz Niroui, to continuously explore these frontiers.
The seminar series will offer monthly talks at MIT, starting in Fall 2019, from researchers across the spectrum of nanoscience and nanoengineering. To lay the foundation for this series, Niroui has organized an introductory set of lectures this spring by experts who have played seminal roles in the progress of our understanding of the nanoscale in each of key areas over the past decades.
Entitled "Perspectives in Nanotechnology," these lectures will offer insight into current research and future directions by the experts based on their experiences in the field. Mr. Howe's lecture is the first of this set.
Each talk will last approximately 45 minutes long and will be followed by a 30-minute question-and-answer session and a reception with refreshments.
See the full list of speakers for the five Perspectives lectures.