AIChE’s Regenerative Engineering (RE) Society has chosen Robert S. Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as recipient of its Cato T. Laurencin Regenerative Engineering Society Founder’s Award for 2024. First presented in 2023, the award was created in honor of the RE Society’s founder, Dr. Cato T. Laurencin, and recognizes individuals for leadership in the science and practice of convergence research as applied to regenerative engineering and medicine.
Langer is slated to receive the prize and deliver an associated lecture on Oct. 28 at the 2024 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA. In his talk, Langer will discuss his trajectory in chemical engineering, including some of his groundbreaking achievements in tissue engineering and drug delivery systems.
Langer’s work
A pioneer in biotechnology and biomedical engineering, Langer joined the MIT faculty in 1978. He has since documented his research in more than 1,600 articles, and he has approximately 1,500 issued and pending patents worldwide. His patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, and medical device companies. He is the most cited engineer in history.
More on Langer’s accomplishments
Langer is one of five living people to have received both the U.S. National Medal of Science (2006) and the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011). He also received the Charles Stark Draper Prize (2002), considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers, and the Millennium Prize (2008), the world’s largest technology prize. Among recent honors, in 2024, he received the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience.
He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, as well as the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors. He also served on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board from 1995–2002 and as its chairman from 1999–2002.
Langer completed his undergraduate studies in chemical engineering at Cornell Univ. and earned his doctorate in chemical engineering at MIT.
This article is also featured in the Institute News column of the September 2024 issue of CEP. Members have access online to complete issues, including a vast, searchable archive of back-issues found at www.aiche.org/cep.