08 Dec UW researchers honored for inventions
Susan Hagness, Jo Handelsman and Justin Williams
Three University of Wisconsin–Madison professors — Susan Hagness, Jo Handelsman and Justin Williams — have been named fellows of the National Academy of Inventors.
The NAI Fellows Program “highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society,” according to the academy.
Susan Hagness, the Philip Dunham Reed Professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, studies the interaction of electromagnetic radiation — microwaves — and human tissue, developing ways to better diagnose and treat diseases like cancer.
Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, Vilas Research Professor of plant pathology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, is a pioneer in metagenomics, exploring the DNA in environmental samples to describe the diversity of microbial communities and their role in infectious disease, as well as to hunt for new antibiotics.
Justin Williams, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of biomedical engineering and neurological surgery, is co-founder of four medical device companies commercializing technologies developed in his research on culturing of neural tissue and recording and stimulating its activity
The 2022 NIA Fellows class hails from 110 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutes worldwide. The NAI says its fellows hold more than 58,000 issued U.S. patents, which have generated more than 13,000 licensed technologies and companies and created more than one million jobs.
UW–Madison’s three new fellows bring the university’s total representation to 15.