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Donald Ingber recognized for outstanding achievements, originality and leadership in biomedical engineering

Boston – A pre-eminent authority in biomedical engineering, Donald Ingber, MD, PhD, has been awarded the Pritzker Distinguished Lectureships for 2009.  The lectureship recognizes outstanding achievements, a high level of originality and leadership in the science and practice of biomedical engineering.

Dr. Ingber is the founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, a former CIMIT Site Miner for Children’s Hospital Boston and a recipient of numerous CIMIT grants.

“Typically, bioengineers have applied engineering principles to solve medical problems. But we are now at a tipping point in the history of science and engineering – we are beginning to understand enough about how Nature builds, controls and manufactures that entirely new engineering principles are already beginning to be discovered,” Ingber said. “These new engineering strategies will transform medicine as well as non-medical areas never before touched by the biology revolution. “

Leading a team of collaborators that include scientists at Children’s Hospital Boston and The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Dr. Ingber was recently awarded at 2-year CIMIT grant to support the development of a micro device that effectively functions as an “artificial spleen” that can cleanse flowing blood of pathogens. 

“We are determined to help improve healthcare,” said John Parrish, MD, executive director of CIMIT. “By supporting promising early-stage research, we are enabling clinicians and engineers to work together to discover innovative methods to provide better treatment more quickly.” 

Dr. Parrish added, “Dr. Ingber’s vision for cleansing infection from the blood is of enormous interest to our military and our academic medical center stakeholders.  We are pleased and proud of his achievements, and we congratulate him on this distinguished honor.”