Plastics scientist wins Lemelson-MIT award
Consumers have environmentally friendlier plastics, patients in clinical trials have a new device to treat clogged arteries, and we all might get disease-treating nanoparticles inside our bodies thanks in part to the work of one man, the winner of this year's Lemelson-MIT Prize.
The $500,000 prize to chemistry professor Joseph DeSimone was to be announced today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The prize recognizes people who turn their ideas into inventions that help change the world.
"The breadth of his inventions, and his ability to leverage his expertise across all these disciplines is really amazing," said Joshua Schuler, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT program.
DeSimone, 44, has appointments as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at North Carolina State University.
He said in a telephone interview that his interest in chemistry blossomed during his childhood in suburban Philadelphia, in part because of a chemistry set. It belonged to his younger sister.
"Maybe it was just jealousy in wanting to have something she had that made me move in that direction," DeSimone said.
He said he was drawn in the 1990s to the emerging field of "green" chemistry and the search for environmentally friendly ways to make plastics.
That interest helped him develop a process to reduce pollutants left over from manufacturing high-performance plastics with applications such as nonstick cookware and insulation for wires.
DeSimone also teamed with a Duke University cardiologist, Dr. Richard Stack, to craft an alternative to the metal that's normally used in coronary stents - tiny mesh tubes that have been implanted in millions of people worldwide to hold arteries open after doctors push back the fatty deposits clogging them.
DeSimone and Stack developed so-called bioabsorbable stents made of a polymer that can hold arteries open while the body slowly heals. After about two years, the stent dissolves in the body, potentially reducing the risk of clotting.
DeSimone also has waded into the field of nanotechnology - creating materials at the atomic or molecular scale.
DeSimone plans to use the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT award to support additional scientific ventures.
