Georgetown prof wins Lemelson-MIT award

A Georgetown University Hospital professor named Joel Selanikio has won the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability, the Lemelson-MIT Program said.

"Merging his expertise in the areas of computer science, medicine, and public health with his business partner’s background in technology, spurred the development of a sustainable mobile software tool to aid in disease surveillance and the collection of public health data in developing nations," the Lemelson-MIT Program said in a press release. "Officially established as an electronic data collection standard by the World Health Organization, Selanikio’s EpiSurveyor is now the most widely adopted open source mobile health software in the world."

Besides being assistant professor of pediatrics at Georgetown University Hospital, Selanikio is a co-founder of a company called DataDyne.

Founded by inventor Jerome H. Lemelson and his wife Dorothy, the Lemelson-MIT Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology seeks to recognize outstanding inventors, encourage sustainable new solutions to real-world problems, and enable and inspire young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)