Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal
The Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal recognizes demonstrated leadership in the field of Science and Engineering of Biomaterials. It rewards either
- materials research that has had a significant and lasting impact on the development of the discipline, or
- recent work of great originality.
The awardee should be a recognized world leader in the field of biomaterials, whose accomplishments in discovery and translation to practice are surpassing and well known in the field.
With this distinction Acta Materialia, Inc. not only intends to honor outstanding contributions to the field but also to improve the awareness of the fundamental importance and diversity of materials research, both within the community and the public at large.
The Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal Award consists of a gold medal, an inscribed certificate, and a cash prize of US$10,000.
Candidates for this award may be proposed by any scientist/engineer/practitioner or any biomaterials related society, previous Acta Biomaterialia award recipients, Sponsoring or Cooperating Societies of Acta Materialia, Inc., Members of the Board of Governors and of the Editorial Board of the Acta Materialia journals.
The nomination package should contain
- Curriculum vitae
- Statement by the nominator specifying the candidate’s suitability for the award**
- Letters of support from up to three distinguished scientists in the field
- Citation of not more than 30 words
**Please emphasize the nominee’s impact on their research field, rather than the metrics on their publications.
Nominations remain in effect for three years unless withdrawn or re-endorsed, with an additional justification, for an additional two-year period. Current members of the Acta Materialia Board of Governors and of the Award Selection Committee are not eligible.
The Award Selection Committee is formed of five judges, themselves distinguished biomaterials scientists.
The Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal is awarded each year, unless the judges feel no candidate is qualified. The presentation is made at a venue approved by the Acta Materialia Executive Committee. The Award will not be bestowed in absentia except under extraordinary circumstances.
Nominations should be submitted to the Executive Secretary (Prof. Carolyn Hansson, chansson@uwaterloo.ca), as a single file document preferably in PDF or Word format.
Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal Award Recipients
2022
Chad Mirkin
2021
Xingdong Zhang
Cato T. Laurencin
The recipient of the 2020 Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal is Professor Cato T. Laurencin of the University of Connecticut. An engineer, surgeon and scientist, Prof. Laurencin earned his B.S.E. degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was named a Hugh Hampton Young Fellow, and earned his M.D., Magna Cum Laude,from the Harvard Medical School where he also received the Robinson Award for Surgery.
Prof. Laurencin serves as a University Professor at the University of Connecticut (the highest academic title and the 8th in the institution’s over 135-year history). He is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering, and is the Albert and Wilda Van Dusen Distinguished Endowed Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery. He is also a Chief Executive Officer of the Connecticut Convergence Institute for Translation in Regenerative Engineering.
Prof. Laurencin is known as a world leader in biomaterials, nanotechnology, stem cell science, drug delivery systems, and a new field that he has pioneered, regenerative engineering. Prof. Laurencin has produced seminal studies in a number of areas of biomaterials. He and his colleagues were the first to develop nanofiber technologies for tissue regeneration. The seminal paper appeared on the cover of the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, in its “Top 25 Biomaterials Papers of the Past 50 Years” edition. His group pioneered the development of polymer-ceramic systems for bone regeneration. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers cited this achievement in naming him one of the 100 Engineers of the Modern Era. He has received the Clemson Award for Contributions to the Biomaterials Literature, and the Founder’s Award, both from the Society for Biomaterials.
Prof. Laurencin’s work has had tremendous impact on many fields. The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering awarded him the Pierre Galletti Award, medical and biological engineering’s highest honor, while the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons awarded him the Nicolas Andry Award, its highest honor. His work was honored by the Scientific American Magazine as one of the 50 greatest achievements in science in 2007. In 2012, his work was highlighted by the National Geographic Magazine in its “100 Discoveries That Have Changed Our World” edition. In 2019, the American Association for the Advancement of Science awarded the Philip Hauge Abelson Prize, given for “signal contributions to the advancement of science in the United States”, to Prof. Laurencin.
Prof. Laurencin has had two awards named in his honor: The Cato T. Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D. Travel Fellowship Award given by the Society for Biomaterials, and The Cato T. Laurencin Lifetime Research Achievement Award given by the Cobb/National Medical Association Health Institute.
Prof. Laurencin is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. It is the highest honor bestowed in the United States for technological achievement.
Prof. Laurencin is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Internationally, he is an elected Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, a Fellow (Foreign) of the National Academy of Sciences of India, the Indian National Academy of Engineering and The World Academy of Sciences. Prof. Laurencin is an Academician and elected member (Foreign) of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Antonios G. Mikos
The recipient of the 2019 Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal is Professor Antonios G. Mikos, Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. The Award will be presented at the 2019 U.S. Society for Biomaterials Annual Meeting and Exposition to be held in Seattle, WA, in April 2019.
Professor Mikos received his Dipl.Eng (1983) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and his Ph.D. (1988) in chemical engineering from Purdue University. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Medical School before joining the Rice Faculty in 1992 as an assistant professor where he has remained since.
Professor Mikos’ research focuses on the synthesis, processing, and evaluation of new biomaterials to be used as scaffolds for tissue engineering, as carriers for controlled drug delivery, as non-viral vectors for gene therapy, and as platforms for modeling diseases. His work has led to the development of novel orthopaedic, dental, cardiovascular, neurologic, and ophthalmologic biomaterials.
Professor Mikos is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas, and the Academy of Athens. He is a Founding Fellow of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society, as well as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Biomedical Engineering Society, the Controlled Release Society, the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering, and the National Academy of Inventors.
Professor Mikos has been recognized by various awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society-Americas, the Founders Award and the Clemson Award for Contributions to the Literature of the Society For Biomaterials, the Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Lecturer Award and the Shu Chien Achievement Award of the Biomedical Engineering Society, the Excellence in Surface Science Award of the Surfaces in Biomaterials Foundation, the Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Research and the James E. Bailey Award in Biological Engineering of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Meriam/Wiley Distinguished Author Award of the American Society for Engineering Education, the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Engineering of the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas, the Marshall R. Urist Award for Excellence in Tissue Regeneration Research of the Orthopaedic Research Society, and the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award of Purdue University.
Professor Mikos is a founding editor and editor-in-chief of the journals Tissue Engineering Part A, Tissue Engineering Part B: Reviews, and Tissue Engineering Part C: Methods. He is the organizer of the continuing education course, Advances in Tissue Engineering, offered annually at Rice University since 1993. He is also the Past-President of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society-Americas and the Society For Biomaterials.
Jeffrey Hubbell
The recipient of the 11th Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal is Jeffrey Hubbell, Eugene Bell Professor in Tissue Engineering in the Institute for Molecular Engineering of the University of Chicago.
Professor Hubbell holds a BS from Kansas State University and a PhD from Rice University, both degrees being in chemical engineering. He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2010 and the National Academy of Inventors in 2014. Prior to moving to Chicago, he was on the faculty of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL, where he served as founding Director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Dean of the School of Life Sciences), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and University of Zurich, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas in Austin.
Professor Hubbell uses biomaterials and protein engineering approaches to investigate topics in regenerative medicine and immunotherapeutics. In regenerative medicine, he focuses on biomaterial matrices that mimic the extracellular matrix and on growth factor - extracellular matrix interactions, working in a variety of animal models of regenerative medicine. In immunotherapeutics, he focuses on nanomaterials in vaccines that target lymphoid-resident antigen presenting cells and on protein engineering approaches to deliver antigen to the spleen and liver for inverse vaccines to induce tolerance to protein drugs and in autoimmunity. His interests are both basic and translational, having founded or co-founded several biomedical companies based on his technology, including Focal, in Boston, acquired by Genzyme; Kuros Biosciences, in Zurich, in the domain of regenerative medicine; Anokion and Kanyos Bio, in Boston, both in the domain of immunological tolerance; and Clostra Bio, in Chicago, in the domain of food allergy.
The Gold Medal will be presented to Professor Hubbell at the 2018 Meeting of the Society for Biomaterials in Atlanta, GA.
Allan S. Hoffman
Education
1953, BS in Chemical Engineering, MIT (Cambridge, Mass.)
1955, MS in Chemical Engineering, MIT
1957, ScD in Chemical Engineering, MIT
Academic Career (MIT and University of Washington)
2010-present Professor Emeritus, Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
2009-2014 World Class University (WCU) Distinguished Professor (part-time), Kyungpook National University Medical School, Daegu, So. Korea
1970-2010 Professor, Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
1973-1983 Assistant Director, Center for Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
1964-1970 Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering, M.I.T. Cambridge, MA
1958-1960 Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA
1954-1956 Instructor, Chemical Engineering, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA and 1954-55 Assistant Director, M.I.T., Chemical Eng’g Practice School, Oak Ridge, TN
Selected Honors, Recognitions and Awards
(NOTE: This list includes only a selected few of many invited lectures, including plenary and keynote lectures, given over the past 40+ years at conferences, universities and companies in the US and overseas)
2015 Hoffman Family Symposium 3 will take place in Seoul Korea, in March, 2015.
2014
- Presented 2 Invited lectures in a short course on Biomaterials at Havana University, Havana Cuba, November, 2014
- Presented an Invited Lecture at the Symposium on Innovative Polymers for Drug Delivery, Soochow University, Suzhou, China, September, 2014
- Presented four invited class lectures at Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, September, 2014
- A special symposium in my honor, called the “Hoffman Family Symposium 2”, was held March 23-25 at the National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba, Japan. Over 80 scientists attended from Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Canada and the US. Many were scientists with whom I have collaborated (mostly from Japan and Korea) over the past 40 years.
2013
- Invited Special Symposium Lectures: Zhejiang Univ, Hangzhou, China, Dec. 2013
- Invited Plenary Lecture: Royal Society of Chemistry, 11th Materials Chemistry Conference, MC11, Warwick, UK, July, 2013
- Invited Keynote Lecture: European Soc. Biomaterials, Madrid, Sept. 2013
- Invited Lectures: South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, January, 2013; University of California at Berkeley, Feb, 2013; Chugai Pharmaceutical Corp, Gotemba, Japan, March, 2013; Tsukuba University, Tsukuba, Japan, March, 2013; Institute of Biomaterials Science, Berlin, Germany, May, 2013; Pusan National University, Busan, Korea, June, 2013; Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea, June, 2013; NanoDDS’13, UCSD, San Diego, CA, Oct. 2013; Shanghai Univ, Shanghai, China, Dec. 2013
2012
- Invited Plenary Address: 10th Conf. on Irradiation & Polymers, Krakow, Poland, October, 2012
- Invited Plenary Address: 9th World Biomaterials Congress, Chengdu, China, June 2012
2011
- Three Plenary Addresses: Molecules and Materials M3 Meeting, IMRE, Singapore, Jan., 2011; European Polymer Federation, Granada, Spain, July, 2011; ACS Polymer Division, Polymers in Medicine and Biology, Santa Rosa, CA, September, 2011
2011
- Invited Lectures: Zhongguancun Forum, Beijing, PR China; Tsinghua University Chemistry Department, September, 2011 Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea, October, 2011 Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, October, 2011 2011 Keynote Address: International Congress on Biohydrogels, Florence, Italy, Nov. 2011
2010
- Keynote Address: Society for Biomaterials Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, April, 2010
2009
- Plenary Address: Controlled Release Society Annual meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark, July, 2009
2007
- Founder’s Award, Controlled Release Society, USA
2007
- Keynote Address: Society for Biomaterials Annual Meeting, Chicago, April, ‘07
2006
- International Award from Society of Polymer Science, Japan
2005
- Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, USA
2003
- Chandra Sharma Award of the Society for Biomaterials and Artificial Organs of India, Mumbai, India
Klaas de Groot
Dr. Klaas de Groot, emeritus professor at the Tissue Engineering Group at Twente University, The Netherlands, has been awarded the highly acclaimed international 2015 Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal Award. The award recognizes excellence in research and development in the field of biomaterials. Dr Klaas de Groot, born in 1940, is since 2008 - emeritus professor at the Tissue Engineering Group at Twente University, The Netherlands. He studied physical chemistry at Groningen University, the Netherlands, where he received his B.Sc. in 1961 and his M.Sc. in 1965. Thereafter he received a fellowship to spend two years as a post-doc at the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, USA. He then returned to Groningen to obtain his PhD in 1968. In the 1980’s he started to cooperate with Chinese Universities, which led to honorary appointments at several Chinese Universities, among them Beijing University and University of Sichuan. His research concerned mainly implants to replace bone, bone joints, and teeth. He received many awards besides the already mentioned Chinese Friendship Award. To mention a few: the George Winter Award, the Clemson Award, Sir John Charnley Award, Honorary Member of the Dutch Society for Biomaterials. He was a member, and elected as a Fellow, of various professional societies such as The European society for Biomaterials (ESB) and the American Society of Biomaterials, and was co-founder of the ESB. Currently, he is still active in science as scientific advisor at the Amsterdam School of Dentistry (ACTA) department of Oral Implantology.
Jack Lemons
Dr. Jack Lemons received his PhD from the University of Florida in 1968 and completed his National Institute of Health-sponsored Fellowship in Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 1973. He currently serves as a university professor in the Department of Prosthodontics and Biomaterials at UAB’s School of Dentistry, where his academic responsibilities include dental prosthodontics, medical orthopaedic surgery and biomedical engineering. He also serves as Professor of the Joint Materials Science Program at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and is an adjunct professor of prosthodontics at the University of Pittsburg School of Dental Medicine. He is a member of numerous organizations including the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery, the International Association for Dental Research, the American Board of Forensic Examiners and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to name just a few. He presides over lectures for local study clubs and continuing education classes and has contributed over 40 years of education, research and service focused on the biocompatibility of synthetic origin bio- and dentalmaterials. He has sat on the editorial board of the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research and has been a section editor at the Journal of Clinical Implantology. His publications and abstracts exceed 600 titles in various peer-reviewed journals.
See more at: http://www.deardoctor.com/authors/dr-jacklemons/#sthash.W6X0vu8A.dpuf
Larry Hench
Larry Hench, University Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Florida Institute of Technology College of Engineering, has been awarded the highly acclaimed international 2014 Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal Award. The award recognizes excellence in research and development in the field of biomaterials. Professor Hench, who is also director of the Florida Tech Center for Medical Materials and Photonics, specializes in bio-ceramics and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Born in Ohio in 1938, Dr. Hench received his bachelor’s degree in 1964 in ceramic engineering from The Ohio State University. After 32 years on the faculty, Hench retired from the University of Florida as Emeritus Professor to join the Imperial College, University of London, as chair of ceramic materials. There, he co-founded and co-directed the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Centre for 10 years.
2013
James M. Anderson
U.S.A.
2012
David Williams
U.K.
U.S.A.
2011
Michael Sefton
Canada
2010
Nicholas Peppas
U.S.A.
2009
Buddy Ratner
U.S.A.
2008
Robert Langer
U.S.A.