In honor of National Inventors Month we highlight the good work of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and our fellows. In 2010, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office organized the founding of the NAI to promote innovation and support inventors by creating a dynamic community of inventors, non-profit organizations, universities, and other research institutes across the United States. Since then, the NAI has grown to include over 3,000 individual members and fellows originating from more than 200 institutions. “The rapid growth of the NAI is a direct reflection of how critical academic invention has become. Commercializing patents, spinning off new companies, building products, and creating high paying jobs have to become as much a part of a university’s mission as educating a high tech workforce for its state and the nation,” says NAI president Paul Sanberg.
The NAI inducts members and researchers who reach the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s benchmark of “inventorship”. Using the organizational power of the NAI community, to recognize and encourage inventors, enhance the visibility of the contributions of research and innovation, and advance measures supportive of intellectual property. Emory University is an NAI member institution, and has had at least one of its faculty added to the NAI community over the past three years. Todd Sherer, the Associate Vice President for Research Administration and Executive Director of Technology Transfer at Emory University said “The scope of new thinking and new products represented by the NAI Charter Fellows is a profound example of the power of academic innovation and invention.”
In 2012, Emory President James W. Wagner, PhD and Raymond I. Schinazi, PhD, Frances Winship Walters Professor of Pediatrics at Emory and director of the Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology; were inducted. In 2013 Dennis Liotta, PhD, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Chemistry and executive director of the Emory Institute for Drug Development was inducted. Wagner was recognized for his promotion and facilitation of Emory’s global biotechnology relations, especially in the fields of drug development and treatment research. Both Schinazi and Liotta were recognized for their work in HIV and Aids treatment, most well known for the ground breaking antiviral HIV treatment, Emtriva, which is now used by 90% of HIV patients. Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Organic Chemistry at Emory University, Huw Davies, PhD, became an NAI fellow in 2014, for his work on new catalysts that enable synthetic technologies for drug discovery. In 2015, John S. Lollar III, MD, professor of pediatrics at Emory School of Medicine and Helen Mayberg, MD, professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Radiology and Dorothy C. Fuqua Chair in Psychiatric Neuroimaging and Therapeutics at Emory University School of Medicine were inducted as Emory’s most recent NAI fellows. Lollar works primarily on improving treatments for patients with hemophilia and Mayberg has led research on deep brain stimulation as an alternative treatment for those suffering from severe depression.
Elizabeth Dougherty, the 2013 U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director of Inventor Education, Outreach & Recognition said “Universities that encourage intellectual property by opening the doors immediately to inventorship will be the ones that attract the greatest talent.” She went on to assert that the NAI was an institution that could nurture and promote such talent on a national scale. It will “help to shape new policies, ones that offer new opportunities for students but also respect the longstanding and important research and development endeavors that universities support and rightfully retain control over,” said Dougherty. David Kappos, the 2013 Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office summed it up perfectly by saying, “The NAI is a breakthrough for our country. It couldn’t be more timely to have an organization like this to be championing innovation.”
Emory Press Releases for Inductees