University of Pittsburgh faculty members Prashant N. Kumta and José-Alain Sahel have been elected Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors.
Chancellor Joan Gabel recognized the accomplishments of both at the Jan. 18 Senate Council meeting. “They are the 13th and 14th Pitt faculty named NAI fellows since 2015, which is great,” she said.
Kumta is a pioneer in an array of research fields, including advanced nanostructured materials for energy storage and conversion, as well as functional nano-scale materials systems for hard and soft tissue engineering.
He is distinguished professor of bioengineering and the Edward R. Weidlein endowed chair professor in bioengineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, with secondary appointments in Chemical & Petroleum Engineering and Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, and an appointment in School of Dental Medicine's Department of Oral and Craniofacial Sciences.
Sahel, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the School of Medicine and endowed chair of the Eye and Ear Foundation, is a global trailblazer in vision restoration research.
Sahel is a leader in vision restoration techniques. He has developed several interventions—including stem cell implantation, gene therapy, innovative pharmacologic approaches and the artificial retina—for retinitis pigmentosa, other retinal dystrophies, age-related macular degeneration and other vision impairments that currently are untreatable.
He has pioneered optogenetic vision restoration, a technique in which cells in the retina are genetically modified to express light-sensitive proteins to help patients who are blind or visually impaired.
He is also a coinventor on more than 40 patents, several of which have led to start-up companies. He also was recently appointed to French President Emmanuel Macron’s new Presidential Council for Science, and he’s been a member of the French Academy of Sciences since 2007.
“He’s a global leader in vision restoration, literally giving sight back to the blind,” Gabel said. “It’s an incredible body of work that he's doing.”
The NAI Fellows program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.