Robert Langer

Dr. Robert Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the highest honor that can be awarded to an Institute faculty member. He has written over 1,450 articles, which have been cited nearly 300,000 times, and his h-index of 270 is the highest of any engineer in history. He has more than 1,350 issued and pending patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies. He served as chairman of the Food and Drug Administration’s Science Board (its highest advisory board) from 1999 to 2002. He is the recipient of over 220 awards, including both the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the Charles Stark Draper Prize (considered the Nobel Prize of engineering), the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Millennium Technology Prize, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the Kyoto Prize, the Priestley Medal (the highest award of the American Chemical Society), the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Canada Gairdner Award, the Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, and the Lemelson-MIT prize for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” He holds 34 honorary doctorates from institutions that include Harvard and Yale Universities. Dr. Langer is one of the very few individuals ever elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors.

Bio last updated in June 2021.