Leading the way in biomedical engineering: an interview with Robert Langer. Interview by Hannah Stanwix,...

Professor Robert Langer obtained his Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University (NY, USA) in 1970. He received his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA, USA) in 1974. He is currently the David H Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Langer is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. At the age of 43 he was the youngest person in history to be elected to all three United States National Academies. Throughout his career, Professor Langer has received over 200 awards including, notably, the Charles Stark Draper Prize (considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers), the 2008 Millennium Prize, the 2006 United States National Medal of Science and the 2012 Priestley Medal. In 1996 he was awarded the Gairdner Foundation International Award (the only engineer ever to have been awarded this accolade). Professor Langer has also been the recipient of the Lemelson-MIT prize, which he was awarded with for being "one of history's most prolific inventors in medicine." Professor Langer was selected by Time Magazine in 2001 as one of the 100 most important people in the USA. He has received honorary degrees from several universities worldwide, including Harvard University (MA, USA), the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine (NY, USA), Yale University (CT, USA), the ETH Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland), the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), the Université Catholique de Louvain (Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY, USA), Willamette University (OR, USA), the University of Liverpool (Liverpool, UK), Bates College (ME, USA), the University of Nottingham (Nottingham, UK), Albany Medical College (NY, USA), Pennsylvania State University (PA, USA), Northwestern University (IL, USA) and Uppsala University (Uppsala, Sweden), and was awarded with the University of California San Francisco Medal in 2009. Professor Langer has founded over 20 biotechnology companies and authored more than 1175 articles. He has over 800 issued or pending patents. Professor Langer is the most cited engineer in history.