Story Tools
JOSEPH M. DeSIMONE
BORN: May 16, 1964, in Norristown, Pa.
ON CAMPUS: Chancellor's Eminent Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of chemical engineering at N.C. State University; director of the Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanoscience and Technology at UNC-CH; director of the National Science Foundation's Science and Technology Center for Environmentally Responsible Solvents and Processes at UNC-CH.
OFF CAMPUS: Co-founder and chief scientific officer at Liquidia Technologies in Durham.
SALARY: $253,500.
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in chemistry from Ursinus College, 1986; doctorate in chemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990.
HONORS: The Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award in 1997, DuPont's Engineering Excellence Award in 2002, American Chemical Society's Award for Creative Invention in 2005; elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.
FAMILY: Wife, Suzanne; son, Philip, 19, and daughter, Emily, 15. The family lives in Chapel Hill.
THE LEMELSON PRIZE
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lemelson Prize is among a handful of premier prizes in science that include the most respected of all, the Nobel Prize.
First given in 1995, the Lemelson Prize honors inventors who are midcareer and rising in their fields of experience.
Its recipients are the Thomas Edisons of the 21st century: Dean Kamen built the first battery-powered wheelchair that climbs stairs. Nick Holonyak invented the first light emitting diode, a tiny microchip that can illuminate traffic signals, billboards and cell phones. The research of Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen laid the foundation for gene therapy and the biotech industry.
The Lemelson Prize pays $500,000. Joseph DeSimone, the 2008 winner, plans to invest the money to help commercialize new ideas, either his own or others.
Related Content
More Business
Most Popular
Last 24 Hours
Last 7 Days
Last 24 Hours
Last 7 Days
The News & Observer is pleased to be able to offer its users the opportunity to make comments and hold conversations online. However, the interactive nature of the internet makes it impracticable for our staff to monitor each and every posting.
Since The News & Observer does not control user submitted statements, we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted on our website. In addition, we remind anyone interested in making an online comment that responsibility for statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not The News and Observer.
If you find a comment offensive, clicking on the exclamation icon will flag the comment for review by the administrators, we are counting on the good judgment of all our readers to help us.