Congratulations, Aditya M. Kunjapur, the 2021 Langer Fellow
At the 2021 Annual Meeting, Aditya M. Kunjapur, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Delaware, received the Langer Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence. He also presented an associated lecture.
The fellowship is named for biomedical pioneer, Dr. Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Each year, The Langer Prize enables early-career engineering researchers and entrepreneurs to pursue potentially game-changing innovations with transformative societal impact. Featured presenters included Bob Langer, who gave a talk highlighting the connections of risk-taking and entrepreneurship; Pablo Debenedetti, Dean of Research at Princeton University and AIChE Foundation Chair; and Terry McGuire, Founding Partner at Polaris Partners who collaborated with Bob on nearly twenty companies. Attendees also received an update from María Eugenia Inda, Pew Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT and the 2020 Langer Fellow, on her research and a recently published paper.
In his laboratory at the University of Delaware, Kunjapur and his research group are designing innovative biomolecular technologies to address a variety of societal needs. He uses approaches from synthetic biology to investigate how microbes can use non-standard chemistry and unusual building blocks to generate products — including fuels, chemicals, materials, and therapeutics — that exhibit enhanced functionality. The Langer Prize will support Kunjapur’s work to boost the efficacy of live vaccines by engineering cells to produce an immunogenic amino acid.
Information about the 2021 Langer Fellow, previous Langer Fellows, and the application process is available here. The deadline for 2022 fellowship applications is February 15, 2022.
You can support Langer Fellows like Aditya, Eugenia and Cesar and enable them to tackle high-risk, high-impact challenges, with a gift to the Langer Prize endowment.
Langer Fellow Leverages Award to Do Extraordinary Good
María Eugenia Inda, the 2020 Langer Fellow was awarded funding of $75,000 to support her research to develop novel non-invasive strategies for the early diagnosis and alleviation of inflammation in intestinal disorders, with an initial application for infants.
César de la Fuente, Inaugural Langer Prizes Fellow
AIChE has awarded its first Langer Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence to César de la Fuente, Presidential Assistant Professor in the departments of bioengineering, microbiology and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.