image: These are the UT Arlington National Academy of Inventors fellows for 2013. view more
Credit: UT Arlington
Four University of Texas at Arlington faculty members and senior administrators have been named fellows of the National Academy of Inventors.
They are Frank Lewis, electrical engineering professor and a University Distinguished Scholar Professor; Carolyn Cason, a nursing professor and vice president for research; Ron Elsenbaumer, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and provost and vice president for academic affairs; and UT Arlington President Vistasp M. Karbhari, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and of civil and environmental engineering.
Last year, the organization inducted UT Arlington College of Engineering faculty members Khosrow Behbehani, Nai Yuen Chen, George Kondraske and Robert Magnusson among its charter fellows.
Karbhari said the NAI honors exemplify the creativity, scientific and technological expertise at UT Arlington.
"The University of Texas at Arlington has a tremendous set of accomplished faculty who are internationally recognized in their fields of research," Karbhari said. "My colleagues are distinguished not only by their patents and discoveries, but by their dedication to sharing innovation with the global community and enabling the translation of fundamental research into practical applications for the benefit of humankind."
Election to NAI Fellow status is awarded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society, according to the organization.
Lewis is also the Moncrief-O'Donnell Endowed Chair Professor at the UT Arlington Research Institute. He is an expert in the areas of feedback control systems, intelligent control, cooperative multi-agent systems, neural networks for control, discrete event systems, wireless sensor networks, robotics, nonlinear process control, optimal and robust control and adaptive systems. He holds six related U.S. patents.
Cason has worked to increase innovation and diversity in the healthcare workforce throughout her career. She is co-founder of UT Arlington's Smart Hospital, a physical virtual hospital equipped with state-of-the-art patient simulators that serves as a teaching and research and development facility. She also created the Genomics Translational Research Laboratory within the College of Nursing in collaboration with colleagues in the College of Engineering. Cason holds a U.S. patent for a cardiopulmonary resuscitation sensor that has been commercialized.
Elsenbaumer is considered one of the early leaders in the field of electronically conducting polymers. He established an active and internationally recognized group in paving the way for the practical applications by rendering the conducting polymer in easily processed form to enable casting as a fiber, fabric and other materials. He holds 25 patents in the area of conductive polymers and their applications.
Karbhari is known for his work in the infrastructure renewal and multi-threat mitigation of infrastructure, durability, mechanics and processing of composites. His work had led to His research has found application in several fields including infrastructure rehabilitation, crash-energy management, and biomedical materials. He holds a U.S. patent for composite components.
The 143 innovators elected to NAI Fellow status in 2013 represent 94 universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes. Together, they hold more than 5,600 U.S. patents.
Included in the 2013 class are 26 presidents and senior leadership of research universities and non-profit research institutes, 69 members of the National Academies, five inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, six recipients of the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation, two recipients of the U.S. National Medal of Science and nine Nobel Laureates, among other major awards and distinctions.
About The University of Texas at Arlington
The University of Texas at Arlington is a comprehensive research institution of more than 33,300 students and more than 2,200 faculty members in the epicenter of North Texas. Research expenditures exceeded $77 million last year. Visit http://www.uta.edu to learn more.
The National Academy of Inventors
The National Academy of Inventors is a nonprofit organization comprised of more than 45 U.S. and international universities and nonprofit research institutes with more than 2,000 individual academic inventor members and is growing rapidly. It was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors with a patent issued from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Visit http://www.academyofinventors.org to learn more.