Lee Named Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors

Dec. 12, 2018 - UC Irvine biomedical engineer Abraham Lee has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. It’s the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in originating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have had a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.

Lee is the William J. Link Professor and Chair in Biomedical Engineering, a professor of mechanical & aerospace engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Design and Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics. His research focuses on developing microfluidic platforms for point-of-care and molecular diagnostics, sample preparation and liquid biopsies, single-cell processing and analysis, and vascularized organ-on-a-chip devices. He is the co-founder of Kino Biosciences, which builds three-dimensional vascularized micro-organs and micro-tumors to improve the accuracy of drug discovery and validation. Over Lee’s career, technologies created by him and his team have resulted in numerous licensed patents and have contributed to several startups, including Micrus Endovascular Corp. (which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2010) and SFC Fluidics. Thirty-eight of his inventions have been awarded U.S. patents.

"I am humbled to be recognized for what I love to do and am passionate about, and that is to let my imagination take over in tinkering and building new things to solve problems," said Lee. "Since I was a kid, I read the biography of Thomas Edison and loved his mischievous spirit and persistent pursuit of a working solution. The environment at UCI is conducive for taking creative ideas in the lab to products, and I am looking forward to continuing to invent and improvise, with the goal of helping people from all walks of lives."

Lee is the ninth NAI fellow from UCI. He will be inducted at the Space Center Houston in April at the eighth annual meeting of the academy.