2020 Application Opens for Langer Prizes – Providing Unrestricted Grant for Innovators and Entrepreneurs
The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) is requesting applications for a recently endowed fellowship program. The fellowship aims to support individuals in the early stages of their independent careers, provides an unrestricted grant to enable creative researchers and engineering entrepreneurs to tackle high-risk, high-impact challenges with the potential of achieving game-changing innovations.
Langer Fellows will be able to pursue their boldest and most creative ideas, seeking to transform them into technical and commercial innovations with broad societal impact. - Pablo Debenedetti
The Langer Prizes for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence awards unrestricted grants of up to $100,000 to assist researchers — particularly those working in chemical and biological engineering— in pursuing “blue-sky” ideas that may lead to game-changing technical and commercial innovations. The annual fellowships are endowed by the AIChE Foundation in the name of Robert S. Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a pioneer in drug delivery and biomaterials for medical applications.
The Langer Prizes are administered by AIChE’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence. Recipients will become part of a distinguished cadre of Langer Prize Fellows, skilled in tackling high-risk, high-impact challenges across a range of industries and commercial pursuits, and will have opportunities to collaborate with other innovators and entrepreneurs.
Pablo Debenedetti, Chair of the AIChE Foundation, said, Langer Fellows “will be able to pursue their boldest and most creative ideas, seeking to transform them into technical and commercial innovations with broad societal impact.”
The Langer Prizes Endowment is a key initiative as part of our Research and Innovation transformative priority of the Doing a World of Good Campaign. The fundraising goal to fully endow the fund is $2.5 MM and to date $1.1 MM has been raised.
Details about the Langer Prizes for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence — including application instructions and information on how to contribute to the endowment — are available at www.aiche.org/LangerPrizes, or by email at LangerPrizes@aiche.org. Applications are due May 1, 2020, and the prize recipient will be announced in the fall.
To learn more, get involved, and/or make a contribution to the endowment, please contact Lisa Lanzkowsky, Chief Development Officer at lisal@aiche.org.
The Langer Prize Endowment
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.