Three Purdue professors elected as fellows of National Academy of Inventors

December 17, 2014  


WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Three Purdue University professors have been named fellows of the National Academy of Inventors

The organization recognized Jan P. Allebach, the Hewlett-Packard Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering; R. Graham Cooks, the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Chemistry; and Philip S. Low, the Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.

The three are among 170 new fellows "who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society," according to a statement from the NAI.

Andrew Faile, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office deputy U.S. commissioner for Patent Operations, will give the keynote address for the induction ceremony of new fellows on March 20, 2015 during the fourth annual Conference of the NAI at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Jan P. Allebach

Jan P. Allebach 
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Allebach holds 28 U.S. patents and has authored 440 papers. He has been at Purdue since 1983 and holds courtesy appointments in computer science and quantitative psychology. His current research interests include digital halftoning and other aspects of image rendering, image quality, color imaging, 2.5D printing, content creation, metadata embedding and manufacturing based on printing technologies. The results of his research have been licensed to major digital printing and imaging companies and can be found in products that have sold hundreds of millions of units worldwide.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the IEEE, the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) and SPIE. He has served as associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing and the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

In 2004 he was named Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year by IS&T and SPIE. In 2007 he was named Honorary Member of IS&T and in 2013 he received the IEEE Daniel E. Noble Award. He has won several teaching awards from Purdue and is co-recipient of the 2006 Team Award in recognition of his work with HP. He also received the Purdue Sigma Xi Faculty Research Award and the Provost’s Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware and his doctorate from Princeton University.

R. Graham Cooks

R. Graham Cooks 
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Cooks holds 32 U.S. patents and has authored 1011 papers. He has been at Purdue since 1971 and is co-director of Purdue’s Center for Analytical Instrumentation Development. His research focuses on the field of ambient ionization and tandem mass spectrometry. He developed a desorption electrospray ionization technique, called DESI, that eliminated the need for samples to be chemically manipulated and contained in a vacuum chamber for analysis, which allows testing to be done in the air or directly on a surface in its natural environment.  Cooks’ research paved the way for portable devices and Cooks and his colleague Zheng Ouyang have created miniature mass spectrometers. Cooks and his team have fine-tuned tools for use in molecular imaging for cancer diagnostics and surgery; therapeutic drug monitoring; testing for biomarkers in urine; and the identification of food-borne pathogens, bacteria, pesticides and explosives residues.

Start-up companies based on Cooks’ work include MIMS Technology Inc., Prosolia Inc; QuantIon Inc., and Griffin Analytical Technologies Inc., which has been acquired by ICx, LLC and is now a division of Flyr Inc.

He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

In 2013 Cooks won the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences. His honors include American Chemical Society awards in Chemical Instrumentation, Mass Spectrometry, Analytical Chemistry and the F.A Cotton Award. He has been recognized internationally with both the Robert Boyle Medal and the Centennial Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He also won the American Chemical Society’s 2014 Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry. He has won Purdue’s Outstanding Faculty Commercialization Award, the College of Science Graduate Mentoring Award and the College of Engineering Faculty Award of Excellence.

He earned his bachelor's degree and doctorate from the University of Natal, South Africa, and a doctorate from Cambridge University.

In addition to the Center for Analytical Instrumentation Development, he is associated with Purdue’s Bindley Bioscience Center and the Purdue Center for Cancer Research.

Low holds more than 45 U.S. patents and has authored more than 350 papers. He has been at Purdue since 1976 and is the director of Purdue's Center for Drug Discovery. His research focuses on the design and synthesis of targeting technologies for targeted delivery of therapeutic and imaging agents to both cancer cells and aberrant immune cells involved in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Seven drugs stemming from this research are currently undergoing human clinical trials.

 Start-up companies based on Low’s work include Endocyte Inc., OnTarget Laboratories Inc., and HuLow Inc.

Philip S. Low

Philip S. Low
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Low is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has served on several National Institutes of Health Study Sections and has received an NIH MERIT Award.

He has received the American Chemical Society’s George and Christine Sosnovsky Award for Cancer Research and the Watanabe Life Sciences Champion of the Year Award. Low also has won Purdue’s Herbert Newby McCoy Award and Outstanding Commercialization Award, as well as the Morrill Award, Purdue’s highest career achievement recognition for a faculty member.

Low received his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and his doctorate from the University of California, San Diego.

In addition to Purdue’s Center for Drug Discovery, Low is associated with the Purdue Center for Cancer Research.

Allebach, Cooks and Low join Purdue colleagues Rakesh Agrawal, the Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering, and Michael Ladisch, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, as NAI fellows.

The 2014 NAI fellows will be listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education on Jan. 16 and in upcoming issues of Inventors Digest and Technology and Innovation.

The National Academy of Inventors was founded in 2010 to recognize researchers at universities and non-profit institutes who translate their research findings into inventions that may benefit society.  

Writer: Elizabeth K. Gardner, 765-494-2081, ekgardner@purdue.edu  

Sources: Jan Allebach, 765-494-3535, jan.p.allebach.1@purdue.edu 

R. Graham Cooks, 765-494-5263, cooks@purdue.edu 

Philip Low, 765-494-5273, plow@purdue.edu 

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