Skip to content ↓

Langer wins Warren Alpert Foundation Prize

Biomedical engineer shares $250,000 award
David H. Koch Institute Professor Robert S. Langer
Caption:
David H. Koch Institute Professor Robert S. Langer
Credits:
Photo: Stu Rosner

Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, has been named one of the winners of this year’s Warren Alpert Foundation Prize, which annually recognizes researchers for laboratory discoveries with strong promise to improve human health.

Langer will share the $250,000 unrestricted prize with Alain F. Carpentier, head of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou in Paris.

A biomedical engineer whose major focus is biomaterials, Langer has conducted research that has led to a variety of novel drug-delivery systems. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three U.S. National Academies — sciences, engineering and medicine — and was the youngest in history (at age 43) to receive this distinction.

“I am very grateful to the Warren Alpert Foundation for recognizing my work, and I am honored to be in the company of the previous award winners,” Langer said. “My colleagues and I remain dedicated to improving patients’ lives and are thrilled that the foundation acknowledged our research with this prize.”

“The Alpert Prize was created to reward scientists whose discoveries have made great progress in new therapies for a wide range of diseases,” said Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey S. Flier, chairman of the foundation’s scientific advisory committee. “Alain F. Carpentier and Robert S. Langer’s research splendidly fulfills the prize’s central mission.”

The late Warren Alpert, a philanthropist dedicated to advancing biomedical research, established the prize in 1987. To date, the foundation has awarded more than $3 million to 39 individuals. Seven honorees have also received a Nobel Prize.

This article was adapted from a press release from the Warren Alpert Foundation and Harvard Medical School.

Related Links

Related Topics

More MIT News