“Engineering Novel Medical Aerosols for Global Health”
David A. Edwards
Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering at Harvard University
Friday, April 21, 2006
3:00pm, Building E25-111
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David A. Edwards is the Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering at Harvard University. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in January 2002, David held teaching and research positions at MIT and the Technion (Israel) (1987-1995). From 1995-98 he served as an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Penn State University .
In 1997 David co-founded Advanced Inhalation Research (AIR) (now part of Alkermes, a publicly traded pharmaceutical company in Cambridge) based on his scientific discovery of a new therapeutic aerosol drug form. From 1998 to 2001 David served as Chief Scientific Officer at AIR, helping to initiate its two most advanced products currently in the clinic, inhaled insulin and inhaled growth hormone, both in Phase III testing with Eli Lilly and Co. At Harvard University David Edwards develops novel medical technologies for improved healthcare treatment in the developing world.
In the summer of 2002 he formed the international not-for-profit, Medicine in Need (MEND) (www.medicineinneed.org), aimed at translating advanced drug delivery approaches toward the development of new treatments of diseases of poverty, and presently based in Cambridge (USA), Paris (France), and Pretoria (South Africa). In the spring of 2003 he co-founded the startup company Pulmatrix (www.pulmatrix.com), aimed at developing a novel approach to mitigating the spread of inhaled infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and avian influenza.
David is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the recipient of numerous national and international awards, including the Ebert Award of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (1995, 1996, 1999), the Herzl Award of the Municipality of Jerusaleum (2000), the Professional Progress Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2002), and the Third Annual Pharmaceutical Research Awards’ American Scientist of the Year Award (Finalist) (2004). He is a Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenge grantee for his research toward needleless vaccines for children in developing world nations.