C.C. Chu, the Rebecca Q. Morgan ’60 Professor of Fiber Science & Apparel Design, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He is one of 148 academic inventors to receive the honor this year.

Chu’s work focuses on biodegradable biomaterials design and development applications, including tissue engineering for human body repair. He has more than 90 U.S. and international patents.

His multidisciplinary work, which spans biomaterial engineering and medical sciences, has applications for the treatment of burns, diseased heart valves and blood vessels, bone repair, gene transfection for gene therapy, drug delivery nanotechnology for cancer therapy, and immunotherapy for cancer patients.

“It is a great honor to be inducted into the National Academy of Inventors, and I am very grateful that NAI recognizes my countless efforts and achievements to develop my research programs at Cornell that not only address the traditional advancement of knowledge via typical academic research, but, more importantly, my research programs that would have real impacts on real people,” Chu said.

He is a recipient of the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities and an inductee to the National Academy of Science’s College of Fellows within the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Chu is currently collaborating with Hong Kong Baptist University to advance the delivery of Chinese medicine via his lab’s new pseudo-protein biomaterial nanotechnology for the most challenging breast cancer treatment, triple-negative breast cancer.

With the election of the 2018 class of inductees, there are now more than 1,000 NAI Fellows, representing more than 250 research universities and government and nonprofit research institutes. The 2018 Fellows are named inventors on nearly 4,000 issued U.S. patents, bringing the collective patents held by all NAI Fellows to more than 35,000 issued U.S. patents.

“I am very proud to welcome another class of outstanding NAI Fellows, whose collective achievements have helped shape the future and who each day work to improve our world,” said Paul Sanberg, president of NAI. “Each of these new NAI Fellows embodies the academy’s mission through their dedication, creativity and inventive spirit. I look forward to working collaboratively with the new NAI Fellows in growing a global culture of innovation.”

Election to NAI Fellow status is the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors 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.

Stephen D’Angelo is assistant director of communications in the College of Human Ecology.