Thinker, inventor, mentor to speak at College of Science J. Mark Sowers Distinguished Lecture Series
Four-hundred scientific articles. Two-hundred-and-fifty patents. Eighty-one students mentored through Ph.D. completion. One of only 25 people ever to be elected to all three branches of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine plus the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
You might think this is an article announcing the retirement of some eminent scholar. The eminent scholar part is true, but Joseph DeSimone Ph.D. '90 is still full steam ahead — researching, inventing, teaching, and mentoring. He’s also speaking: On Monday, Oct. 27, this distinguished alumnus will return to Blacksburg to deliver the J. Mark Sowers Distinguished Lecture. The free event begins at 7 p.m. at the Holtzman Alumni Center.
DeSimone has pioneered numerous breakthroughs in his 30-year career in areas including green chemistry, medical devices, nanomedicine, and 3D printing, also co-founding several companies based on his research.
In the 1990s, DeSimone led a team to invent a green manufacturing process that eliminated so-called “forever chemicals” like PFAS. The process was partially commercialized by DuPont.
In the mid-2000s, DeSimone and students developed a nanoparticle manufacturing platform, the first technology to enable large-scale fabrication of uniform nanoparticles for medicine with independent control over particle features such as size, shape, and composition. Based on this technology, DeSimone co-founded Liquidia Technologies, which has multiple clinical products. His lab published a large body of research using PRINT, or particle replication in non-wetting templates, to study how specific particle features influence biological processes and to advance the design of vaccines.
More recently, DeSimone and team invented a revolutionary 3D-printing technology called CLIP, or continuous liquid interface production. CLIP eliminates the slow, layer-by-layer construction seen with other polymer 3D-printing approaches to enable parts to "grow" continuously and rapidly from a pool of liquid resin. Based on CLIP, DeSimone co-founded and led Carbon Inc., now a global digital additive manufacturing company helping to advance product innovation with applications in medical, dental, footwear, automotive, and aerospace industries. CLIP is also used by many academic laboratories to advance research in areas including medical devices and implants.
Currently, DeSimone is the Sanjiv Sam Gambhir Professor of Translational Medicine and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University.
He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Virginia Tech.
The J. Mark Sowers Distinguished Lecture Series in the College of Science is a forum for the exchange of new and innovative ideas in scientific fields. The series began in February 2017.
Generously supported by Mark and Debi Sowers, this series provides opportunities for the university community and general public to interact with and learn from eminent scholars and industry experts. Sowers is a Richmond-based businessman and developer and longtime supporter of the College of Science. He sponsors the series to share with others his fascination with the sciences.
