For work that “significantly advanced the engineering profession,” Dr. Adam Heller has won the College-wide Billy and Claude R. Hocott Distinguished Centennial Engineering Research Award.
The chemical engineer, a Research Professor and past holder of the Ernest Cockrell Jr. Chair in Engineering, has had an impressive list of innovations. His most recent research on glucose-monitoring devices for diabetics has impacted millions of people worldwide.
Dr. Heller co-developed FreeStyle®, a glucose-monitoring device about the size of a keychain that determines blood sugar levels using only 300 nanoliters of blood, making the blood sampling painless. The company he co-founded was purchased for $1.2 billion by Abbott Diabetes Care in May, 2004.
He is currently working on miniature batteries and glucose-oxygen fuel cells. The combination of Heller’s enzyme–wiring-based glucose monitor and these power sources could lead to miniature, less conspicuous, on-the-skin continuous glucose monitors and eventually to automatic dosing of insulin.
Email this article to a friend
About UT's Cockrell School of Engineering:
The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering ranks among the top six public engineering schools in the United States. With the nation's fourth highest number of faculty elected members of the National Academy of Engineering, the School's more than 7,000 students gain exposure to the nation's finest engineering practitioners. Appropriately, the School's logo, an embellished checkmark used by the first UT engineering dean to denote high quality student work, is the nation's oldest quality symbol. The School maintains a Web site at http://www.engr.utexas.edu