Precision medicine pioneer holds more than 30 patents and is the cofounder of multiple companies
Light helps us find our way through the dark, keeps us warm, and allows plants to breathe life into our planet. In his lab at Boston University, Distinguished Professor Ji-Xin Cheng (ECE, BME, MSE) turns light to another purpose: precision medicines and technologies that improve human health. He has pioneered a microscope that enhances cancer detection, a device to zap away antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and a technique for mapping cells that could help take on Alzheimer’s disease.
His innovations have fostered more than 30 patents, catalyzed multiple start-ups—and now prompted his election to the National Academy of Inventors’ (NAI) latest class of fellows.
According to the NAI, becoming a fellow is the “highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors.” To qualify, researchers must have played a major role in “outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.”
An expert on manipulating photons—the particles that carry electromagnetic energy and make up light—Cheng was the 2022 BU Innovator of the Year and serves as a scientific advisor to companies in the US and Europe.
“I am very pleased to receive this honor and join this wonderful NAI class,” says Cheng, the BU College of Engineering Moustakas Chair Professor in Optoelectronics and Photonics. “My name Ji-Xin (继新) means continuous innovation in Chinese. I guess that I was born for this career!”
Read the full story at BU’s The Brink
Photo by Jackie Ricciardi