Faculty Innovators
Amy Arnsten
Repairing the ‘Fabric of Thought’ with Drugs To
De-Stress the Brain
Arnsten has devoted much of her work to developing medications that allow the brain cells in the prefrontal cortex to talk with each other more easily, thereby reducing or preventing the effects of stress or harmful genetic alterations. more »
Tommy Cheng
Mining Ancient Chinese Remedies for Cutting-Edge Therapies
Put simply, Yung-chi Cheng’s work in pharmacology has had a profoundly positive effect on human health. He is one of Yale’s more prolific inventors, with several drug-related patents and applications that have been the basis for groundbreaking therapies to treat diseases that afflict millions. Drugs he has invented are routinely used to treat cancer, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B. more »
Craig Crews
Tapping Nature’s ‘Garbage Disposals’ for Promising
Cancer Treatments
One person’s castoff is another’s treasure. That’s certainly true for Craig Crews and his research on a chemical from a microorganism — a proteosome inhibitor — that he turned into a promising new treatment for cancer. more »
Robert Grober
Helping Golfers Perfect Their Game with the Sound of Swing
Neither of Bob Grober’s parents were into golf, but he took to the game as a boy and has been swinging a club ever since. He’s quick to admit his invention — a club that tells golfers when their swing is smooth and rhythmic by emitting pleasing musical sounds — was born of a desire to improve his game.
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Josephine Hoh
Tapping the Genetic Code To Predict Blindness and
Other Diseases
Josephine Hoh set out to find the genes that predispose people to age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly in the United States and an ailment that afflicts tens of millions worldwide. The young researcher from Taiwan achieved not only that discovery but pioneered a new, more efficient way of identifying the genes involved in such diseases. more »
T.P. Ma
Building Ever-Greater Memory Capacity for Ever-Smaller Digital Devices
As consumers expect lighter products with greater memory, industry faces a mounting challenge to fit the more powerful memory devices into smaller spaces. Enter T.P. Ma, a Yale electrical engineering professor whose work is known to virtually every semi-conductor and computer hardware company in the world. One of his inventions is an improved DRAM that major corporations see as a promising technology to solve this problem. more »
Rob McGinnis and Menachem Elimelech
Harnessing the Power of Osmosis To Create Clean
Water Affordably
McGinnis, now a Yale doctoral student in environmental engineering, and his adviser, Professor Menachem Elimelech, have designed systems that harness the power of osmosis to produce freshwater from seawater or industrial waste water — using a 10th of the energy used in conventional desalination systems that rely on reverse osmosis. more »
William Prusoff
Forging a Potent Weapon in the Battle Against HIV/AIDS
A potent anti-HIV/AIDS drug called Zerit© has prolonged the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients suffering with the disease. William Prusoff and his late colleague Tai-Shun Lin developed the drug, d4T, in the late 1980s. The compound was first synthesized by Dr. Jerome Horwitz in Detroit as an anti-cancer drug but it was not very effective. Prusoff and Lin, however, discovered it was very effective at slowing HIV. more »
Joseph Schlessinger
Halting Tumors’ Growth by Targeting Their ‘Achilles Heel’
Joseph Schlessinger is one of the world’s leading cellular biologists and cancer-treatment inventors. Widely known for pioneering studies of how cells grow and divide, and how aberrant cell signals can lead to cancer, he has made discoveries that have led to an entire field of cancer research, producing a new class of targeted anti-cancer drugs — multi-kinase inhibitors — that combat the disease by retarding both tumor growth and blood supply. more »
Robert Schoelkopf and Michel Devoret
Creating a Quantum Computer — One Artificial Atom at a Time
Robert Schoelkopf and Michel Devoret are creating basic building blocks for a future quantum computer. The two applied physics professors are among an elite group of experimentalists, working at the level of single microwave photons, super tiny packets of light energy. more »
Thomas Steitz and Peter Moore
Eliminating the ‘Guesswork’ in Developing More
Effective Antibiotics
The work of two Yale professors — Thomas Steitz in molecular biophysics and biochemistry and Peter Moore in chemistry studies — illuminated the basic structure of the ribosome, the protein-making machinery in all cells. In particular, Steitz and Moore detailed the structure of the larger of two parts of the ribosome, the 50S subunit. more »
Michael Snyder
Using a Microchip To Analyze the ‘Blueprint’ of Proteins
Michael Snyder, who won the 2007 Connecticut Medal of Science, the state’s highest honor for scientific achievement, has earned a reputation as one of the world’s leading pioneers in the study of proteins. In several pivotal studies, Snyder and his team demonstrated that it was possible to analyze thousands of genes and proteins at once. more »
Tian Xu
Unleashing the Power of Nature To Promote Genetic Research
Mutant mice sounds like the title of a B-movie. Multiply them by tens of thousands, and you’ve got a mutant mouse factory. That’s exactly what geneticist Tian Xu has established, and when he talks about his mice he might as well be referring to the Oscars: In his ambitious vision, he sees medical research gold. more »
Y. Richard Yang and Avi Silberschatz
Tuning Up the Internet To Make It Run Smoother and Faster
If you’ve ever been frustrated at how long it takes to download something from the Internet, the team of Y. Richard Yang and Avi Silberschatz may have just the cure. The two computer scientists have engineered a system to make the Internet work more smoothly and efficiently. more »
