Latest

  • Envisioning a Safer Eye Exam

    Envisioning a Safer Eye Exam

    This young inventor created a synthetic model eye to help medical students train for optical procedures. With more than two million working parts, the eye is considered the second most complex human organ after the brain. So how can medical students train for treating such a complicated and sensitive part of the body? That’s the…

  • Microtechnology, Medicine and Mentoring: One Inventor’s Formula for Success

    Microtechnology, Medicine and Mentoring: One Inventor’s Formula for Success

    Sangeeta Bhatia is a leader in advancing human health care — and a role model for other women interested in STEM. At her lab at MIT, Sangeeta Bhatia is singlehandedly inspiring a new generation of inventors through a combination of humor and pragmatism. “One thing I like to tell the students, just to set their…

  • Meet the Woman Who Forged an Entirely New Scientific Field

    Meet the Woman Who Forged an Entirely New Scientific Field

    Chemical biologist Carolyn Bertozzi is blazing a trail in the way cancer and other diseases may be diagnosed and treated.

  • From Nature to New Materials: This MIT Professor’s Inventions Are Rooted in Biology

    From Nature to New Materials: This MIT Professor’s Inventions Are Rooted in Biology

    An abalone shell inspired Angela Belcher to pursue a career in engineering and cancer research.  Angela Belcher likes to make things. Her medium of choice? Atoms.  “When you take a couple of atoms and you arrange them in different ways and build them into different shapes,” she says, “it changes their properties.”  In nature, those…

  • 2021 Women’s History Month: Three Women Who Are Blazing a Trail in Medicine

    2021 Women’s History Month: Three Women Who Are Blazing a Trail in Medicine

    To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re spotlighting the groundbreaking accomplishments of three women whose work is helping advance human health care. The good news: The number of women inventors is increasing. The not-as-good news: Only about 17% of inventors worldwide are women, according to a report published by World Intellectual Property Indicators. In the United…

  • From Nature to New Materials: This MIT Professor’s Inventions Are Rooted in Biology

    From Nature to New Materials: This MIT Professor’s Inventions Are Rooted in Biology

    An abalone shell inspired Angela Belcher to pursue a career in engineering and cancer research. The notion that nature is full of inspiration is at the heart of Angela Belcher’s work — and it’s what set her own career in motion. A prizewinning inventor, including the 2013 Lemelson-MIT Prize, and MIT’s James Mason Crafts Professor ofMore

  • Microtechnology, Medicine and Mentoring: One Inventor’s Formula for Success

    Microtechnology, Medicine and Mentoring: One Inventor’s Formula for Success

    Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia is a leader in advancing human health care — and a role model for other women interested in STEM. Born near Boston, Massachusetts, to parents who immigrated to the United States from India, Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia is an MIT professor, a physician, a bioengineer, an entrepreneur and a patent-holding inventor. She is…

  • Dorothy Ginsberg Lemelson 1926–2021

    Dorothy Ginsberg Lemelson 1926–2021

    It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Dorothy (Dolly) Lemelson, the Foundation’s co-founder and wife of Jerome Lemelson. Dolly passed away peacefully on March 10th surrounded by her loving family. Dorothy Ginsberg was born on May 11, 1926, in Perth Amboy New Jersey, to Louis Ginsberg, a self-employed glazier, and Lena,…

  • Invent Oregon, Oregon’s Innovation Competition, Launches for 2021

    Invent Oregon, Oregon’s Innovation Competition, Launches for 2021

    The innovation competition is the culmination of the invention pathway, Oregon’s statewide K through capstone entrepreneurial pipeline for economic talent development The Invent Oregon Collegiate Challenge (InventOR), Oregon’s only statewide invention competition hosted by Portland State University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, returns in 2021 for its fifth year of student-pitched inventions and innovations. Held virtually to…

  • Engineer and Children’s Author Arlyne Simon Breaking Barriers for Female Patent Holders

    Engineer and Children’s Author Arlyne Simon Breaking Barriers for Female Patent Holders

    Simon describes her own invention journey and how she works to inspire other young women and girls to enter STEM fields. At first, biomedical engineer, inventor, and author Arlyne Simon didn’t consider the possibility of becoming an entrepreneur or patent holder. “I don’t think I really associated those terms with something that I would have,…

  • Cultivating Curiosity

    Cultivating Curiosity

    Arlyne Simon doesn’t want to be a statistic. She is a biomedical engineer, patent-holding inventor, author, and entrepreneur. Today, that puts her among a very small number of women — especially women of color — but Simon is on a mission to change that. “I really think inventing is magical. I mean, you identify a…

  • If We Want to Build Back Better, We Need a New Focus on Invention and Innovation

    If We Want to Build Back Better, We Need a New Focus on Invention and Innovation

    A road map to economic resilience and more inclusive prosperity The U.S. is at an economic crossroads, hastened by the effects of the pandemic. As we look for the best ways to revitalize our economy, we are appropriately focused on urgent, short-term needs, like getting people back to work and supporting small businesses such as…

  • National Inventors’ Day: Recognizing the Economic Impact of Invention

    National Inventors’ Day: Recognizing the Economic Impact of Invention

    Three new reports underscore why supporting a robust invention ecosystem is critical for economic resilience and creating the industries of the future. For the last 25 years, The Lemelson Foundation has focused on supporting invention as a catalyst for fueling economies and improving lives. Now, as a new administration is setting its agenda for economic…