UNM Rainforest Innovations

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced their election of 120 new members, including Dr. C. Jeffrey Brinker, Distinguished and Regents’ Professor in the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering at the University of New Mexico and Fellow at Sandia National Labs. The NAS is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars that was established in 1863 by an Act of Congress. Its main goal is to provide independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology.

Dr. Brinker is widely recognized for the contributions he has made to processing, characterization, and understanding of porous and composite nanostructured materials, and has been a pioneer in developing sol-gel processing, a method for making inorganic materials molecule by molecule. He and his research team have developed self-assembly (wherein molecules spontaneously organize into nanostructures) as a robust and efficient means to create porous and composite thin film and particulate nanostructures with optimized properties and/or complex functionalities.

To date, Dr. Brinker has received 42 UNM-affiliated issued U.S. patents and was named the 2015 Rainforest Innovation Fellow. That same year he was also elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and received the UNM Presidential Medal of Distinction. He has also won six R&D100 Awards for his inventions, including the first R&D100 Gold Medal for Green Technology.

See also the National Academy of Sciences’ April 26 article, “National Academy of Sciences Elects New Members – Including a Record Number of Women – and International Members,” on the NAS Website at http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/2021-nas-election.html.

Also see, “Brinker elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences” from the UNM Newsroom at https://news.unm.edu/news/brinker-elected-as-a-member-of-the-national-academy-of-sciences.

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