Kyriacos Athanasiou Elected to the National Academy of Medicine

UC Irvine’s Kyriacos Athanasiou, Ph.D., has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest professional honors in the medical and health fields.

A Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Henry Samueli Chair in Engineering, he was elected for inventing, developing and translating technologies that impact several biomedical fields, according to the National Academy of Medicine. These fields include orthopedics, maxillofacial surgery, tissue engineering, diabetes and emergency care.

“Being elected to the National Academy of Medicine is a recognition of decades of work by my students, fellows, colleagues, and me, always toward improving human life,” said Athanasiou. “UCI has proven to be a great environment for our translational work, and I am thrilled that this NAM election is happening while I am at this exceptional university. In particular, Beall Applied Innovation is the linchpin for effecting translation of our research to actual products and procedures, and I am a proud participant in Applied Innovation activities. At UCI, we truly have one of the best ecosystems in the world for taking lab-based technologies and translating them to eventual modalities that can help humankind.”

The prestigious honor of election into the Academy includes 90 national members and 10 international members each year. It is one of three private, nonprofit national institutions that work outside of government to provide objective advice on science, technology and health.

As Director of UCI’s Driving Engineering & Life-Science Translation Advancements @ Irvine (DELTAi), Athanasiou’s primary research objective is to understand and enhance the healing processes of musculoskeletal tissues as well as the body’s various cartilage tissues. He is an active proponent of research translation and is known for making implants that help cartilage heal and repair itself.

“In the history of UCI there have only been five National Academy of Medicine members, and so with this latest accolade, Kerry joins a highly prestigious group of physicians and scientists,” said Michael Green, Ph.D., interim dean at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and professor of Electrical Engineering.

Athanasiou is also the primary inventor of the technology behind UCI startup Cartilage Inc., a Wayfinder team, that recently received a National Institutes of Health phase one Small Business Innovation Research grant of $252,000 to investigate the efficacy and safety of their product Hyaleon®, a scaffold-free, tissue-engineered cartilage implant, capable of healing both large and small cartilage defects.

Learn more about Athanasiou’s research at DELTAi.

Main photo: UCI Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering Kyriacos A. Athanasiou. Photo: Steve Zylius, UC Irvine

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