MIT Professor Awarded $500,000 for Inventions Combining Organic and Inorganic Matter

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Angela Belcher was awarded the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize for her work in creating novel electronic materials used from everything from solar cells and fuel to environmentally-friendly batteries.

Dubbed the “Oscar for Inventors,” the prize is awarded to outstanding mid-career innovators who have developed a patented product or process of “significant value to society, which has been adopted for practical use, or has a high probability of being adopted for practical use,” according to the award’s site.

“It feels fantastic,” Belcher, who is also a faculty member at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, said in a news release. “There’s been so many great people who have won it in the past. I feel very fortunate.”

Belcher is the head of the school’s Biomeolecular Materials Group and says she draws her inspiration from nature’s ability to create materials.

In particular, she found her source of inspiration in the shell of an abalone snail that she discovered when spending time near the ocean as an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Comprised of both the inorganic calcium carbonate and protein, Belcher found herself led down a road in which she is constantly finding new ways to coax inorganic and organic materials to work together.

In doing so, she invented a lithium-ion battery powered by engineered viruses with the same energy capacity and power performance as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries currently being considered for hybrid cars.

Belcher was able to apply this same process to improve the efficiency of alternative solar cells by genetically engineering viruses to more efficiently collect electrons in the solar-cell system. This ultimately improved the cells' energy production by 33 percent

Such discoveries have given rise to two companies; Cambrios Technologies, which develops electronic materials for transparent coatings used for touch screens and other devices, and Siluria Technologies, which converts lower-value methane gas into high-value liquid transportation fuel.

“Angela Belcher is an extraordinary inventor,” Joshua Schuler, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, said. “She has taken a single idea and applied it to develop a remarkable portfolio of inventions that span a multitude of industries and will ultimately benefit business, society and the environment.”

Belcher said she plans on allocating a portion of the award money to developing outreach programming designed to help bring “cutting edge and state-of-the-art technology into the classroom.”

As she put it, “The basis of solving many of the pressing global problems — such as energy, health and food — lies in basic science and technological advances that the next generation can help develop."