Mauro Ferrari Honored by the Controlled Release Society
HOUSTON (May 17, 2011) - Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D. , president and CEO of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston, recently received the 2011 CRS Founders' Award. The prestigious, internationally-recognized Founders Award honors outstanding leaders in the field of drug delivery science and technology.
Ferrari has pioneered the use of nanotechnology for the controlled release of medicines, with technology that maintains steady levels of medicines in the body over time and increases the specificity of drug targeting, which reduces side effects caused by medicines not delivered directly to the site of disease.
The Controlled Release Society is the premier society worldwide for the science and technology of delivering drugs and bioactive materials. The society serves more than 1,600 members from industry sectors, academia and government.
The mission of CRS is to bring together experts in chemistry, chemical engineering, physics, materials science, biological sciences, and medicine to develop technologies that improve the delivery of bioactive agents. Pharmaceutical drug delivery is a major focus of CRS members. CRS also supports the development of delivery technologies for consumer, environmental and agricultural products.
The Founder's Award will be presented at the Opening Session of the CRS 38th Annual Meeting & Exposition at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. Dr. Ferrari will serve as the 2012 Founders Award Chair for the committee that will select the 2012 recipient.
Dr. Ferrari joins an elite group of CRS Founders Award recipients including Drs. Vladimir P. Torchilin (Northeastern University), Robert Langer (MIT), Kazunori Kataoka (University of Tokyo, Japan ), Nicholas Peppas (University of Texas at Austin), Alejandro Zaffaroni and Alexander (Sandy) Florence. "I am very honored to be in such distinguished company," says Dr. Ferrari.
As CEO of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Ferrari heads a 440,000 square foot research facility with more than 900 scientists dedicated solely to medical research. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and received his doctorate in mathematics from Universita' di Padova in Italy.
Ferrari is the president of the Alliance for NanoHealth, and a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He led the development of the NCI's program in nanotechnology, which remains the largest nanomedicine program in the world.
r more information on The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, see www.methodistresearch.com. For more information on The Methodist Hospital, see www.methodisthealth.com. Follow Methodist on Twitter at twitter.com/MethodistHosp and Facebook at www.facebook.com/methodisthospital.
