NEW YORK, NY, September 19, 2019 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, Ph.D., with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic celebrates many years of experience in her professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes she has accrued in her field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic received a Bachelor of Science, Masters of Science and Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Belgrade, all in Chemical Engineering. In 1986-87, she was a Fulbright Fellow at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic also holds a honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Novi Sad in Serbia.
Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic began her career as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Belgrade in Serbia in 1981 and has been promoted to Associate Professor and finally to a Full Professor. Following these appointments, she was with the Division of Health Sciences and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, from 1993 through 2005. In parallel, she also had an appointment at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University. In 2005, she was recruited to Columbia University in the City of New York, as a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and director of Columbia's Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering. Subsequently, Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic has been appointed as a Professor of Medical Sciences in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a faculty in the Center for Human Development, Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Mortimer B Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and the College of Dental Medicine. Since 2011, she holds an endowed chair serving as the Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Sciences.
In 2017, Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic was appointed University Professor, the highest academic rank at Columbia University reserved for only a few active professors out of 4,000, as the first engineer in the history of Columbia to ever receive this highest distinction.
The focus of her research is on engineering functional human tissues for regenerative medicine and studies of development and disease. Gordana published 3 books, 62 book chapters, 400 journal articles (including those in Nature, Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Communications, Nature Protocols, Science Advances, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Cell Stem Cell, Science Translational Medicine). With 44,000 citations and impact factor h=120, she is one of the most highly cited individuals of all times, in all disciplines. She also gave 425 invited talks, and has 400 conference abstracts and 101 licensed, issued or pending patents. 25 of her trainees hold faculty positions (10 of them are women).
With her students, she founded four biotech companies: epiBone (epibone.com), Tara Biosystems (tarabiosystems.com), Xylyx Bio (xylyxbio.com), and Immplacate (immplacatehealth.com) that are all based in NYC.
She has served on editorial boards of 31 journals, the Advisory Council of the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), the Council for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, Board of Directors of the Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) - where she chairs the Science/Technology Committee, Board of Directors of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and as the US Section Head for Musculoskeletal Repair & Regeneration for the Faculty 1000 of Medicine.
She serves on Advisory Boards at several academic institutions (Johns Hopkins University, Tufts University, Boston University, Sloan-Kettering Center for Stem Cell Biology, New York Stem Cell Foundation, New York State Stem Cell Science, City College New York, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Washington University, University of Washington Seattle Dialysis Center, University of Maryland Center for Engineering Complex Tissues, University of Vermont, University of Pennsylvania, Pensylvannia State University, University of Toronto) and companies (Forkhead, Ionic Biomedical Inc, epiBone, Tara Biosystems, Xylyx, Immplacate, Advanced Cell Technology, Organovo, Modern Meadow, StemSave).
Among her many recognitions, Dr Vunjak-Novakovic was elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) where she was the Chair of the College of Fellows (2016-17), and inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame "for developing biological substitutes to restore, maintain or improve tissue function". She received the Clemson Award of the Biomaterials Society "for significant contributions to the literature on biomaterials" (2009), the Pritzker Award of the Biomedical Engineering Society (2017) and Shu Chien Achievement Award (2018).
She gave the Director's lecture at the NIH, as the first woman engineer to receive this distinction.
She was elected to the New York Academy of Sciences for contributions to biomedical engineering, Academia Europaea for contributions to translational research, and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts for contributions to biology and chemistry. She is a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, a Fellow of the AAAS, a Founding Fellow of the International Society for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, one of the Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers for 2014.
Dr Vunjak-Novakovic has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (the first women faculty at Columbia University), the National Academy of Medicine (the first engineer at Columbia University), the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic has previously been selected for inclusion in the 21st edition of Who's Who of American Women, the 27th edition of Who's Who in the East, the 31st edition of Who's Who in Finance and Industry, the sixth edition of Who's Who in American Education and multiple editions of Who's Who in Science and Engineering, Who's Who in the World and Who's Who in America.
In recognition of outstanding contributions to her profession and the Marquis Who's Who community, Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic has been featured on the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement website. Please visit www.ltachievers.com for more information about this honor.
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