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Takeuchi named SUNY Distinguished
Esther S. Takeuchi, Greatbatch Professor in Power Sources Research in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been named a SUNY Distinguished Professor, the highest faculty rank in the SUNY system.
This is Takeuchi’s second major honor in as many months. She received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor awarded for technological achievement, from President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony held Oct. 7.
Takeuchi was one of eight SUNY faculty members appointed to the rank of Distinguished Professor by the SUNY Board of Trustees at its Nov. 17 meeting.
The rank is an order above full professorship and has three co-equal designations: distinguished professor, distinguished service professor and distinguished teaching professor.
The distinguished professorship recognizes and honors individuals who have achieved national or international prominence in their fields.
Before joining the UB faculty in 2007, Takeuchi was chief scientist at Greatbatch Inc., where she worked for 22 years. Her development of the lithium/silver vanadium oxide battery while at Greatbatch was a major factor in bringing implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) into production in the late 1980s. ICDs shock the heart into a normal rhythm when it goes into fibrillation.
Takeuchi often is cited as the woman awarded the most patents in the U.S.—more than 140 at last count—most of them related to her pioneering development of sophisticated power sources for implantable devices, now a booming multibillion-dollar business. Named to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering in 2004, she is one of just 104 women elected to the organization, considered the highest distinction that an engineering professional can achieve. Less than 5 percent of the academy’s 2,400 active members are women.
Takeuchi is the first UB faculty member to receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, which is administered for the White House by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It recognizes individuals or companies for outstanding contributions to the promotion of technology for the improvement of the economic, environmental or social well being of the United States.
At UB, Takeuchi is applying some of the same principles involved in her signature inventions to power source issues key to developing electric vehicles and alternative energy storage devices.
She also is working on some applications for homeland security that rely on sensors and require more efficient and portable power sources.
As part of UB’s new initiative in biomedical engineering—a cross-disciplinary effort between UB Engineering and the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Takeuchi and her colleagues in UB Engineering are working with researchers in the medical school to explore how new concepts for medical devices they developed could be powered.
A fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Takeuchi received the 2008 Astellas USA Foundation Award administered by the American Chemical Society, as well as the Battery Division of the Electrochemical Society Technology Award for development of lithium/silver vanadium oxide batteries and the Jacob F. Schoellkopf Award by the Western New York American Chemical Society for creative research in batteries for medical applications.
She has received the Inventor of the Year Award, Physical Sciences, of the Technical Societies Council of the Niagara Frontier and the Niagara Frontier Intellectual Property Law Association; a Pioneers of Science Award from Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute; a citation from UB’s Community Advisory Board for outstanding achievement in science; a Woman of Distinction citation from the American Association of University Women and the Achievement in Healthcare Award from D’Youville College. She also was inducted into the Western New York Women’s Hall of Fame.
She earned a doctorate in chemistry at The Ohio State University and completed postdoctoral work in electrochemistry at the University of North Carolina and UB. She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania with a double major in chemistry and history.
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