UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Professor Dipanjan Pan, the Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Chair Professor in Nanomedicine at Penn State has been named a 2025 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Being named an NAI Fellow is the highest professional distinction currently awarded to inventors in the nation.
NAI Fellows are academic inventors who have demonstrated “a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.”
Pan will be inducted at the 15th annual meeting of the National Academy of Inventors scheduled for June 1-4, 2026, in Los Angeles. This year’s 169 U.S. fellows — including Swaroop Ghosh, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Penn State — represent 127 universities, government agencies and research institutions, across 40 U.S. states.
“It is a great honor to be elected a fellow by the National Academy of Inventors,” Pan said. “This is a recognition of my lab’s significant academic, entrepreneurial and translational successes over the years. My sincere thanks to all my current and past team members, collaborators and funding agencies. This honor will motivate me further to continue to bring keen passion of scientific intuition with cutting-edge biomedical concepts to promoting the field of translational nanomedicine through various educational, research and leadership roles.”
Pan holds dual faculty appointments in College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ Department of Materials Science and Engineering and in the College of Engineering’s Ken and Mary Alice Lindquist Department of Nuclear Engineering. Pan is also affiliated with the Department of Chemistry, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Radiation Oncology, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and Materials Research Institute.
“Dr. Dipanjan Pan’s election to the National Academy of Inventors is a wonderful recognition of his creativity and impact at the intersection of materials science and biology,” said John Mauro, head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “His innovative work translating advanced materials into powerful biomedical technologies exemplifies the spirit of discovery that has defined materials science and engineering at Penn State for generations. We are proud to count him among the leaders carrying this tradition forward.”
Pan has a demonstrated track record in point-of-care diagnostics, therapeutics and nanotechnology. He serves as the director of Penn State’s Laboratory for Materials in Medicine. The laboratory’s mission is to develop next generation translatable materials to improve human health by merging “molecule making” and “device making,” and through innovations in nanomedicine tools.
Pan’s research focuses on translational innovation at the interface of materials science, biology and engineering to address unmet challenges in human diseases. His lab’s contributions are in developing synthetic blood for transfusion medicine, tear fluid diagnostics, infectious disease diagnostics and menstrual effluent-based point-of-care diagnostics for women’s health.
Pan’s work has been featured in several news stories, including on CNN, CBS and WPSU; and in many publications such as Nature, Science, Newsweek, American Society of Hematology Clinal News, American Bazaar, AI Magazine, The Microbiologist and Clinical Lab Products.
His research has resulted in more than 200 high-impact, peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals. He holds many patents, is involved in several ongoing clinical trials and is the founder of five biotechnology start-ups. Pan serves as the chief technology officer for two of the start-ups that he co-founded.
Pan is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Royal Society of Biology, the Royal Society of Medicine, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology. He is also a Distinguished International Associate of the Royal Academy of Engineering
Pan earned his master’s degree from Vidyasagar University in India and his doctorate in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology and conducted his postdoctoral studies at the Washington University in St Louis.
The National Academy of Inventors is a member organization comprising U.S. and international universities, and governmental and nonprofit research institutes, with over 4,600 individual inventor members and fellows spanning more than 260 institutions worldwide. Together, the 2025 class of fellows hold more than 5,300 U.S. patents and include recipients of the Nobel Prize, the National Medals of Science and Technology & Innovation, and members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, among others.