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Brinker elected as Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences

April 18, 2018 - By Kim Delker

C. Jeffrey Brinker, a Distinguished Professor and Regents’ Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The University of New Mexico, has been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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C. Jeffrey Brinker

“This is an extremely prestigious honor, which recognizes the groundbreaking scientific work that Jeff has for many years been involved with at both UNM and through his joint appointment with Sandia National Laboratories,” said Christos Christodoulou, Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing. “We congratulate Jeff on this incredible professional accomplishment that sets a shining example for both UNM and the School of Engineering.”

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences was founded in 1790, bringing together leaders from the academic, business and government sectors to address critical challenges facing our global society. Membership includes around 4,600 Fellows and 600 foreign honorary members in the fields of mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, medicine, the social sciences and humanities, business, government, public affairs and the arts. Among the Academy's Fellows are more than 250 Nobel laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Brinker is also the only member of the National Academy of Engineers at UNM, and in 2015 was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
He was chosen as a 2015 STC.UNM Innovation Fellow, along with Dr. Cheryl Willman of the UNM Cancer Center, for their achievements as some of UNM’s leading innovators.

Brinker joined Sandia National Laboratories as a member of the technical staff in 1979 and was appointed distinguished member of the technical staff and National Laboratory Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at UNM in 1991. Since 1999, he has been jointly em-ployed at UNM and Sandia.

He is Internationally known for his work in advanced materials, pioneering sol-gel processing, a method for making inorganic materials molecule by molecule.

In 2010, Brinker was one of the leaders of $6 million funding partnership with the National Cancer Institute Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer and the state of New Mexico. One NCI grant established a UNM Cancer Center/UNM/Sandia joint cancer nanotechnology program and another one created a new cancer nanotechnology training program to train a new generation of multidisciplinary engineers, life scientists and oncologists. The state funded a new lab supporting Brinker’s research into nano-bio materials and nanomedicine in space donated by the UNM School of Engineering at its Centennial Engineering Center. The development of the protocell technology is the result of this multidisciplinary effort to develop new and innovative cancer diagnosis and treatment methods using nanotechnology.

Brinker will be officially inducted into the Academy at a ceremony Oct. 6 in Cambridge, Mass.

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