Prolific patent-holder won for inventing battery that increases the lifespan of implantable defibrillators fivefold, greatly reducing need for reoccurring surgery.
Esther Sans Takeuchi, PhD, has won the 2018 European Inventor Award in the “Non-EPO countries”, the European Patent Office (EPO) announced today. The award was given to her by the EPO at a ceremony held today in Paris, Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Of the four U.S. scientists nominated for the award, Takeuchi is the only American to bring home Europe’s most prestigious prize of innovation.
Takeuchi is the Chief Scientist of the Energy Sciences Directorate at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University’s (SBU) William and Jane Knapp Endowed Chair in Energy and the Environment, and a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts & Sciences and in Materials Science and Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SBU. She was honored for developing the compact batteries that power tiny, implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs)—devices that detect and correct irregular, potentially fatal, heart rhythms. Her lithium silver vanadium oxide (“Li/SVO”) battery extended the power-source lifetime for ICDs to around five years, considerably longer than its predecessors, thus reducing the number of surgeries patients needed to undergo to replace them. Her invention led not only to an advance in battery chemistry, but also enabled the production and widespread adoption of ICDs and significantly improved patient well-being.
>Read more on the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) website
Image: Esther Sans Takeuchi, a joint appointee of Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University, has won the 2018 European Inventor Award in the category “Non-EPO countries.”