Polymer chemistry expert wins two major New Jersey awards
Archived article from Nov 3, 2003
Kathryn Uhrich and her company, Polymerix Corp., are bringing double accolades this month to Rutgers. The university has received a Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award from the Research & Development Council of New Jersey, while Polymerix has become the New Jersey Technology Council’s “Life Sciences Company of the Year.”
Polymerix Corp. is a company based on a broad range of technologies with medical, dental, cosmetic and industrial applications. These technology platforms are the product of Uhrich’s discoveries at Rutgers, and Polymerix has been created with the encouragement and support of the university. Uhrich is the scientific founder of Polymerix and Karen Giroux is the company’s chair and chief executive officer.
The Edison Awards are given for the most revolutionary product innovations and important scientific breakthroughs originating in New Jersey. The award-winning patent covers a polymer technology used to coat medical devices, including coronary stents to prevent life-threatening scarring in the artery. This is Polymerix’s first commercial target for the technology that also underlies PolyAspirin™, sometimes called “plastic aspirin.” In PolyAspirin™, salicylic acid — the active ingredient in aspirin — is incorporated into the polymer structure. This makes the drug more acceptable to the body and promotes a slow release, thereby providing long-term, anti-inflammatory and pain-killing effects with less risk of stomach problems.
Polymerix will receive its Life Sciences of the Year award at the New Jersey Technology Council’s awards gala Nov. 21 at the Hilton East Brunswick. Uhrich and Rutgers will be honored at the R&D Council’s awards dinner at the Liberty Science Center Nov. 6. Beyond the awards and accolades, Polymerix’s future has also been brightened by an infusion of $3.9 million by investors. In addition, Polymerix has recently signed a strategic partnership with a major medical device company, bringing in an additional $4.5 million. The collaboration will accelerate commercialization of the company’s medical device coating applications.
Michael W. Smith, professor and chair of the department of learning and teaching at Rutgers’ Graduate School of Education, has been named a recipient of the 2003 David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English by the National Council of Teachers of English. Smith and co-author Jeffrey D. Wilhelm won the award for their book “Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men.” The award will be presented Nov. 22 at the group’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
Smith and Wilhelm’s book, published last year by Heinemann Publishing, seeks to uncover why boys have consistently underperformed girls in literacy achievement.
Research conducted by two Rutgers professors redefining the origins of political interest groups in the United States has earned two awards from the American Political Science Association (APSA).
Richard Harris, a professor of political science in Camden, and Daniel Tichenor, an associate professor of political science in New Brunswick, were honored for their article “Organized Interests and American Political Development,” which was published in the winter 2002 edition of the journal Political Science Quarterly. Harris and Tichenor received the APSA’s Mary Parker Follett Award and the Jack C. Walker Award for outstanding research articles. Both awards honor research published during 2002-03. The Rutgers scholars’ research challenges contemporary beliefs that the rise of special interest groups in American government originated in the 1950s, finding new evidence that special interests have played a role in the evolution of government institutions since the 19th century. Working from the archives of the U.S. Congressional Information Service’s Index of Congressional Testimony, Harris and Tichenor collaborated to compile an entirely new database of more than 80,000 instances of organized interest testimony.
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