FIU’s Khizroev named a Charter Fellow by National Academy of Inventors

FIU professor Sakhrat Khizroev, a world-renowned inventor in the area of nanotechnology, is one of 98 innovators recently named a Charter Fellow by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

The holder of 30 U.S. patents, Khizroev, a professor of immunology and electrical engineering, was recognized for inventing a dynasty of pioneering nanotechnologies that significantly impacted modern information processing.

Election to NAI Fellow status is a high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a highly 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.

Khizroev focuses his research on applications of nanomagnetics/spintronics, which studies the interplay of magnetism and transport phenomena. His research in information processing and medicine has resulted in the development of several groundbreaking nanotechnologies, including: perpendicular magnetic recording, the main state-of-the-art technology in the multibillion data-storage industry; nanolasers, optical transducers capable of focusing light into a spot size of 5 nanometers (billionths of a meter); and magneto-electric nanoparticles for targeted delivery and on-demand release of drugs used to fight, diagnose, prevent and cure cancer, HIV/AIDS, Central Nervous System disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, and others.

In Nov. 2011, Khizroev returned to FIU, his first academic home, as a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the College of Engineering & Computing, and a professor of Immunology at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine.  He was one of the two co-founding directors (along with Professor Madhavan Nair) of the new university-wide Center for Personalized NanoMedicine, a research center at the Institute of NeuroImmune Pharmacology, which involves researchers at different colleges within FIU and across the globe. He also serves as vice chair at the Department of Immunology.

From 2006 to 2011, Khizroev was a tenured faculty at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of California, Riverside, where he, along with a team of students and post-doctoral fellows, worked hand-in-hand with many Silicon Valley companies. In 2007, Khizroev oversaw the joint UCR / University of Houston / Western Digital demonstration of nanolasers – a new generation of optical devices. This technology overcame the stumbling blocks that for decades prevented optical diagnostics at a single-molecule level.

Khizroev started his academic career in 2003 as an associate professor in the FIU Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering where he was tenured in 2005. Khizroev contributed to the development of the Focused Ion Beam laboratory within the Motorola Nanotechnology Facility, making FIU the first university across the globe where the popular nanotechnology tool was used for an unconventional application, as a powerful nanodevice prototyping machine. Three-dimensional (3-D) magnetic memory is one of the pioneering and patented technologies that came from the Khizroev group at FIU and was later advanced at UCR.

This technology takes advantage of a 3-D space (compared to the conventional 2-D surfaces and interfaces in the conventional Silicon technologies) and paves a way to an entirely new level of information processing with the potential to realize energy-efficient quantum processing.

Prior to his academic career, Khizroev spent almost four years as a research staff member with Seagate Research and one year as a pre-doctoral intern with IBM Almaden Research Center. Khizroev led the 1998 joint demonstration by researchers of IBM and Carnegie Mellon University to prove the feasibility of perpendicular magnetic recording – the main nanotechnology used today in the multibillion-dollar information storage industry. At IBM, he authored or co-authored three patent inventions in the field of nanomagnetic devices.

Khizroev received a bachelor’s in quantum electronics and applied physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, a master’s in physics from the University of Miami, and a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992, 1994, and 1999, respectively.

The 98 innovators named to NAI Charter Fellow status represent 54 prestigious research universities and non-profit research institutes. Together, the new Fellows hold more than 3,200 U.S. patents. Included in the Charter class are eight Nobel Laureates, two Fellows of the Royal Society, 12 presidents of research universities and non-profit research institutes, 50 members of the National Academies (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine), 11 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, three recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, four recipients of the National Medal of Science, and 29 AAAS Fellows, among other major awards and distinctions.

The NAI Charter Fellows will be inducted as Fellows by the U.S. Commissioner for Patents, Margaret A. Focarino, from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), during the 2nd Annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors, on Feb. 22 in Tampa.

The NAI Charter Fellows will be recognized with a full-page announcement in The Chronicle of Higher Education on Jan. 18, 2013, in the Jan. 2013 issue of Inventors Digest, and in a future issue of Technology and Innovation – Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors.

The academic inventors and innovators elected to the rank of NAI Charter Fellow are named inventors on U.S. patents and were nominated for outstanding contributions to innovation in areas such as patents and licensing, innovative discovery and technology, significant impact on society, and support and enhancement of innovation.

The 2012 NAI Charter Fellows are listed online at http://www.academyofinventors.org/charter-fellows.asp.