Keynote Fireside Chat with Dr Robert Langer and Dr Ester Caffarel-Salvador

Dr. Ester Caffarel-Salvador is a multidisciplinary scientist with a background in biotechnology and biochemistry. At the Langer Lab at MIT, she developed a pill to administer insulin orally, which led the MIT Technology Review to recognize her as one of the 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2019.After working across startups, pharma, and consulting, Dr. Caffarel-Salvador is now an Associate Director of Rare Disease Strategic Innovation at Chiesi USA. She is passionate about advocating on career development for women in science and is an advisor and mentor to various startups and academic programs.

Robert Langer is an Institute Professor at MIT (there are 13 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member). Over 300 of his trainees are now professors, 17 have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, 12 have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, 21 to the National Academy of Inventors and 35 to the Technology Review 35. His h-index of 251 is the highest of any engineer in history and he has over 1,300 issued and pending patents worldwide. His patents have licensed or sublicensed to over 350 companies. He served as Chairman of the FDA’s SCIENCE BOARD (it’s highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. Dr Langer is also one of very few individuals ever elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. He is one of four living individuals to have received both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation. In 2015, Dr Langer received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the world’s largest engineering prize. He has also received the Charles Stark Draper Prize (sometimes referred to as the engineering Nobel Prize), the Albany Medical Center Prize, the Wolf Prize for Chemistry, the Millennium Technology Prize, the Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), the Gairdner Prize, the Kyoto Prize, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the Lemelson-MIT Prize, for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” Dr Langer holds 33 honorary doctorates including honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale.