Professor Buddy Ratner will be honored with two special sessions at this year’s Society for Biomaterials Annual Meeting. This will be the 51st annual meeting, and Ratner has been at every annual meeting of the professional society that focuses on materials for medical and biological applications.

Ratner was a new assistant professor at the University of Washington when he attended the first. Now the Darland Endowed Chair in Technology Commercialization, Ratner’s sessions are called “51 years of Buddy Ratner” and will celebrate the many milestones of his long career. He is a global leader in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, publishing more than 340 journal articles and holding more than 25 patents.

The sessions were organized by two of Ratner’s former graduate students, Professors Ashutosh Chilkoti and Gabriel Lopez. Chilkoti, the Alan L. Kaganov Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University, is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the National Academy of Inventors. Lopez is a Distinguished Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering at the University of New Mexico. He was founding director of Research Triangle Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, from 2011-2015, before serving as University of New Mexico’s Vice President for Research until 2020.

Both studied with Ratner in the 1980s.

“I will always be deeply grateful to Buddy for taking a chance on me many years ago and welcoming me into his research group. Organizing this symposium is just a small way of saying thank you!” said Chilkoti.