Professor Allan S. Hoffman.The recipient of the 2017 Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal is Professor Allan S. Hoffman, Emeritus Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. The Award will be presented at the 2017 Meeting of the Society for Biomaterials to be held in Minneapolis in April 2017.
Professor Hoffman studied at M.I.T., where he received his B.S., M.S., and Sc.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering between 1953 and 1957. He taught on the faculty of the Chemical Engineering Department at M.I.T. for a total of ten years. He then spent 46 years as Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.
Prof. Hoffman’s major research interests are in drug delivery; diagnostic assays; “smart”, stimuli-responsive polymers; hydrogels; and chemical and biological modification of biomaterial surfaces. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles and is co-inventor on over 35 issued patents. He is co-Editor (along with Buddy D. Ratner, Fred J. Schoen and Jack E. Lemons) of “Biomaterials Science”, Elsevier Publishers, now in its 3rd Edition.
His early work in 1984 on the use of “smart” polymers in a temperature-driven phase separation immunoassay sparked a huge worldwide interest in such stimuli-responsive polymers as biomaterials. Biomedical applications of “smart” polymers continue to grow rapidly around the world at the present time.
He has been an Honorary Professor at: Sichuan University, Chengdu, China; South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China; Wuhan University, Wuhan, China; Shanghai University, Shanghai, China; and Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark. In 2013 he completed a four-year appointment (2009-2013) as WCU (“World Class University”) Distinguished Professor at the Kyungpook National University Medical School in Daegu, South Korea.
Professor Hoffman was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2005. His other recognitions and awards include Presidency of the US Society for Biomaterials (1983); the “Biomaterials Science Prize” of the Japanese Society for Biomaterials (1990); the Founders’ Award of the US Society for Biomaterials (in 2000); the Chandra Sharma Award of the Society for Biomaterials and Artificial Organs of India (2003); the “International Polymer Research Award” of the Japanese Society of Polymer Science (2006), and the Founder’s Award of the US Controlled Release Society (2007);
Special symposia have been organized in Maui, Hawaii by his colleagues to celebrate his 60th, 70th and 80th birthdays. Former students, along with many academic colleagues, have also organized symposia which they have called “Hoffman Family Symposia” (HFS) and since 2010 there have been four, the first two were in Tokyo, Japan in 2012 and 2014, the third was in Gwangju, Korea in 2015, and a fourth was in Taipei, Taiwan September, 2016. A fifth HFS will be held in Shanghai, China this coming October, 2017.