AdamHeller

Educational Qualifications

Ph.D., Chemistry, Hebrew University (1961)
M.Sc., Chemistry and Physics, Hebrew University (1957)

Focus

Glucose monitoring for diabetes management; Management of diseases, particularly Parkinson’s disease, by continuous delivery of drugs in the mouth

Biographical Information

Adam Heller received his Ph.D. from Hebrew University in 1961 where he studied under Ernst David Bergmann. He worked at GTE Laboratories in Bayside, NY and in Waltham, MA (1964-1975), then at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ (1975-1988), headings its Electronic Materials Research Department (1977-1988) where a team headed by King L. Tai developed key  parts of the high speed, high density chip-to-chip interconnect technology of mobile electronic systems.  While a professor of engineering at The University of Texas at Austin (1988-to date)  he co-founded with his son Ephraim Heller in 1996 TheraSense, now Abbott Diabetes Care and was the first Chief Technical Officer of the company. There they created in 2000 the now world-wide available painless blood glucose monitor FreeStyle^TM; unlike others, it requires only 300 nL blood, 1/8^th of the average volume of a mosquito blood meal. In 2015 Consumer Reports top rated FreeStyle^TM.  TheraSense was acquired in 2004 by Abbott Laboratories and is now the core of Abbott Diabetes Care. After making glucose monitoring painless, Heller and his colleagues at Abbott Diabetes Care made it bloodless. The bloodless FreeStyle Libre^TM system of Abbott Diabetes Care was introduced in Europe in 2014. Unlike earlier continuous glucose monitors it no longer requires the use of blood samples and strips for periodic calibration. It is replacing blood-requiring single-use strips. It is based on Heller’s electrical wiring of glucose oxidase. It consists of a dollar-coin sized skin-patch comprising the sensor and a short range transmitter, painlessly self-replaced every 14 days; and a cellphone-sized scanner-reader. When it is swiped over the skin-patch it displays the instantaneous glycemia, its trend and the glycemia of the past 8-hours. At the age of 82 Heller is the CSO of SynAgile Corp, also cofounded with his son Ephraim Heller, working on a miniature, non-intrusive, continuously orally L-DOPA infusing system for managing advanced Parkinson’s disease.

As of April 2020, Heller and his co-inventors’ patents and publications have been cited according to Google Scholar citations 119,387 times and their h-index is 168.

Medals

National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2007)
Fresenius Gold Medal and Prize, German Chemical Society (2005)
Spiers Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK (2000)
Faraday Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK (1996)
Vittorio De Nora Gold Medal of The Electrochemical Society (1988)

Awards & Honors

No. 142 on Wikipedia’s world List of Prolific Inventors (2020)
Honorable Member Israel Chemical Society (2019)
78th Honorary Member of The Electrochemical Society (2015)
Heinz Gerischer Prize of the European Section of The Electrochemical Society (2015)
Service to Society Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2014)
Torbern Bergman Medal of the Swedish Chemical Society (shared with Allen J. Bard, 2014)
Award for Creative Invention, American Chemical Society (2008)
AICHE Award in Chemical Engineering Practice (2005)
Charles N. Reilly Award of the Society of Electroanalytical Chemistry (2004)
Chemistry of Materials, American Chemical Society (1994)
David C. Grahame Physical Electrochemistry Award, The Electrochemical Society (1987)
Battery Research Award, The Electrochemical Society (1978)

Fellowships

Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009)
Institute Lecturer, American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2004)
Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (1996)
Elected Fellow, The Electrochemical Society (1994)
Elected to the U. S. National Academy of Engineering (1987)

Honorary Degrees

Doctor, Honoris Causa, City University of New York (Queens College) (2008)
Doctor, Honoris Causa, Uppsala University, Sweden (1991)

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