Aravinda Kar, a UCF professor who has received 29 patents, was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors last week.
Kar, of CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, is the 11th NAI Fellow from UCF. According to the nonprofit organization, it’s the highest professional accolade bestowed solely upon academic inventors who have demonstrated a 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.
Those elected to the rank of NAI Fellow are named inventors on U.S. patents and were nominated by their peers 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.
With the election of the 2017 class there are now 912 NAI Fellows, representing over 250 research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes. The 2017 Fellows are named inventors on nearly 6,000 U.S. patents, bringing the collective patents held by all NAI Fellows to more than 32,000.
Kar leads the Laser Advanced Manufacturing and Materials Processing (LAMMP) laboratory in CREOL. He has worked on laser materials processing and manufacturing for more than 30 years. Kar has published 114 technical journal papers, 172 conference papers, and the book Theory and Application of Laser Chemical Vapor Deposition. He is also a Fellow of the Laser Institute of America.
Many of the patents resulting from new technologies developed in Kar’s lab have been licensed by UCF to AppliCote Associates, LLC.
Kar and others from the 2017 class of NAI Fellows will be inducted on April 5 at the Seventh Annual NAI Conference of the National Academy of Inventors in Washington, D.C.