Three UMass Faculty Named Senior Members of National Academy of Inventors
AMHERST — UMass Amherst faculty Lili He, Govindarajan Srimathveeravalli, and VP Nguyen have been named senior members of the 2026 class of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). The senior member recognition program was created to recognize active faculty, scientists, and administrators at NAI member institutions who have successfully produced, patented, and commercialized technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society and economic progress.
“UMass Amherst is committed to fostering an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem that helps connect cutting-edge research to real-world applications, bringing revolutionary solutions to life for our global community,” said Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, provost and senior vice chancellor for Academic Affairs. “I am proud of our three new senior members of the National Academy of Inventors and celebrate their visionary work, which spans contributions across the intellectual landscape from food science, computer science, and biomedical engineering.”
He, professor and Food Science department head, serendipitously stumbled upon her first of seven patents when one of her students accidentally discovered that the chemical coating her lab was working on had an unexpected property. He was awarded a grant from the USDA to help develop a method and technology for quickly and accurately quantifying how many bacteria are in food — one of the core problems in food science. The team developed a hypothesis that involved a complex, multi-step protocol, but it turned out that the chemical coating itself eliminated all the intermediate, and costly, steps.
That coating is now the backbone of a patent for BactiSee, a rapid surface-bacteria detection system for food processing, pharmaceutical, and healthcare environments. He has also launched a startup, HertZ Innovation Tech, to bring BactiSee to market with her postdoc, Yuzhen Zhang.
Srimathveeravalli, associate professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in the Riccio College of Engineering and director of the Center for Personalized Health Monitoring in the Institute for Applied Life Sciences, holds several patents for medical devices for minimally invasive therapy and image-guided treatments.
“My lab develops technology to advance image-guided therapy,” he said. “In these procedures, a physician — with a really tiny incision — inserts a needle or a catheter into diseased tissue to treat it. We use electrical energy as a therapeutic modality.” The catheter allows the electricity to reach deep within the body to kill the cancer cells without destroying the organ.
Upcoming technologies that are based on this principle include a diagnostic system that reimagines cancer biopsy, medical devices and energy delivery approaches for arresting early-stage bladder cancer, and a catheter-based system that can clear tumors or plaque from major blood vessels.
Nguyen, assistant professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, studies wireless and sensing systems. “We are able to solve a very diverse set of problems,” he said. “When we see problems, we are able to go deep into what is missing and then try to correlate it with our sensor and system expertise.”
Applications of his sensor technology include device-free sleep breathing monitoring, tongue- and teeth-manipulated computing systems via an ear-based wearable, wearable devices for cardiovascular health, and a bioelectronic sensing and stimulation platform for adaptive balance therapy. His sensing network research has also been used for drone swarm tracking for alternative firework displays.
“UMass Amherst’s inductees in the NAI class of 2026 senior members join a distinguished group of over 700 scientists and researchers from around the world,” said Sundar Krishnamurty, vice provost for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Creativity. “This honor recognizes their significant contributions to our innovation ecosystem, as evidenced by their success in securing patents and bringing to life technologies that impact the welfare of our society.”
The 2026 class of senior members will be honored during an induction ceremony at NAI’s 15th annual conference taking place June 1-4 in Los Angeles.