​KAUST Vice President for Research and Distinguished Professor of Materials Physics & Device Engineering, Donal Bradley, has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the organization announced on December 8, 2020. This year's class represents 115 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutes worldwide. Collectively, the new Fellows hold over 4,700 issued U.S. patents; 24 are Fellows of National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; six are Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and two are Nobel Laureates.

Bradley, a pioneer of soluble semiconductors, co-invented conjugated polymer electroluminescence and co-founded Cambridge Display Technology Ltd., now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sumitomo Chemical Company. He subsequently co-founded Molecular Vision Ltd. at Imperial College London to develop novel polymer detection systems for microanalysis applications, latterly acquired by the Abingdon Health Group.

Bradley also served on the Board of Solar Press Ltd. (U.K.) and supported CSEM Brasil in establishing Sunew, with both Solar Press and Sunew established to develop roll-to-roll printed solar cells. Most recently, he is a co-founder of PeroLED Ltd., a perovskite-focused display and lighting company that is relocating to KAUST.

Bradley's contributions to science and engineering have been recognized by receipt, amongst others, of the EU Descartes Prize (2003); SID Jan Rajchman Prize (2005); IOP Faraday Medal (2009); IET Faraday Medal (2010); RS Bakerian Medal (2010); and E-MRS Jan Czochralski Award (2019).

He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society, the U.K. National Academy, since 2004 and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010 for services to science. He also holds honorary doctorates from the University of Sheffield (2014) and Hong Kong Baptist University (2017) and an honorary fellowship from Churchill College Cambridge (2018). In addition, Bradley is a visiting professor of physics at the University of Oxford and is a visiting academician at the Oxford Suzhou Centre for Advanced Research.

About the NAI Fellows Program

The NAI Fellows Program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a 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. Election as an NAI Fellow is the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors.

To date, NAI Fellows hold more than 42,700 issued U.S. patents, which have generated over 13,000 licensed technologies and companies, and created more than 36 million jobs. In addition, over $2.2 trillion in revenue has been generated based on NAI Fellow discoveries.

Bradley and the rest of the Fellows will be inducted at the 2021 Fellows Induction Ceremony at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Inventors in June 2021, in Tampa, Florida.

View the complete list of NAI Fellows here.

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