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Sang M. Han elected into National Academy of Inventors

December 15, 2023 - by Kim Delker

Photo: Sang M. Han
Sang M. Han

Sang M. Han, chair and Regents’ Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, has been elected into the National Academy of Inventors.

Han was among 162 academics from around the country to be inducted into the 2023 class. The NAI Fellows will be honored at the NAI 13th Annual Meeting on in June 2024 in Raleigh, N.C.

Election as an NAI Fellow is the highest professional distinction awarded solely to an inventor. The NAI Fellows Program was established to highlight academic inventors who have demonstrated innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.

Han joined UNM in 2000 after a brief stint in the private sector. His primary areas of research are materials engineering for solar photovoltaic (PV) reliability, instability-driven semiconductor quantum materials engineering and plasma-based materials processing for CMOS technology.

Since 2016, he has been chief technology officer of the startup Osazda Energy LLC, a company based on advanced metallization technologies developed at UNM. In 2018, he was named a UNM Rainforest Innovations Innovation Fellow for commercializing this technology.

Han joins more than 1,700 NAI Fellows worldwide representing more than 300 universities and governmental and non-profit research institutes. Collectively, the Fellows hold more than 58,000 issued U.S. patents, which have generated over 13,000 licensed technologies, 3,200 companies and created more than 1 million jobs. In addition, over $3 trillion in revenue has been generated based on NAI Fellow discoveries.

Han is among 12 NAI Fellows at UNM. In the School of Engineering, he joins Jeffrey Brinker, Steven Brueck, Ravi Jain, Gabriel Lopez and David Whitten.