The most recent recpients of the world's top bioengineering award were honored Tuesday night for their work with vision correction surgery that has helped million worldwide.
Rangaswamy Srinivasan, James J. Wynne and, posthumously, Samuel E. Blum, who developed laser ablative photodecomposition allowing PRK and LASIK vision correction surgery, were awarded the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize at the National Engineers Week gala in Washington D.C. by officials from Ohio University and the National Academy of Engineering.
The biennial prize started in 1999 with a gift from Fritz and Dolores Russ, giving out a cash prize of $500,000 and gold medals, according to a news release.
“Fritz and Dolores wanted to honor significant contributions to our quality of life and to our society,” OU President Roderick McDavis said in the release. “They also wanted to promote engineering education, in order to inspire future generations of engineers. This, we know, is so important to our country and our world, with the increasingly complex problems we face.”
Fritz Russ is a 1942 graduate of the engineering college that now also bears his name.
The trio’s research focused on using an ArF (193 nm) laser to cut animal tissue, leaving behind a clean incision without scarring — a practice that was eventually applied to vision correction for 25 million people internationally, according to the release.
Dennis Irwin, dean of OU’s Russ College of Engineering and Technology, Kenneth Johnson, dean of the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and Joe Shields, vice president of Research and Creative Activity, were in attendance at the event held at Union Station, according to the release.
dd195710@ohiou.edu
