Anthony Atala, MD, is the W. Boyce Professor and Chair of the Department of Urology at Wake Forest University and the G. Link Professor and Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. His work focuses on growing human cells, tissues and organs. Dr. Atala works with several journals and serves in various roles, including Editor-in-Chief of: Stem Cells- Translational Medicine, and BioPrinting. Fifteen applications of technologies developed in Dr. Atala's laboratory have been used clinically. He is the editor of 25 books, has published more than 800 journal articles and has applied for or received over 250 national and international patents.
Dr. Atala was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and is a recipient of the US Congress funded Christopher Columbus Foundation Award, bestowed on a living American who is currently working on a discovery that will significantly affect society; the Edison Science/Medical Award; the R&D Innovator of the Year Award; and the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award. Dr. Atala’s work was listed twice as Time Magazine’s top 10 medical breakthroughs of the year, and was ranked by the Project Management Institute as one of the top 10 most impactful biotech projects from the past 50 years. Dr. Atala was named by Scientific American as one of the world’s most influential people in biotechnology, by U.S. News & World Report as one of 14 Pioneers of Medical Progress in the 21st Century, by Life Sciences Intellectual Property Review as one of 50 key influencers in the life sciences intellectual property arena, and by the journal Nature Biotechnology as one of the top 10 translational researchers in the world.