Two Rochester faculty members named fellows of National Academy of Inventors
Eby Friedman and Steve Goldman are being recognized for their pioneering work.
Two University of Rochester faculty members have been elected as fellows of the National Academy of Inventors(NAI), the highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors.
They are among the 170 inventors, representing 135 research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes worldwide, being honored this year. Explore the full list.
The honor recognizes academic inventors “who have demonstrated a prolific 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.”
The 2024 class of fellows will be honored at the NAI 14th Annual Meeting on June 26, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Eby Friedman: Advancing high-complexity, high-performance integrated circuit design
Friedman was recognized for his pioneering work in high-performance integrated circuits. Friedman’s work spans topics such as clock synchronization, power delivery and management, interconnect models, three-dimensional (3-D) integration, and emerging technologies such as superconductive circuits and magnetic devices. His research is used in a variety of common applications, such as microprocessors, wireless cell phones, cloud computing centers, and electronic design automation (EDA) tools used throughout industry.
As an inventor, Friedman holds 25 US patents and four foreign patents, which cover topics ranging from circuits for high-performance microprocessors and superconductive systems to methods for directional biasing of magnetic devices in high-density magnetic memory. His research has been integrated into a variety of commercial products across a diverse group of industries such as ink jet printers (Xerox), electronic design automation algorithms (Synopsys), digital cameras (Eastman Kodak), power management circuits (Qualcomm), and synchronous circuits (Intel) for microprocessors. His patents have been licensed by the primary EDA companies.
Friedman has been a member of several technical advisory boards and has founded multiple startup companies in the areas of electronic design automation and quantum computing. Several of these startups commercialized design tools for clock network synthesis to automate the on-chip synchronization process, necessary in almost all modern integrated circuits.
Friedman worked at Hughes Aircraft Company for 12 years, where he participated in the development of a large variety of integrated circuits and systems for US military and commercial applications. Friedman joined the University of Rochester in 1991 where he directs the High-Performance VLSI/IC Design and Analysis Laboratory. Friedman also serves as a visiting professor at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, where he directs the Technion Advanced Circuits Research Center and is a member of the Technion Board of Governors. He previously led the Center for Electronic Imaging Systems at Rochester for nine years. The Center is now known as the Center for Emerging and Innovative Sciences.
A prolific author and scholar, Friedman has authored more than 600 peer-reviewed publications and 17 textbooks. His books cover a broad range of topics, including high performance integrated circuits, 3-D integrated circuits, quantum integrated circuits, and on-chip power delivery and management. Friedman is a Fellow of the IEEE and past Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems and the Microelectronics Journal.
Friedman is a Fulbright scholar and has been a recipient of many awards such as a University of Rochester College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, the University of Rochester Graduate Teaching Award, the University of Rochester Hajim Lifetime Achievement Award, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Charles A. Desoer Technical Achievement Award, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Mac Van Valkenburg Award, and is an inaugural member of the University of California, Irvine Engineering Hall of Fame.
Steve Goldman: Pioneering neurological therapies through innovation and commercialization
Goldman, the URMC Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurosciences, was recognized for his innovative research on stem and progenitor cells in the central nervous system. This work continues to shape the future of therapeutic development for complex neurological conditions, including progressive multiple sclerosis, childhood leukodystrophies, Huntington’s disease, and other neurodegenerative and myelin disorders, potentially touching the lives of countless individuals worldwide.
Goldman’s contributions and entrepreneurship extend beyond academia into commercial biotechnology. He holds 36 US patents, with another 32 pending, and more than 100 foreign patents. These new technologies include innovations like fluorescence-activated cell sorting of brain cells, stem cell-derived glial cells, and human-glial chimeric brain models, all of which have become industry standards. The technologies—licensed by the University of Rochester to Sana Biotechnology, Oscine, CNS2, and Lyriq—are being employed in the development of new cell and gene therapies for neurological disorders.
Oscine was cofounded by Goldman in what was then the University’s largest-ever biotech startup, and was later acquired by Sana Biotechnology, which subsequently went public. He then cofounded another startup, CNS2, which now employs 22 staff members in Rochester, New York, further supporting innovation and job creation in the region’s biotechnology sector. Research done in the Goldman Lab—under both academic and commercial support—has led to FDA applications for therapies targeting progressive multiple sclerosis, Huntington’s disease, and other conditions.
Goldman is a neurologist and former chair of the Department of Neurology at the Medical Center. He has published more than 250 articles, most as first or senior author, which include papers in top journals such as Science, Nature (including Nature portfolio journals Nature Biotechnology, Nature Communications, Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience) Cell (including subjournals Cell Stem Cell and Cancer Cell), Neuron, JCI, and Brain, among many others. He is an associate editor of Brain, on the editorial board of Stem Cell Reports, and has been editor of the neuro-oncology and neuroscience sections of the Merck Manual. He has also served as a permanent voting member of the FDA’s Cell, Tissue, and Gene Therapy Advisory Committee. Goldman and his wife, Maiken Nedergaard, codirect the Center for Translational Neuromedicine, which maintains labs in both Rochester and at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Reporting by Luke Auburn and Mark Michaud.
