Edith Mathiowitz

Edith Mathiowitz is an Israeli American bioengineer who is Professor of Pathology and Professor of Engineering at Brown University. She has focused her career on biomedicine and the development of polymers for drug delivery and tissue engineering. She is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Early life and education Mathiowitz was born in Israel. She earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry at Tel Aviv University. For her graduate studies, she studied physical chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science. She remained there as a doctoral researcher, where she studied polyamide microcapsules. She was a postdoctoral researcher with Robert S. Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a postdoctoral researcher she submitted several patent applications which have since been licensed to many start-ups, include injectable growth hormones and tattoo inks. She has spent much of her career at Brown University, where she was Director of the Graduate Program in Biotechnology.

Mathiowitz has created bioadhesive polymers that enhance interactions with intestinal mucosa. Her bioadhesive polymers achieve these specific interactions by inducing secondary bonds and prolonging 'dwelling time' compared to other oral dosages. She has also developed biodegradable nanoparticles that can be chemically engineered to penetrate mucosal barriers and deliver biological components (e.g. through the use of hydrophobic polymers with carboxylic acid), as cancer vaccines, and to deliver peptides and proteins.

Awards and honors 1997 Elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering 2013 Elected Member of the National Academy of Inventors 2015 Elected Fellow of the Controlled Release Society

Selected publications