IEEE-SA & Dean Kamen

About IEEE-SAThe IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) provides an open environment that unites some of the world’s best and brightest minds to objectively explore, nurture and advance global technologies. Participation in the IEEE-SA is open to professionals of all ages, and includes developers, engineers, designers, inventors, entrepreneurs, technologists, students and academics from over 160 countries, from any industry and/or sector. IEEE-SA participants work together to envision the future, identify opportunities and create more efficient, safe, interoperable, profitable, sustainable and responsible technologies for the future.

About Dean KamenDean Kamen is an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a tireless advocate for science and technology. His roles as inventor and advocate are intertwined—his own passion for technology and its practical uses has driven his personal determination to spread the word about technology's virtues and by so doing to change the culture of the United States.

As an inventor, he holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of health care worldwide. While still a college undergraduate, he invented the first wearable infusion pump, which rapidly gained acceptance from such diverse medical specialties as chemotherapy, neonatology, and endocrinology. In 1976, he founded his first medical device company, AutoSyringe, Inc., to manufacture and market the pumps. At age 30, he sold that company to Baxter Healthcare Corporation. By then, he had added a number of other infusion devices, including the first wearable insulin pump for diabetics.