Rice U.’s Philip Kortum named fellow of National Academy of Inventors

Rice University
Office of Public Affairs / News & Media Relations

NEWS RELEASE

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Amy McCaig
713-348-6777
amym@rice.edu

Rice U.’s Philip Kortum named fellow of National Academy of Inventors

HOUSTON – (Dec. 12, 2017) – Philip Kortum, an associate professor of psychology at Rice University, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the organization announced today. He is one of 155 academic inventors who received the honor this year.

According to the academy, election to NAI fellow status is “the highest professional accolade bestowed solely to 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 welfare of society.”

Kortum’s research focuses on a number of applied human factors issues, including voting system usability, measuring the usability of products and services and web use and navigation. He currently holds 53 patents, with contributions in hardware design, image quality and user interfaces.

With the election of the 2017 class there are now 912 NAI fellows; they represent more than 250 research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes. The 2017 fellows are named inventors on nearly 6,000 issued U.S. patents; the collective U.S. issued patents held by all NAI fellows is more than 32,000.

The 2017 NAI fellows will be inducted April 5 as part of the seventh annual NAI Conference of the National Academy of Inventors in Washington, D.C.

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For more information, contact Amy McCaig, senior media relations specialist at Rice, at 713-348-6777 or amym@rice.edu.

This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/.

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Related Materials:

Phil Kortum website: http://philkortum.com/

Photo link: http://news.rice.edu/files/2015/07/0713_KORTEM.jpg

Photo credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

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