October 2026

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) announced the election of 100 new members for 2026 on October 19, 2026, including 90 regular members and 10 international members. Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors in health and medicine, and members are elected by current members in recognition of major contributions to medical science, health care, and public health. With this class, NAM’s total membership exceeds 2,600.

The International Engineering and Technology Institute (IETI) is delighted to congratulate two of its Distinguished Fellows on this achievement: Professor Jennifer Lewis and Professor Matthew V. Tirrell.

Professor Jennifer Lewis (IETI 2025 Distinguished Fellow) is the Hansj?rg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, and a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. NAM recognized her groundbreaking work in 3D bioprinting of soft and living materials, including advanced techniques for creating vascularized organoids and human tissues for drug discovery, disease modeling, and therapeutic repair.

Professor Matthew V. Tirrell (IETI 2020 Distinguished Fellow) is the D. Gale Johnson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago. NAM recognized his pioneering design and synthesis of self-assembling polymers for the delivery of peptide, protein, and nucleotide drugs in cardiovascular disease, cancer, infection, and vaccination, as well as his development of the fundamentals of self-assembly and their application to targeted delivery at the subcellular, cellular, and tissue levels.

Both honorees work where engineering meets medicine, and their election reflects the growing role of engineering in advancing human health. This is closely aligned with IETI’s mission of promoting innovation in science, engineering, and technology across disciplines and borders.

“On behalf of the entire IETI community, we extend our warmest congratulations to Professor Lewis and Professor Tirrell, and we thank them for their continued support of IETI,” said the Institute. (You may wish to replace this with a quote from IETI leadership.)

Source: National Academy of Medicine, “NAM Elects 100 New Members for 2026,” October 19, 2026.