Two students working on a autonomous plane
Duffield Hall at sunset.
Students walking along Ho Plaza
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Two students walking on Engineering Quad towards Duffield

David A. Putnam

Associate Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Professor
Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering / Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Biography

David Putnam joined the College of Engineering at Cornell University in 2002. Prior to joining the engineering faculty, he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer. From 2000 until 2002, he held a joint appointment MIT and as a Scientific co-Founder of a start-up company, TransForm Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in March, 2005. In 2008-2009 he was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at PureTech Ventrures in Boston, MA where he focused on emerging technologies in the field of drug delivery. He is currently a member of seven Editorial Advisory Boards including Pharmaceutical Research, Journal of Controlled Release, Analytical Biochemistry and Experimental Biology and Medicine. His funding sources include NIH, NSF, the Coulter Foundation and the Department of Defense. He is a Fellow of AIMBE (reserved for the top 2% of Biomedical Engineers in the United States) and the Coulter Foundation. He received his B.S. in Pharmacy from Union University and his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Utah.

The Putnam research group focuses on the design and synthesis of functional biomaterials. Using organic polymer chemistry and micro/molecular biology, we build biomaterial from first principles and apply them to human health. Research areas include vaccine/adjuvant design and delivery, synthetic lubricants, surgical devices and drug delivery systems.

Research Interests

Teaching Interests

Engineering principles for biomedical applications.

Selected Publications

  • Zawaneh, P N., S P. Singh, R F. Padera, P W. Henderson, J A. Spector, David A. Putnam.  2010. “Design of an injectable synthetic and biodegradable surgical biomaterial.”  PNAS 107 (24): 11014-11019.
  • Chen, D J., N. Osterrieder, S M. Metzger, E. Buckles, A M. Doody, Matthew DeLisa, David A. Putnam.  2010. “Delivery of foreign antigens by engineered outer membrane vesicle vaccines.”  PNAS 107 (7): 3099-3104.
  • Wong, S Y., N. Sood, David A. Putnam.  2009. “Combinatorial evaluation of cations, pH-sensitive and hydrophobic moieties for polymeric vector design.”  Molecular Therapy 17 (3): 480-490.
  • Pelet, J M., David A. Putnam.  2009. “High molecular weight poly(methacrylic acid) with narrow polydispersity by RAFT polymerization.”Macromolecules 42 (5): 1494-1499.
  • Putnam, David A.  2006. “Polymers for gene delivery across length scales.”  Nature Materials 5 (6): 439-451.

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Editorial Advisory Board (Scientific Reports, Nature Publishing Group) 2016
  • Invited Speaker (Keystone Symposium) 2015
  • Michaelson Grant (Found Animals Foundation) 2014
  • Fiona Ip Li ’78 and Donald Li ’75 Excellence in Teaching Award (Cornell, College of Engineering) 2010
  • Fellow [American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)] 2009

Education

  • B.S. (Pharmacy), Albany College of Pharmacy at Union University, 1990
  • Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Chemistry), University of Utah, 1996
  • Postdoc Langer Lab (Biomaterials and drug delivery), MIT, 1996-1999