Adam Heller

Adam Heller

Adam Heller (born June 25, 1933) is an Israeli American scientist and engineer. He is Chief Science Officer of SynAgile Corp. of Wilson, Wyoming, consults to Abbott Diabetes Care of Alameda, California, and is Ernest Cockrell Sr. Chair Emeritus of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. His 1973 paper with James J. Auborn established the feasibility of high energy density, high-voltage, non-rechargeable lithium batteries. Their 3.6-volt lithium thionyl chloride and 3.7-volt lithium sulfuryl chloride batteries remain in use in applications requiring very high energy density and a shelf life of 20 years or more. In 1996, Heller co-founded with his son Ephraim Heller TheraSense Inc. In 2000, the company's Freestyle micro-coulometric blood glucose assaying system made the monitoring of blood glucose by diabetic people painless by reducing the required blood volume to 300 nL. TheraSense was acquired by Abbott Laboratories in 2004 for $1.2 billion.Between 1987 and 2010 Heller introduced electron conducting hydrogels, the only known aqueous phases that conduct electrons having no leached redox couples. With these he electrically wired reaction centers of electron transferring enzymes to electrodes, transducing their turnover rates to electrical currents. Using electrically wired glucose oxidase he and his team engineered prototypes of subcutaneously implanted continuously glucose monitoring systems. These were developed by his colleagues at Abbott Diabetes Care, who created the world's most widely used FreeStyle Libre continuously glucose monitoring systems for diabetes management. His continuous non-invasive oral drug delivery system forms the basis of SynAgile Corporation's investigational DopaFuse L-DOPA/Carbidopa delivery system for managing Parkinson's disease. According to Google Scholar, Heller's patents and publications were cited 133,300 times and their h-index was 176 as of December 12, 2021. Heller is co-inventor or inventor of 293 granted US Patents and he ranks #192 on Wikipedia's List of the World's Most Prolific Inventors.

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