Medical device pioneer Robert Fischell gifts $20M for University of Maryland innovation center

A new center combining business, medicine and engineering to create new solutions is coming to the Baltimore-based University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Biotech inventor and entrepreneur Robert E. Fischell announced a $20 million gift for the Center for Bioengineering Innovation earlier this month.
Funding will be used to establish the center, which will bear Fischell’s name, and for construction of a new 450,000 sq. ft. building called Health Sciences Research Facility III.
Among many inventions, Fischell invented medical devices to prevent migraine headaches, and a device to prevent death from heart attacks, as well as a heart defibrillator insulin pump that are implantable. Fischell holds 200 patents, which also include many focusing on orbiting spacecraft that led to the modern era of satellites. He was also presented with a National Medal of Technology and Innovation by then-President Barack Obama in 2016.
“Our specific purpose for the new center is to help expand the UMSOM’s capacity for biomedical engineering so that it will produce new technologies and devices that will help treat our most critical and chronic diseases,” Fischell said in a statement.
Fischell also supported the University of Maryland College Park’s Institute for Biomedical Devices, which launched in 2016 and now has a Baltimore office at The GRID.