Page 104 - Technology and Innovation Journal - 19-1

442 THE NAI PROFILE

pending patents, and a successful serial entrepreneur. INTERVIEW
His outstanding scientific work has earned him a T&I: Can you tell us a bit about the current projects
place in that elite group of scholars who have been you are working on at Carbon and if you still have
elected to the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, work in progress at your lab at UNC?
Engineering, and Medicine and selected as fellows DeSimone: I began my leave from the University
of the National Academy of Inventors, the Amer- of North Carolina about three years ago. I still have
ican Association for the Advancement of Science, seven students finishing up their doctoral disser-
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. tations, and the majority of them will be done by
Moreover, he has also been recognized with major the end of this calendar year. After starting several
awards in other areas that are equally important to companies as a faculty member and nurturing them
him, including innovation, technology transfer, and while being a faculty member—as a board member
the promotion of diversity in science. or a consultant—and having taught entrepreneurship
Trained as a chemist, DeSimone has focused his in the College of Arts and Sciences at Carolina, after
academic and entrepreneurial efforts on finding inno- 25 years, I’ve turned a new chapter, and I’m leading
vative solutions to major problems in a wide range of Carbon.
areas. Some of his key contributions have come in the We have an amazing team of people here working
area of medicine and include his co-founding a com- at the intersection of hardware engineering, software
pany to commercialize bioabsorbable drug-eluting engineering, and molecular science. We’re about 200
stents as well as his creation of fabrication techniques strong, and we have products in the marketplace
to specifically tailor nanoparticles for medical appli- that are doing fantastic. We’re trying to reinvent and
cations such as vaccines and medicines. Most recently, disrupt the manufacturing sector. We believe strongly
he has turned his considerable creative powers to the that although the digital revolution has impacted
manufacturing sector, where his invention of Con- many different sectors of the economy—commerce
tinuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP), a new and movies and media and getting a hotel room or
3D printing technology inspired by the Hollywood a taxi—the digital revolution has not happened in
blockbuster Terminator 2, stands to revolutionize manufacturing. And the only hope for where that
the manufacturing industry and affect sectors from could really happen is in additive manufacturing
automotive to medical. CLIP technology, a major and 3D printing. Up until this point, 3D printing
advance in additive manufacturing, uses a novel pho- has been slow and uneconomical, and the parts have
tochemical process that exploits light and oxygen to not had the quality to be final parts. Carbon changes
quickly make high-quality parts from specialized all of that, and therefore we’re trying to usher in the
liquid resins. By using an oxygenated layer of resin digital revolution in manufacturing, reinventing the
during fabrication, CLIP obviates the need to peel way people design, engineer, make, and distribute
between layers of resin, a process that made previous physical things.
3D printing machines slower and thus not feasible
for mass manufacturing applications. T&I: You just mentioned that you have several prod-
Dr. DeSimone was kind enough to take time away ucts on the market that are doing really well right
from his hectic schedule at his new company, which now. Which products are you most excited about?
is in full growth mode, to talk about how Carbon DeSimone: We’ve invented a new way of doing 3D
is revolutionizing the Maker Movement, why we printing, and our machine—our hardware that we
shouldn’t be pessimistic about the impact that 3D call M1—is an internet-connected device that uses
printing and other manufacturing technologies will light and oxygen to grow parts. We have amazing
have on jobs, and what really makes innovative teams resins that have a wide range of mechanical properties
successful. for a host of applications, ranging from a variety of

performance plastics used in automotive and aero-
space to advanced materials for medical devices to