Yuri Peterson elected to the National Academy of Inventors

Yuri Peterson has just earned the highest distinction offered exclusively to inventors – he was elected to the 2024 Fellows Class of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the NAI announced today.

Peterson, professor and interim co-chair of the Department of Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences at the MUSC College of Pharmacy, joins the late Craig Beeson as MUSC pharmacy representatives in the academy. The NAI lists seven other scientists with an MUSC designation.

The NAI Fellows Program was established to highlight academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society. Election to NAI Fellow status is the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors.

Collectively, NAI Fellows hold more than 68,000 issued U.S. patents, which have generated over 20,000 licensed technologies, 4,000 companies and created more than 1.2 million jobs. In addition, over $3.2 trillion in revenue has been generated based on NAI Fellow discoveries.

MUSC scientists elected to the NAI include (with year of election): Craig Beeson (2016), Carol Feghali-Bostwick (2023), Nancy Klauber-DeMore (2020), Anand S. Mehta (2022), Yuri Peterson (2024), Barbel Rohrer (2014), Stephen Tomlinson (2015), John Vournakis (2013), and Michael Yost (2018).