Elisa Konofagou Named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors

Robert and Margaret Hariri Professor of Biomedical Engineering Elisa E. Konofagou has been elected to the 2025 Class of Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the nation’s highest professional distinction currently awarded to inventors. 

Konofagou, who is also a professor of radiology (physics) and of neurological sciences (in Neurosurgery), designs and develops ultrasound-based technologies for drug delivery and therapeutics, as well as algorithms to estimate and image tissue mechanics and electromechanics. Her group has also developed novel techniques for using ultrasound to facilitate noninvasive brain drug delivery, as well as modulation of both the central and peripheral nervous systems. 

Her group has pioneered methods such as Myocardial Elastography, Electromechanical Wave Imaging, Pulse Wave Imaging, and Harmonic Motion Imaging for the noninvasive early detection and screening of the early onset of cardiovascular disease and myocardial infarction, as well as for the detection, monitoring, and generation of ablative therapy for noninvasive, extracorporeal tumor treatment. A critical focus of her work is on ultrasound-induced opening of the blood-brain barrier to facilitate noninvasive and localized brain drug delivery in pediatric brain tumors, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and peripheral neuropathy. She maintains several collaborations with physicians in order to translate and establish these technologies to the clinical setting. 

Due to the efforts of Konofagou and her team, Columbia University was named a Center of Excellence by the Focused Ultrasound Foundation in 2025, a distinction held by only 14 sites worldwide. The Center will expand collaboration and research on focused ultrasound for clinical applications. 

Konofagou received a BS in chemical physics from Sorbonne University (Université de Paris 6) in 1992, a MS in biomedical engineering from Imperial College (London, UK) in 1993, and a PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Houston in 1999. She is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and in 2007, she received the NSF CAREER Award. In 2021, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

The NAI Fellows Program is dedicated to “recognizing individuals whose patented innovations have made an enduring and profound economic and societal impact on the world.” The Fellows Induction Ceremony will take place June 4, 2026, in Los Angeles, California, at the Dolby Ballroom.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Louis E. Brus, Samuel Latham Mitchill Professor Emeritus, and special research scientist from Columbia University’s Department of Chemistry, was also named to the 2025 Class of Fellows.