Eric Ledet

Director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship 

Within minutes of waking up, biomedical engineering has already touched your life. Glasses. Contact lenses. Hearing aids. CPAP machines. Smart watches tracking your sleep. Memory foam mattresses. Clear aligners. Even the bristle design on your power toothbrush. 

"And if you get out of bed and smile at someone," says Eric Ledet, "that smile might not look the same without biomedical engineering." 

Then there's Sunday. The helmets keeping football players safe. The training science optimizing their performance. The AED mounted at the golf course that lets a completely untrained bystander save someone's life during a cardiac event. "That technology did not exist a couple of decades ago." Ledet holds 25 patents across orthopedic devices and assistive technology. To him, the distinction is simple: "It's not just life-saving technologies. It's lifestyle-enhancing technologies. It's all biomedical engineering."