LSU Boyd Professor of Chemistry and SEC Professor of the Year Isiah Warner and Professor of Equine Research Mandi Lopez were named Fellows to the National Academy of Inventors. NAI Fellows is a high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible improvement on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.
Although the two professors are involved in different research, they share many commonalities.
Lopez is the director of the Laboratory for Equine and Comparative Orthopedic Research in the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine. She has more than 75 original scientific publications and is an associate editor of a national scientific journal, as well as a member of many public and private grant review boards. She has also been an active member of the LSU Faculty Senate for nearly a decade.
Lopez came to the University after going to school in Europe, Asia and California, and her European accent comes out sporadically. She said she was introduced to surgery in veterinarian school and was always committed to applying engineering principles to surgery.
While working with orthopedic surgeons, Lopez said she realized they were struggling to find a good way to hold tension when working with the anterior cruciate ligament. The ACL is one of a pair of cruciate ligaments in the human knee.
Lopez said she has been working on two devices, the GraftGrab and Grab Ten, for 15 to 20 years and is continuing to work on them.
Both inventions make it easier to secure tissue to bone, while tension is simultaneously adjusted, a feat which could not previously be accomplished. The devices could possibly be used in future bone and joint surgeries for both animals and humans, ultimately improving surgical outcomes that may make it possible to further advance techniques that stablize the knee.
“I always encourage people to have lifelong creativity and interest,” Lopez said. “Never underestimate yourself and what you can learn and master. It requires effort, commitment and failures, but you keep going. It’s the people that pick up after failures that grow.”
Warner is the University’s Phillip W. West Professor of Chemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor at LSU. His research aims to develop and apply chemical, instrumental and mathematical measurements to solve important questions in chemistry. He is considered one of the world’s experts in analytical applications of fluorescence spectroscopy.
Warner holds eight U.S. patents that specialize in spectroscopy and include a variety of different research areas. His spectroscopy studies have become foundations for many leading manufacturers of commercially available fluorescence in analytical measurements.
Similar to Lopez, Warner said he never dreamed of receiving such an honor and it was only possible because of the people that believed in him.
“My true love is working with students, whether it’s at the graduate level in my research group or at the undergraduate level inspiring students to get Ph.Ds,” he said.
Being from Bunkie, La., Warner said he had no idea what a Ph.D. was in college until his mentor told him he would receive one by the age of 30.
Teaching young people the sky is the limit and that their potential is only limited by their confidence and knowledge of what they can do is something he hopes to do for the rest of his life.
Warner and Lopez were nominated by their peers for contributions in areas such as patents and licensing, innovative discovery and technology, and support and enhancement of innovation.
Both professors said they are completely humbled by their recognition, and they plan to pay their knowledge forward by mentoring students and helping them pursue their dreams, as their own mentors did for them.

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Kim Nguyen

LSU Boyd Professor of Chemistry and SEC Professor of the Year Isiah Warner sits in his office on Jan. 18, 2017, in Choppin Hall. Warner was recently named Fellow to the National Academy of Inventors.