• Award
• Center for Remote Health Technologies and Systems
• Faculty
• Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES)

Dr. Mark Benden '89, '06 at the National Academy of Inventors Annual Conference. | Image: Courtesy of Dr. Mark Benden.

Dr. Mark E. Benden '89, '06 was inducted by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) as a Fellow last month at the NAI 13th Annual Conference, Unlocking Innovation: Keys to Societal Solution, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Benden is a faculty researcher at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station's Center for Remote Health Technologies & Systems, the department head for Environmental & Occupational Health at the Texas A&M School of Public Health, director of the Center for Worker Health, and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Multidisciplinary Engineering and the Wm Michael Barnes '66 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University,.

"I hope that receiving this honor might encourage other young academic inventors and entrepreneurs," Benden said. "Most importantly, it will challenge me to keep pushing invention and discovery."

The NAI is comprised of U.S. and international universities, non-profit research institutes and governmental research institutes. It recognizes inventors with patents focused on academic technology and innovation that are issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

For the last 35 years, Benden's research has focused on ergonomics and, in the past decade, digital humans and AI. He received a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary engineering from Texas A&M. His 25-year professional career in occupational safety and ergonomics has produced multiple processes, tools and devices to ease injury and illness risk and improve comfort and productivity.

His recognition follows a long career in discovery and invention with 25 U.S. patents and several more pending. Most of his inventions have been commercialized, and many are still in production. Sales of items carrying his patents have totaled more than $1 billion, and those designs' expected lifetime economic impact exceeds $2.5 billion.