The R&D 100 Award is known as the “Oscars of Innovation”. It recognizes the year’s most significant technology advances across industry, academia, and government-sponsored research. The 2016 R&D 100 Awards Banquet took place on November 3, 2016, at the Gaylord National Harbor & Resort in Oxon Hill, Maryland, USA, where R&D Magazine also presented its R&D 100 Conference.

Among the R&D Magazine’s 100 Most Innovative Products of 2016 are:

• the Thermo Scientific Vanquish Flex ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) system instruments. The system is filly bioinert and is designed for high speed, resolution, and sensitivity. It is ideal to analyze all major biopharmaceutical attributes, including aggregates, glycans, charge variants, peptide sequences, and intact proteins.
• the CANVERA Polyolefin Dispersions of Dow Coating Materials. The high-performing coating for steel and aluminum containers for food and beverage offers packaging alternatives which avoids Bisphenol-A (BPA) and other materials of concern such as epoxy, styrene, and phenolic cross-linkers.
• the PuLMo: Pulmonary Lung Model developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM, USA. It is a miniature tissue-engineered lung platform that precisely mimics the response of human lungs to pharmaceuticals and other agents. Possible applications include drug toxicity assessments, predictions of drug efficacy, and models for lung-specific diseases. It also allows the study of flow dynamics of particles inside a lung for applications including drug delivery, inhalation studies, and particle/pathogen deposition studies.
• the Porous Nano-Network Catalyst developed at the Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA. The non-precious metal catalyst is a viable replacement for the expensive precious metal catalysts in practical fuel cell applications. It is highly effective toward the oxygen reduction reaction in both acidic and basic environments, making it applicable to both proton exchange membrane and alkaline membrane fuel cells.
• the Monowave 50 Synthesis Reactor of Anton Paar, Graz, Austria, is a modern, easy-to-use (“plug & play”), and ultra-compact conventionally heated reactor for synthesis applications performed under sealed vessel conditions, i.e., high temperatures and pressures.

• RD 100, R&D Magazine, 2016.