The Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago (IPLAC) announced its prestigious Inventor of the Year award recipient and introduced its newly-elected officers for 2005 at its annual meeting held on May 3, 2005, at the University Club, Chicago.

Richard I. Brown was named IPLAC's Inventor of the Year for 2005 in recognition of his work in the field of blood collection, separation, treatment, storage and handling, and in particular, in the field of automated blood collection and the separation of blood components known as apheresis. With more than 91 U.S. patents on which he is a named inventor, one of Mr. Brown's advancements permits the collection of single donor platelets, a component of blood crucial in the clotting process, for use in cancer therapy and treatments of other diseases. His inventions have made it easier for healthy blood donors to donate blood and for patients to have their own platelets harvested for use in their treatment. More recently, his instrument for automating the collection of red blood cells in a more efficient and cost-effective manner for blood centers enables an increase in the supply of blood to the medical community at a time when the blood donor base is shrinking and makes possible future applications such as the collection of plasma and platelets using a smaller, mobile instrument.

Mr. Brown holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Lowell Technological Institute in Massachusetts and a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University. He currently works at Baxter Healthcare Corporation in Round Lake, Illinois, where he has won several awards for outstanding achievement, and also has worked at Sandia Laboratories in California and Zenith Corporation in Chicago.