The 2012 Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal has been awarded to Professor David F Williams. The award recognizes undisputed world leaders who have demonstrated excellence and leadership in biomaterials, including basic science and translation to practice. Professor Williams is currently Professor of Biomaterials and Director of International Affairs at the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina, USA. He also has a number of academic and advisory appointments in various countries around the world.

Professor Williams received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Birmingham, UK in metallurgy / materials science. He left Birmingham in 1967 to take up an appointment as lecturer in orthopaedic biomechanics at the University of Liverpool. At the time he started this career in biomechanics and biomaterials science, there were, in fact, very few materials in clinical use. He worked alongside some of the early pioneers in implant surgery, including Charnley, the inventor of total hip replacement, and quickly realized that too little was known about the host response to implanted biomaterials for there to be any reasonable hope of routine success. He wrote the first monograph on this subject in 1973, Implants in Surgery, in order to place the existing scientific knowledge into the perspective of the amazing potential that reconstructive surgery offered. He established one of the first research laboratories in Europe concerned with biomaterials science and set out to develop in vitro and in vivo systems to explore the subject of biocompatibility, encompassing phenomena such as polymer biodegradation, physiological metallic corrosion, the role of the immune response in the biocompatibility of synthetic biomaterials and mechanobiology. Crucially, he developed systems for the quantification of the host response to biomaterials, using, for the first time, the combination of immunohistochemistry and image analysis. He went on to study, and introduce into clinical practice, some high performance engineering biomaterials, including new titanium alloys, silver-based products, highly biostable polyurethanes, biodegradable polymers such as the PHB family and thermoplastics such as PEEK.

Professor Williams spent a year as a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Clemson University in South Carolina and returned to Liverpool with a plan to develop his laboratory and turn it into one of the world’s leading research and educational groups in biomaterials science. He was awarded a Personal Chair at the University, then the youngest person to receive such a professorship. He successively formed the Institute of Medical and Dental Bioengineering and then the Department of Clinical Engineering in Liverpool, establishing widely respected undergraduate, masters and Ph. D. programs. He served many of the Research Councils of the UK at all levels, including the highest Board levels, and for many years advised the European Commission on aspects of research policy.

In 1997 he was appointed as Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, equivalent to the position of Academic Vice-President of a US university, where he directed a series of major university-wide changes to enhance the research-profile of the University. During this time he remained as Chair of the Department of Clinical Engineering, and wrote two award -winning proposals to the UK Government for a major new suite of state-of-the-art biomaterials research laboratories, and then for the UK Center for Tissue Engineering. He left the university vice-president position and was co-director / director of this Center, established jointly with Manchester University, for 6 years until 2007. He was also the Scientific Director of a major European Commission funded collaborative research program on a systems approach to tissue engineering.

During these years at Liverpool, Professor published extensively, gave numerous keynote and eponymous lectures around the world and received many awards and honors. To date he has published 400 peer-reviewed papers and edited / authored over 30 books. He has received a Clemson Award from the US Society for Biomaterials and the major awards from the equivalent UK, European and Indian societies. In 2008 he received the Founder’s Award of the US Society for Biomaterials and the Chapman Medal of the UK Institute of Materials. In 1999 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the highest engineering honor in the UK, and also as a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, as one of the few overseas fellows.

Professor Williams also developed extensive experience and expertise in industry, serving as a Director of companies and also as an expert witness in product liability and patent litigation. He has given testimony on many of the scientific issues that have underpinned the major legal actions that have followed the failure of medical devices to achieve desirable outcomes in patients. He has also advised regulatory bodies on the subtleties of medical device / biomaterials performance and the optimal way of conducting pre-clinical testing to determine the risks associated with these materials and devices.

Professor Williams remained research active at the University of Liverpool until he left the UK in 2007 and re-located to the USA to take up his current position. During the last decade he has worked extensively on issues of balancing risk and innovation in medical technology, and has written several Opinion Papers on which new European legislation has been based, including public health issues concerned with latex, PVC, dental amalgams and so on. In recent years he has devoted more time and energy to the development of new research strategies and the promotion of biomaterials science and regenerative medicine, and has advised governments and institutions around the world on these matters. His recent publications on the nature of biomaterials and the mechanisms of biocompatibility are already seen as seminal works in the evolution of biomaterials science.

His primary focus has been as Editor-in-Chief on the journal Biomaterials, which he has now taken to the top position in the world’s journals in this area. As the sole editor of this journal, he has been able to witness and encourage developments in biomaterials science around the world and, through his editorial style and outlook, has changed the way in which biomaterials are perceived and used. He travels extensively, especially in Asia, to promote excellence in scientific research and writing. In the pursuit of the globalization of excellence in biomaterials research, he has been elected to the position of President-elect of TERMIS, the international society concerned with regenerative medicine, and is actively promoting the application of biomaterials science in Asia and Africa. His latest research area, as Visiting Professor in the Christiaan Barnard Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Cape Town, is concerned with the development of low cost medical devices for critically ill patients in Southern Africa, especially the million or so young people who have rheumatic heart disease and are doomed to die by the time they reach 25 years of age. He also has visiting professorial positions in Sydney in Australia, Shanghai and Beijing in China, Taipei and in Trivandrum, India.

Professor Williams has just finished a single-author book, on Essential Biomaterials Science, to be published by Cambridge University Press, nearly 40 years after publication of his first book. This new book is a combined textbook and monograph. It covers all of the essential principles of materials science relevant to medical technology and the uses of materials in wide-ranging areas such as drug and gene delivery, contrast agents for imaging, semiconductor quantum dots and upconversion nanoparticles for diagnostic systems, templates for tissue engineering and the long-established materials for implantable devices. Professor Williams introduces a new classification system for biomaterials, the first comprehensive unified theory of biocompatibility, the new concepts of tissue engineering templates and pathways for materials in nanomedicine, in this book.

Professor Williams will receive the Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal Award at a session of the World Biomaterials Congress in June 2012 at Chengdu, China.