Honored for his achievements as an academic inventor and leader in systems modeling, Ekundayo Shittu, chair and professor of engineering management and systems engineering at GW Engineering, was elected a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He was officially inducted at the 15th NAI Annual Conference in Los Angeles, California, where he was lauded by NAI and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
“This recognition is deeply meaningful to me because it affirms a career-long commitment to translating rigorous systems modeling into real-world impact, particularly in energy systems, healthcare technologies, and policy-relevant decision-making,” said Shittu.
Across his career, Shittu has secured patents spanning innovations in data-driven decision frameworks to technology-enabled healthcare planning and management. While some of this work originated before he joined GW Engineering in 2013, a significant portion was developed at GW, where he feels an intentional focus on bridging engineering, policy, and entrepreneurship has created pathways to turn ideas into successful ventures.
“The collaborative ecosystem at GW – combined with access to federal agencies, industry partners, and policy institutions in Washington, D.C.– has been instrumental in enabling inventions that are not only technically sound but also contextually relevant and scalable,” Shittu explained.
As a Senior Member, Shittu joins a distinguished group of nearly a thousand faculty affiliated with NAI member institutions worldwide. This network only broadens the potential impact Shittu and his students may have as he leverages existing partnerships with industry, government, and healthcare systems to integrate GW Engineering students into the full lifecycle of his projects.
Through his mentorship, Shittu inspires a new generation of innovators to make an impact across sectors and disciplines. This begins by ensuring they are not just solving textbook problems but are also exposed to decision-driven problems with real stakes through research projects, capstone experiences, and lab activities. In his Systems Modeling Lab for Economic Decisions, he emphasizes a structured approach to this process, taking them from inference, modeling, and optimization to validation, deployment, and commercialization.
Shittu always encourages students to think beyond publication to intellectual property, translational pathways, and the broader implications of their work. GW alumnus Connor Roberts, B.S. ‘16, M.S. ‘17, is one such student who benefited from his support in turning innovative ideas into successful ventures as he now leads the healthcare startup, Opal HTM, which utilizes patented technology they co-developed here at GW Engineering.
Opal HTM’s flagship technology is a module that attaches to medical devices’ power ports, using machine learning to track usage, analyze reliability, and quantify factors like age and device health to inform condition-based maintenance. This innovation stemmed from market research supported by the National Science Foundation I-Corps program, which revealed a critical lack of usage data that is needed to optimize inventory and healthcare technology management.
“By combining technical rigor with exposure to markets, stakeholders, and policy contexts, we prepare GW students not just to generate ideas but also to transform them into impactful innovations–whether in academia, startups, or industry,” said Shittu.
The patent they co-developed, “System and method for asset-agnostic wireless monitoring and predictive maintenance of deployed assets” (U.S. Patent 10,911,912), is one Shittu is particularly proud of because of its tangible impact on hospitals and healthcare providers. By enabling real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance, this device helps healthcare decision-makers anticipate failures, reduce downtime, and improve safety by better balancing cost, reliability, and risk.
For Shittu, seeing theory translate into tools that inform real decisions is the most rewarding aspect of invention, exemplifying the spirit of innovation that being a NAI Senior Member represents.
“Personally, it is less about the honor itself and more about what it represents: that the kind of interdisciplinary, decision-centric research we pursue–where modeling, economics, policymaking, and implementation intersect–can meaningfully shape how complex systems are designed and governed,” Shittu concluded.