Kurt H. Becker


ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVISOR TO CATT; PROFESSOR EMERITUS, NYU TANDON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

Prior to his retirement in August 2023, Kurt Becker was the Vice Dean for Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship at NYU Tandon and a Professor of Applied Physics and of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He was also the Founding Director of Tandon’s Institute for Invention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (IIIE), which serves as the umbrella for all research, educational, and service activities at Tandon related to innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E). He is now a Professor Emeritus and serves as Advisor to the Director of Tandon’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). He is also the Director of Business Development at CARA Systems Inc., a Tandon health IT spin out company. In his role as Vice Dean and IIIE Director, Becker was responsible for all curricular and extra-curricular I&E activities at Tandon. In particular, he oversaw the Tandon Future Labs, a network of Technology Innovation and Commercialization Hubs created to help deep tech startup companies to scale up.

Kurt Becker

Contact Information


Email: kurt.becker@nyu.edu

Phone: 646.997.3608

Website: https://engineering.nyu.edu/faculty/kurt-becker

Kurt Becker

Kurt Becker

As a physicist, Becker worked on low-temperature plasmas and their applications and published more than 240 papers in peer reviewed journals. He pioneered the field of microplasmas and holds numerous patents on the stabilization of atmospheric-pressure plasmas and their technological applications, particularly in the areas of environmental remediation and biomedicine. He was involved in two startups that commercialized this technology, one of them was acquired by Stryker Instruments in 2005. Kurt Becker earned a Diplom in Physik (MS degree) and Dr. rer. nat. (PhD degree) from the Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany in 1978 and 1981, respectively.

He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and he is the recipient of the Dr. Eduard-Martin Prize for Excellence in Research from the Universität des Saarlandes, the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, the SASP Erwin Schrödinger Medal and the New York City & State Sustainability and Environmental Impact Award. He also holds an honorary Professorship at the Leopold
Franzens Universität Innsbruck, Austria.

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