The National Inventors Hall of Fame has released the names of its latest inductees.
Fifteen people are being brought into the hall of fame during the 2018 conference, and three of those people are from Florida.
Sumita Mitra, a current resident of St. Petersburg, is a chemist at 3M Oral Care. Her multidisciplinary team at 3M developed the unique dental filling material, Filtek Supreme Universal Restorative. This versatile material is used for restoring teeth in any area of the mouth and mimics the beauty of natural teeth with better polish retention and superior strength compared to pre-existing dental composites.
Jacqueline Quinn, a current resident of Titusville, and a NASA environmental engineer, co-invented an environmentally safe clean-up technology called emulsified zero-valent iron. Quinn and her team of researchers from the University of Central Florida developed EZVI to combat chlorinated solvent contaminants left over from space exploration’s early years, when NASA used chlorinated solvents as degreasers for rocket engine parts.
The system Quinn helped invent speeds up the decontamination process and creates less toxic and more biodegradable byproducts.
Joseph C. Shivers, Jr., the third inductee, resided for many years in Venice.
Shivers invented one of the top clothing innovations of the 20th century while working at DuPont; LYCRA, the stretchy synthetic fiber known generically as Spandex.
Shivers is being posthumously honored. He died in September 2014.
The induction ceremony takes place May 2-3 in Washington, D.C.