One of his primary technologies is microneedles. His team has developed patches to painlessly deliver drugs and vaccines through the skin. They also put microneedles on what they call STAR particles, which can be rubbed onto the skin to promote absorption of dermatological drugs and cosmetics.

He has launched nine companies, largely based on microneedle technology developed at Georgia Tech. They have raised more than $350 million in financing. A product using microneedles for targeted injection into the eye was the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drug therapy developed at Georgia Tech. 

So far, Prausnitz’s innovations have been studied in more than 20 human clinical trials.

“I became interested in this work because I can use my training in engineering to solve problems that improve the health of people in the United States and around the world,” Prausnitz said. “I also enjoy working in the area of pharmaceuticals because of its interdisciplinary nature, drawing not only from science and engineering, but also from medicine, public health, public policy, and other fields.”

Other projects have included a microneedle patch to deliver measles and rubella vaccines that recently completed phase 1 and 2 clinical trials in Gambia. Prausnitz’s company Micron Biomedical ran the trial using a patch developed at Georgia Tech. He has created low-cost, painless, and bloodless tattoos that can be self-administered and used in place of medical alert bracelets that communicate serious medical conditions such as diabetes, epilepsy, or allergies.

Prausnitz also introduced a new method to simplify the complexity of delivering vaccines through a handheld electroporator. His team used short electric pulses to drive molecules into cells using a pen-size device that requires no batteries and can be mass produced at low cost.

Prausnitz is the fourth current Georgia Tech faculty member elected to NAM, all within the last four years. 

Pediatrician and biomedical engineer Wilbur Lam was elected in 2023. Mechanical engineering and Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience Executive Director Andrés Garcíabecame a member in 2021. And in 2020, the Academy added Susan Margulies, then chair of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. She’s now leading the National Science Foundation’s engineering directorate and remains on the Coulter BME faculty.

Robert Nerem, who died in 2020 and was founding director of the Petit Institute, was elected in 1992.