The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) has named two NJIT faculty members — Cesar Bandera, master teacher and Leir Endowed Chair for Entrepreneurship, and Sara Zapico, assistant professor of forensic science — to the 2026 class of Senior Members. They are among 230 emerging academic inventors from 82 member institutions selected for demonstrated success in producing technologies that have been patented, licensed, commercialized, or possess strong potential for real-world impact.
This year’s class collectively holds more than 2,000 U.S. patents, making it the Academy’s largest Senior Member cohort to date.
“This year’s Senior Member Class is a truly impressive cohort. These innovators come from a variety of fields and disciplines, translating their technologies into tangible impact,” said Paul R. Sanberg, FNAI, president of NAI. “I commend them on their incredible pursuits and I’m honored to welcome them to the Academy.”
The NAI Senior Member program, launched in 2018, recognizes faculty, scientists, and administrators who foster a culture of innovation at their institutions and whose work contributes meaningfully to societal and economic progress. Senior Members will be inducted at NAI’s 15th Annual Conference in Los Angeles, June 1–4, 2026.
Cesar Bandera — Master Teacher and Leir Chair for Entrepreneurship, Martin Tuchman School of Management
Cesar Bandera’s work sits at the intersection of technology innovation, entrepreneurship education and mobile health. An electrical engineer by training, Bandera has taught, multiple times, every entrepreneurship course offered at NJIT's Martin Tuchman School of Management and leads efforts that help student- and faculty-led ventures translate research into societal impact. He directs NJIT’s Tech Venture Support Program and contributes to the university’s national benchmarking in entrepreneurship education.
Bandera’s translational research portfolio includes breakthroughs that have earned four U.S. patents, the NASA Space Act Award and multiple Small Business of the Year nominations from the U.S. Department of Defense. As a founding partner of a mobile health company serving the emergency response community — as well as federal and international health agencies — he has helped advance technologies recognized by the National Institutes of Health as a Small Business Success Story. His work in augmented-reality training for hazardous materials response is now used in more than one hundred facilities across the U.S. Bandera has also contributed to national R&D policy — the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense have highlighted his accomplishments in their reports to Congress and in their support of the federal Small Business Innovation Research program.
A National Science Foundation I-Corps Instructor, Bandera also plays a leading role in NJIT’s NSF-funded Accelerating Research Translation (ART) initiatives that strengthen the regional innovation ecosystem. He serves as associate editor of the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine and the International Journal of Mobile Network Design and Innovation, and is chair of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business Entrepreneurship and Innovation Affinity Group. His scholarship spans entrepreneurship pedagogy, business incubation policy and technology-enabled learning and is widely published in journals, books and national and international conferences.
Sara C. Zapico — Assistant Professor of Forensic Science, Jordan Hu College of Science and Liberal Arts
Sara C. Zapico is an assistant professor in NJIT’s Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science and a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution. She directs NJIT’s Interdisciplinary Forensics and Biomedical Sciences Lab (ForenBioS), where she applies biochemical, epigenetic and molecular approaches to advance forensic science. Her work addresses core challenges in age-at-death estimation, post-mortem interval determination, body-fluid identification and DNA recovery from degraded samples.
Zapico is internationally recognized for pioneering molecular age-estimation techniques using DNA methylation signatures in dental tissue. She is co-inventor of a U.S. patent that provides biochemical methods for estimating age-at-death with high precision, improving the accuracy of identifications in adult remains. Her research includes high-impact publications on methylation biomarkers, decomposition-omics, body fluid identification and DNA extraction from difficult substrates — and her methods have direct applications for medical examiners, forensic laboratories and humanitarian identification work.
Her scholarship includes multiple books, chapters and articles on forensic decomposition, biochemical aging and mass-fatality identification, including Wiley’s “Burnt Human Remains: Recovery, Analysis, and Interpretation” (2023). She presents her work at leading forensic conferences and contributes to interdisciplinary studies on biomarkers related to environmental exposures and public health. Through her Smithsonian collaboration and translational research, Zapico has become a rising innovator advancing the scientific foundations of modern forensic identification.
Launched by guidance from NAI Board Member Sethuaman Panchanathan, FNAI, former director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the program has now welcomed 945 NAI Senior Members worldwide, collectively holding more than 11,000 U.S. patents.
“It has been incredible to watch this program grow year over year, and see these inventors get the recognition they truly deserve,” said Panchanathan. “It highlights the dedication of our Member Institutions to celebrating their inventive faculty and fostering innovation on their campuses and within the broader innovation ecosystem.”