Paul Thibado Named a Senior Member of National Academy of Inventors

​Paul Thibado, a professor of physics at the University of Arkansas, has been named to the National Academy of Inventor’s 2025 class of senior fellows. He will be formally inducted at the 14th NAI Annual Conference this June.  

“The National Academy of Inventors is a prestigious organization working to promote the spirit of invention in America,” Thibado said of the invitation to join. “This is a great honor for me.”  

“Paul is a gifted researcher with a tremendous ability to recognize opportunities with commercial applications,” said Margaret Sova McCabe, vice chancellor for research and innovation. “From solving practical classroom problems with his clicker system to his revolutionary insights into graphene energy harvesting, he’s a brilliant innovator. We’re delighted the NAI had chosen to recognize his accomplishments.” 

Thibado has been with the U of A since 1996. Over that time, he has submitted 17 invention disclosures and received seven U.S. patents. Six of those patents have been licensed. 

Much of Thibado’s recent work in physics has focused on the unique properties of freestanding graphene, which is a form of graphite reduced to a sheet a single atom thick. Many years ago, Thibado and his colleagues observed that freestanding graphene rippled up and down in response to ambient temperature, suggesting that tiny amounts of energy might be harvested from this natural property.  

This ultimately led to the invention of a device he calls a Graphene Energy Harvester (or a GEH). A GEH uses a negatively charged sheet of graphene suspended between two metal electrodes. When the graphene flips up, it induces a positive charge in the top electrode. When it flips down, it positively charges the bottom electrode, creating an alternating current. 

NTS Innovations, a company specializing in nanotechnology, owns the exclusive license to develop GEH into commercial products. NTS is working with more than 100 companies that currently rely on battery-powered sensors but are keen to eliminate the need for battery replacement. There is a critical need for self-powered sensors in areas like transportation, product tracking, agricultural monitoring, livestock tracking, disaster alerts, predictive maintenance, child tracking and medical tracking, to name a few. 

Thibado is currently leading efforts to develop GEH technology for the following sources of power: solar, thermal, acoustic, kinetic, nonlinear and ambient radiation. As each device is developed, his research team plans to build a full prototype sensor system around that specific power source.  

Thibado also created an audience response system, which led to them being widely used in classrooms across the country. He was issued four patents related to this technology and formed a company called Hyper-Interactive Teaching Technology LLC in 2001. The company sells handheld, remote-control devices, more commonly known as ‘clickers,’ that allow hundreds of students in a large lecture hall to respond to an instructor’s prompt while also providing a distribution of their answers.  

Thibado said he invented the clicker system because he felt students in his introductory physics classes were struggling with the material. He needed a better way to engage with them and determine if they were understanding the concepts before he moved on.  

“Everybody who used them said, ‘Yeah, this is what we need to improve attendance and get everyone answering questions in class,’” Thibado explained. “And I could find out through the histogram how many knew the material, so I could adjust my lecture accordingly.” 

Thibado and his partners sold the company in 2007 after it became so time consuming it threatened his teaching and research interests, which have always been his priority. The new owners have subsequently sold more than a million devices. 

Thibado noted that most of his inventions have come in response to problems he’s faced as a faculty member. “Problems come up,” he explained, “and if you find that no one has a solution to that problem, you think, ‘well, hey, here’s an opportunity.’” 

Thibado was nominated by David Hinton, executive director of Technology Ventures at the University of Arkansas. Hinton noted in his letter of support: “Dr. Thibado is a remarkable scientist who is pushing the boundaries of innovation. His seminal paper in the area of graphene energy harvesting published in 2020 is in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric.” 

Thibado joins Min Zou, Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering, in being the second U of A faculty member to be invited into the National Academy of Inventors this academic year. Zou  was named a fellow in December 2024.