A tribute in engineering · private preview
The machines that live inside us are sealed by his hands.
David A. Ruben spent three decades at Medtronic solving one of engineering's quietest hard problems: how electronics survive — sensing, pacing, powering, healing — sealed inside the human body. This is his patented body of work: 56 granted US patents, 1993–2026, verified and traced to source.
granted US patents (1996–2026)
sole-inventor grants
patents citing his 1993 housing design
Deep dives
Six lines of invention, told properly — the problem, the physics, what was genuinely new, and what's honestly known about its impact.
Hermetic Packaging & Feedthroughs · 1993-1996
1993: The First Housing
1 patent · US5535097A
Implantable Sensors · 1997-2001
The Accelerometer Line: teaching the pacemaker to feel motion
4 patents · US5885471A, US5911738A, US6038475A…
Laser Materials Processing · 2000-2025
The Laser Craft: light as a precision tool
11 patents · US6501043B1, US6717100B2, US7872208B2…
Hermetic Packaging & Feedthroughs · 2014-2024
The Feedthrough Line: wiring through an unbroken wall
4 patents · US9865533B2, US10535596B2, US10813238B2…
Power Sources · 2015-2024
The Nuclear Line: reviving the atomic heartbeat
5 patents · US10096393B2, US10811157B2, US11881325B2…
Flow Control & Surgical Navigation · 2020-2024
The Valve: engineering mercy for hydrocephalus
2 patents · US11701503B2, US12059542B2
Six themes, one thesis
Hermetic Packaging & Feedthroughs
Sealing electronics inside the body — 20 grants — the largest cluster and the corpus's center of gravity
Laser Materials Processing
Welding, bonding, cutting, texturing with light — 11 grants over 25 years, several sole-inventor, three co-assigned with Corning
Implantable Sensors
Pressure, motion, and chemistry, measured from inside — 10 grants from 1997 accelerometers to 2023 pressure sensors; analyte-sensing applications pending
Power Sources
Batteries that outlive their patients' need — 9 grants: nuclear converters, radioluminescent cells, stacked solid-state batteries, wafer-scale integration
Flow Control & Surgical Navigation
Fluid physics and position sensing in the OR and the brain — 3 grants + an active continuation line
Interconnects & Materials
The metallurgy that makes the rest possible — 5 grants, four of them sole-inventor
Still inventing
The corpus is alive: 8 applications are pending publication-to-grant right now — analyte biosensor arrays, hermetic feedthrough continuations, fluidic valves — with more filings known to be in the pipeline. A 2026 grant (US12610487) is the newest; the earliest filing is from 1993. Thirty-three years, and counting.