Chuck Lemme '66 has a way with inventions.

When Chuck Lemme ’66 needs to devise a new solution or product, he takes the problem apart in his mind and reassembles it. Then he mentally turns it inside out, upside down, this way and that to arrive at a solution. Currently a named inventor on 27 patents, Lemme has used this method successfully during his lucrative career as a mechanical engineer.

Lemme grew up seeing how things were built in his dad’s welding and machine shop, where he was running a lathe by the age of 10. School was a challenge because Lemme has dyslexia, a learning disability that alters the way the brain processes written material. But, he managed to cope early on. “I’d always try to take things apart in my mind and assemble them back together in order to try and understand how stuff worked,” he said.

He used this ability to his advantage during primary and secondary grades and earned a spot at Harvey Mudd College. But his dyslexia caused him to struggle with his now-frequent writing assignments. Fortunately, William Davenport, then professor of English and chair of humanities and social sciences, noticed this during Lemme’s first semester and offered help in the way of weekly writing sessions. “He taught me how to write,” said Lemme, who credits Davenport with helping to provide him with a skill that has played a fundamental role in his career. Lemme managed to make the dean’s list his first semester. “No matter how skillful you are, if you can’t communicate your ideas to others you are at a disadvantage. This was definitely one of the most important things I took away from HMC.”

Lemme also took away a grounding in the fundamentals that enabled him to earn an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology and then work on the cutting edge of new technology in the fields of chemistry, engineering and biology. His patents include mechanical devices for hydraulics, medical instrumentation, optics, shape memory metal, vacuum technology and cookware. He’s been named on one or more patents at every company he’s worked for and he proudly points out that he has patents with numbers that start with 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 million.

Lemme considers his most significant patents to be two items created for cars. When he worked for automotive supplier Maremont Corp. of Chicago in the mid-1970s, automobile manufacturers were looking for a better way to incorporate catalytic converters into car exhaust systems. At that time, an idling car expelled 7 percent carbon monoxide, a huge volume compared with today’s emission standards.

“My insight was to make biscuit converters, make the catalytic converters very short then have a gap where the gases would become turbulent again, then have another biscuit converter, another short section,” said Lemme. The design and operation of the new device improved cold-start test performance, conversion efficiency and physical durability of catalytic converters. Maremont built the biscuit converter for Ford for several years, and a similar design continues to be used in car engines today.

The lamp reflector that Lemme created for Blazer International of Chicago (now a division of Cooper) is currently used in automotive headlamps worldwide. Both the patent for the biscuit converter and the reflector optics (this design distributes light in a non-collimated pattern but has a continuous surface which is visually smooth) are referenced by more than 10 other patents, a good measure of a patent’s usefulness, Lemme pointed out.

Lemme’s biscuit converter design for Maremont gave him a name in the industry and led to involvement in his first legal battle, fortunately not a personal one. He was called to be an expert witness by Toyota which was accused of infringing on GM’s catalytic converter patent. “I learned a lot about patent law and infringement as an expert witness on that case,” said Lemme.

Significant changes to patent law have occurred during his career, notably a rule created in the 1980s that affects patenting items within one’s field of expertise.

“It used to be assumed that inventors should be aware of every possible patent and article so that if anything had ever been published anywhere about the kind of thing they were trying to do, they couldn’t claim novelty because it had already been done,” said Lemme. “The result was that when patents were challenged, many new inventions were thrown out because if you dig deep enough long enough, you could find something that’s related. Sometime in the early ’80s this changed so that inventions were only compared to those within its own area. In medical instruments, I can patent stuff that might have been used in other fields but not in the medical industry. That has greatly improved the patenting process, definitely a big change for the better.”

Lemme mentioned that on the flip side, inventors now have to list all possible applications of an item when applying for a patent. “You can’t later expand on it,” he said. “You have to be very explicit.”

With four full-time attorneys handling any patent disputes at his current employer, Ventana Medical Systems, Inc., a supplier of diagnostic instruments and reagent systems for health care providers, Lemme is freed from legal worries to concentrate on what he does best—invent. And this he has been doing for Ventana since he began work there as its fourth employee in 1989. Lemme credits the company’s founder, Thomas M. Grogan, with being at the forefront of improving the practice of medicine through automation, specifically by utilizing immunohistochemistry (IHC), the use of antibodies as histological tools for identifying patterns of antigen distribution within a tissue or an organism. The company’s first product was an instrument-reagent system designed to automate IHC staining, which is used primarily for cancer biopsy slides that help determine the nature of cancers. Lemme and several others were hired by Grogan to help automate and standardize the process. After selling the first instrument in 1991, the company went public in 1996 and its staining technology won a Medical Design Excellence award in 2001. Named as one of 2004’s fastest growing companies in the United States, Ventana now has 900 employees worldwide; about 600 of them, including Lemme, work at its headquarters in Tucson, Ariz. Of Ventana’s 150 patents, Lemme is named on eight of them, including two—an automated biological reaction apparatus and an automated molecular pathology apparatus with independent slide heaters—that the company considers key and are recognized as patents of distinction.

Now an engineering fellow at the company, (“a management position without any of the responsibilities”) Lemme works an 80-percent-time schedule, partly because of quadruple bypass surgery in 2000. “I decided I wanted to live life a little more,” he said. He and his wife, Linda, downsized and they travel more. But his desire to invent still remains. “I love what I’m doing. I love inventing things,” he said. He is excited about Ventana’s latest project, another staining instrument that the company is now gathering its top employees to create.

Bill Richards, Lemme’s longtime colleague and fifth Ventana employee, said that both he and Lemme are eager to “do something new and different.

“This project will be the next big thing for Ventana,” said Richards, who added that Lemme is just the guy for such a project. “Chuck has a very open mind for different ideas and always tries to think of different ways of looking at a particular problem. He is very good at trying to wipe away preconceived notions and look at something from a different angle. He’s had lots of opportunities here at Ventana to come up with new ideas for instrumentation and always has something new to bring to the table. He’s well-respected here for his ideas.”

The next big idea for Ventana is likely the last invention Lemme will create for the company. He calls it his “swan song.” He said when the process is complete, he’ll be ready to retire and spend more time on his interests, namely travel and evolution. He’s a fan of author Stephen Jay Gould and Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society. Lemme commented that studying the philosophies of evolutionists has been an “exhilarating, freeing thing.”

About life, he concludes, “There is no purpose. We make our own purpose. We have the ability to think about and decide who we are and who we want to be.”

Lemme has made a name for himself thinking differently and trying new things. He believes that’s what has made him a successful inventor. “Inventors in general are a little bit unique and see things from a different perspective than the normal John Q. Public,” he said. “We see the world in a slightly different way. You certainly can’t be afraid to buck convention,” said Lemme, straightening his shoulder-length ponytail.