At 85, Robert Bartlett is not really retired. His official title is professor emeritus of surgery, but he has never stopped working in his lab, where he and his research team are now developing the next generation of life-support devices. 

“What we work on in the lab might be clinical in 5-10 years, like wearable artificial lungs,” he says. The team is also working on artificial placentas, ways to keep organs alive outside the body for days, and making plastic that will not cause blood clotting. “All of the extracorporeal devices are made of one type of plastic or another and so they all require anticoagulation.” 

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