URBANA — Innovative materials scientist John Rogers will use a $500,000 prize to do even more research in electronics that work with and fit to the human body.

A physicist, Rogers will receive the 2011 Lemelson-MIT Prize on Wednesday.

The award cites that Rogers' research "has helped create products and companies across disciplines in areas like health, fiber optics, semiconductor manufacturing and solar power."

The Lee J. Flory-Founder Chair in Engineering and an MIT alumnus, Rogers has been a professor at the University of Illinois since 2003. His recent work has created tiny eye-like cameras as well less-invasive surgical tools and biocompatible sensor arrays. He won a MacArthur "genius" grant in 2009.

"This new prize is targeted toward mid-career folks who do innovative engineering," Rogers said Tuesday. "Our latest emphasis is on biointegrated electronics, devices that have shapes to conform with internal organs or the surface of skin."

Rogers will accept the award during the Lemelson-MIT Program's fifth annual EurekaFest this week. He will give a presentation about his research and its end results.

The professor already has business in the Boston/Cambridge area.

He is co-founder and director of Cambridge maker of flexible semiconductor products mc10 Inc. and North Carolina-based solar power technology company Semprius Inc., among various other companies.

He said much of his work has commercial applications, and he would be interested in having more business in Champaign-Urbana.

"We can start a business here, but there are challenges in access to capital. Places like Boston and San Jose have infrastructure in place for this, when you want to take it up to the next level," Rogers said.

He said the new prize money "will allow us to pursue some very wild and crazy innovations."

Rogers, affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, has written more than 300 published papers and holds more than 80 patents, the UI noted in a press release.

Among his honors are election to the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.