With the advances in microscopy and digital imagery today, it's not unusual to find yourself looking at visual representations from the micro-world of the lab that are truly beautiful to behold, both for what they tell us about the science of life and on an aesthetic level as well. Some of the images might be said to qualify as art. In the case of Greg Dunn, PhD Neuroscience 2011 from the University of Pennsylvania, neural art has become his profession, and departments of neuroscience across the US have commissioned his large, metallic and ink visions for their offices, libraries, and reception halls. Influenced by Japanese art, completely self-taught, and still very much the scientist with his subject matter, Dunn's work is quite simply spectacular, and a great deal more than an homage to the neuron.
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Tags: Pennsylvania, Northeast, University of Pennsylvania, UPenn, Thomas Jefferson University, 2012, Neuroscience, Philadelphia, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Front Line event, ThomJeff
Cancer research is hot, and the best in the field are hotly-courted by top cancer research centers, often with very attractive compensation packages in addition to state-of-the-art labs and equipment. As if fighting cancer weren't challenging enough, even renowned universities with world-class biomedical programs like the University of California San Diego have had some of their shining stars in the laboratory snatched away by big-money states like Texas in recent years. Not to be outdone or undermined, UCSD has recently engaged in some aggressive recruiting of its own and is proud to announce that two very important players in the cancer research field have joined the Moores Cancer Center faculty: Dr. Napoleone Ferrara (formerly of Genentech) and Dr. Razelle Kurzrock (formerly of MD Anderson at the University of Texas).
Tags: CA, University of California San Diego, cancer research, California, 2012, Cancer Treatment, Cancer, San Diego, UCSD, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase, Cancer Center, BVS
Dr. J. Lee Nelson (right) has been studying the fascinating phenomenon of microchimerism in the context of autoimmune disorders ever since she joined the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center faculty in 1986. Microchimerism refers to the presence of two distinct sets of cells in one individual and is surprisingly common as a result of cell exchange between mother and child during pregnancy. The numbers of these outside cells is typically small, but Dr. Nelson's research has implicated them in various autoimmune responses, both positive and negative.
Tags: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Washington, Northwest, cell biology, 2012, Cancer, Cell Research, autoimmune disease, Canada, Seattle, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase
It's an honor to receive a postdoctoral fellowship to continue your professional training in an established lab just after getting your PhD; it's even more prestigious to to win a postdoc fellowship to start your own lab research program. Dr. Brad Rosenberg finished the clinical portion of his M.D.-PhD program last year at Weill Cornell Medical Center, having earned his PhD from Rockefeller University through the Tri-Institutional Program two years earlier. This year he is conducting his own research at Rockefeller using advanced high-throughput sequencing techniques to analyze lymphocytes in the immune system.
Tags: Rockefeller University, New York, 2012, Immune System, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, NY, NIH, New York City, BRPF
We've heard about the Golden Fleece Awards (vilifying seemingly-obscure science research) and the Golden Goose Awards (lauding seemingly-obscure science research) more than a little often in this year of threatened federal science budget cuts, but that's more politics than anything else. It certainly isn't half as much fun as the infamous and much-laughed-with Ig Nobel Prizes, given out yearly in honor of improbable research so absurd-sounding we can't help but love it. At this year's awards ceremony, held last Thursday night at Harvard University, 10 unlikely science research projects received their due respect (and a few guffaws) at the hands of genuinely bemused genuine Nobel laureates.
Tags: CA, 2013, Northeast, Southwest, 2012, BioResearch Product Faire Front Line Event, Boston, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Event, MA, Harvard, science researchers, Harvard Medical School, UCSB, Santa Barbara, Happy scientist, UC Santa Barbara
The Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (WADDL) within the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University in Pullman is one of an elite group of veterinary facilities that use sophisticated molecular tools to diagnose disease, with labs for bacteriology, parasitology, pathology, serology, and virology. One threat they've been keeping a particularly keen eye out for this summer is West Nile Virus, which they have in fact found in horses, and which led the State to issue warnings for both animals (to have them vaccinated) and humans (to take extra precautions). West Nile is transmitted from infected birds, through biting mosquitos, and on to larger warm-blooded creatures. Because this has been such a hot, dry summer across most of the U.S., birds and mosquitos are finding themselves more often sharing the same rare watering hole, which may be causing the rise in West Nile cases. West Nile is an example of a zoonotic disease, meaning that it can be transfered between species. The role of veterinary labs like WADDL in tracking and identifying cases of these diseases is doubly important, then, as they work to prevent epidemics in our animals as well as ourselves.
Tags: Washington, WSU Pullman, WA, Northwest, New research facilities, Washington State University, veterinary medicine, 2012, animal science, Front Line event, new construction
In a recent round of new funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), two UC Irvine stem cell research labs and their collaborators at other California universities and private labs have been awarded some $37M, of which approximately $12M will go directly to UCI. The two funded projects involve translational research to develop eventual clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease, in the one study, and retinitis pigmentosa in the other. The new awards bring Irvine's total CIRM funding over the years to $96.25 million, most carried out at the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center (right) which opened its cutting-edge facility on campus 2 years ago.
Tags: CA, Stem cell research, University of California Irvine, Southwest, California, 2012, Neuroscience, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, Irvine, CIRM, UC Irvine
"High-risk, high-reward" life science research funding isn't something we hear about very often in these days of fiscal belt-tightening, especially coming from the private sector. Fortunately the NIH is still committed to supporting exceptional life science labs that take the road less travelled, with the Director's Transformative Research Awards and the Director's New Innovator Awards, because the potential payoff justifies the gamble taken. The NIH has standard criteria by which they evaluate grant proposals. Realizing that those criteria would enevitably leave out some of the most daring and ground-breaking research, they came up with the High Risk awards. 2012 Director's Awards from the NIH Common Fund (totalling some $155M) have gone to 81 investigators, and 5 of them are faculty members and heads of laboratories at Rockefeller University.
Tags: Rockefeller University, Northeast, RNA research, New York, 2012, biology research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, NY, NIH, New York City, new research grants, Rockefeller, early career funding
One of the things they got was some very thoughtfully designed labs. Though flexibility of design is important to assure future utility, research team leaders gave significant input into the design of their specific labs to make sure those labs were ideal for the type of research that would be carried out within their walls. Project architect Tim Williams, of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, said in an interview:
“Scientists spend a lot of time in the lab. The UW faculty wanted to look at how we could make that a nicer place to be."
Here are some of the ways they made a nicer science lab building:
5-story, 90,300sf structure- Each of the four above-ground floors is divided into a laboratory half and an office half
- The basement is a 28,000sf low-vibration lab space
- Houses more than 15 faculty, 3 research centers and 4 major instrumentation centers
- Aluminum-plate shielding on the building guards against electromagnetic waves
- Natural ventilation in office spaces provided by windows that open
- Optimized ventilation in the lab spaces, replacing air 6 times per hour rather than 10
- Innovative commons spaces
- Green roof gardens
UW officials are proud of the new building, not just because it is state-of-the-art, but also because it's "state-of-the-science." Molecular engineering is a relatively new field, and the UW Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute (MOLES, the building's primary occupant) sees its mission as exploring a new kind of engineering for the 21st Century: rather than build bridges over rivers (still a noble feat), the new molecular engineer may be building proteins that travel to specific parts of the body. He or she may follow the latest developments in chemistry, biology, physics, nanotechnology and predictive modeling; and his or her research projects will often be interdisciplinary, with colleagues from diverse fields and perhaps different institutions.
Furthermore, if life scientists often pursue basic research to understand the building blocks of life, and engineers build things and occupy themselves with practical mechanics and physical principles, the fusion of the two should have tremendous translational potential. Such is the goal of MOLES and their new collaborative workspace. Per their website:
Research at the Institute for Molecular Engineering & Sciences will be evolvable and dynamic, focusing initially on the themes of CleanTech and BioTech.
Some of the faculty scientists who will be doing research in the new MOLES facility include:
- Patrick Stayton, a professor of bioengineering
- Suzie Pun, a bioengineering associate professor
- David Baker, a biochemistry professor
- Daniel Gamelin, a chemistry professor
- Hugh Hillhouse, a chemical engineering professor
- Christine Luscombe, an associate professor of materials science and engineering
(Dr. David Baker seems to come up in our blog series with regularity. For former blogs citing his work, read the following:)
Computational Biology Scientist at UW Develops New Protein Structure
Crowdsourcing Research Challenge by UW Scientists a Game Changer?
Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. will hold 3 professional tradeshow events focusing on Washington state's bioscience technology and the research partnerships between scientists and the science equipment industry next month on these dates:
- 10/23/2012 -- Washington State University BioResearch Product Faire event, Pullman
- 10/24/2012 -- Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center BRPF event, Seattle
- 10/25/2012 -- University of Washington Front Line event, Seattle
For information on exhibiting at the University of Washington show in particular, and receiving a university research funding report, click here:
Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. is a full service event marketing and planning company producing on-campus, life science research tradeshows nationwide for the past 20 years. We plan and promote each event to bring the best products and services to the best research campuses across the country.
Tags: Bioscience research, CEEM, UW, Molecular Engineering, University of Washington, Northwest, WSU, New research facilities, 2012, Biochemistry, chemistry research, Engineering, Front Line event, Energy, Seattle, new construction, construction
Chemical and biomolecular engineering researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have recently achieved something truly impressive: they've managed to dramatically improve the process of methane catalysis, by a factor of 30, and using lower temperatures. What this could mean in terms of environmental protection and energy generation is nothing less than game-changing. Natural gas production is at an all-time high in the U.S. and will replace much of our dependence on oil and coal if we can burn it efficiently and without methane pollution. Methane is also a by-product of industries such as waste management, animal farming, and oil extraction (the iconic flame at the top of an oil well is methane being released from underground), where its containment is an ongoing challenge.
Tags: Pennsylvania, Northeast, University of Pennsylvania, UPenn, catalysts, nanotechnology, 2012, chemistry research, Philadelphia, BioResearch Product Faire Event, PA, BRPF