One of the most prestigious scientific awards, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), has been awarded to not one University of Michigan Ann Arbor researcher, but three! This award, started in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, was founded to recognize "the most meritorious scientists and engineers whose early accomplishments show the greatest promise for assuring America's preeminence in science and engineering and contributing to the awarding agencies' missions," as per a White House press release. These scientists are nominated by eleven different US government departments and agencies including the Departments of Energy and Health and Human Services, as well as the National Science Foundation.
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Tags: University of Michigan, Midwest, Bioresearch, 2012, Michigan, scientific research, Ann Arbor, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research Funding, MI, research scientists, research scientist, UM
It seems we can get oil from any number of unlikely substances these days, and a joint biofuel research team from Texas A&M and Cornell is trying to do just that. With a $2M grant from the NSF, researchers are studying how to extract the naturally-produced oil from algae. So next time you look at a green swimming pool, consider that a similar muck just might be able to fuel your car. Algae is an eukaryotic organism that is photosynthetic and generally aquatic, and it comes in a wide variety of forms. It can be a very small single cell organism like B. braunii or a very large multi-cellular organism like kelp. It fact algae is one of the newest and most promising subjects of research in the quest for biofuels.
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Tags: Cornell University, biofuels, Texas A&M University, Texas, Southwest, 2012, Biochemistry, College Station, TAMU, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Energy, TX, BRPF
In the search for early life we are going where we have never gone before...with newly-funded astrobiology research at the University of Illinois.
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Tags: Midwest, Bioresearch, Bioresearch funding, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2012, Illinois, biology research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, Research Funding, IL, genomics research, research grant, new research grants, UIUC
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.
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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
Construction of an exciting new research facility was recently announced for the University of Illinois at Chicago. According to a UIC news article, Illinois Governor Quinn declared the commencement of the Advanced Chemical Technology Building (ACTB), which will house researchers from chemistry, biology, and physics. The driving idea behind the building is to foster connections between the three broad fields to focus on specific fields like immunology, orthopedics, tumor growth, and nanoscience.
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Tags: Midwest, University of Illinois Chicago, New research facilities, 2012, Illinois, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Chicago, IL, new construction, BRPF, UIC
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.
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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.
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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
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.
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Tags: Pennsylvania, Northeast, University of Pennsylvania, UPenn, catalysts, nanotechnology, 2012, chemistry research, Philadelphia, BioResearch Product Faire Event, PA, BRPF
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Tags: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Washington, AIDS Research, WA, evolution research, 2012, biology research, biology research scientists, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Genetics, Seattle
The word antibacterial is popping up on more and more household items as merchandisers find that consumers generally believe that chemicals designed to kill bacteria are a useful additive to a product and boost its appeal. Very often the chemical that's added is one called triclosan, and according to recently published research by a team of University of California Davis biomedical scientists, the common polychloro phenoxy phenol causes muscle impairment in animal and lab tissue models. Specifically, it limits the ability of the muscle to expand and contract. A beating heart is one example.
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Tags: CA, University of California Davis, cardiovascular research, chemical research, cell biology, California, 2012, animal science, chemistry research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Davis, Sacramento Campus, UCD