The U.S. Department of Energy this month awarded $4 million to a team, led by UW chemical engineers, that aims to develop bacteria to turn the methane in natural gas into diesel fuel for transportation.
Congratulations to MolES faculty David Castner (Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering) who has been selected as a member of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to improving lives through medical and biological engineering. Castner joins a distinguished group of 1,000 other fellows from academia, industry and government who have made significant contributions to bioengineering research, industrial practice, and education. Read More
By Leila Gray, UW Health Sciences/UW Medicine
November 29, 2012
By following certain rules, scientists can prepare architectural plans for building ideal protein molecules not found in the real world. Based on these computer renditions, previously non-existent proteins can be produced from scratch in the lab. The principles to make this happen appear this month in Nature magazine.
The lead authors are Nobuyasu Koga and Rie Tatsumi-Koga, a husband-and-wife scientific team in David Baker's lab at the UW Protein Design Institute. Read More
Electrically spun cloth with nanometer-sized fibers show promise as a cheap, versatile platform to simultaneously offer contraception and prevent HIV. New funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help MolES faculty member Kim Woodrow further test the system's versatility and feasibility.
Congratulations to MolES faculty David Ginger, who was named fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 2012. Ginger was honored for advances in the physical chemistry of nanoscale materials relevant to optoelectronics, particularly photovoltaics, and innovation in surface microscopy techniques for probing such materials.
Molecular Engineering & Sciences faculty Suzie Pun (Bioengineering) and David Baker (Biochemistry) were highlighted in the latest UW 360 feature on targeted drug delivery.
Watch the UW360 feature on Targeted Drug Delivery Read More
The series of evening lectures, which are open to the public, kicks off next Tuesday (Oct. 16) in 120 Kane Hall with Launching the Molecular Engineering Revolution. Matthew O'Donnell, dean of the UW's College of Engineering, will describe how molecular engineering is poised to spark a new digital revolution, with implications for biotech, clean energy and other fields. O'Donnell will also discuss the role of the UW's newly established Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute.
Global health researchers, including MolES faculty member Dan Ratner, are working on cheap systems like a home-based pregnancy test that might work for malaria, diabetes or other diseases. A new chemical technique makes medically interesting molecules stick to regular paper "” a possible route to building such paper-based diagnostics from paper you could buy at an office-supply store.
In this documentary, you'll see how the new molecular engineering & sciences building at the University of Washington will bring together a collection of people "” world class talent in energy delivery and medicine to work together to address some of today's biggest challenges.
A diverse group of UW collaborators seeking to determine whether solar cells from earth-abundant elements can be a sustainable, environmentally low-impact, and profitable form of electricity production were awarded an Sustainable Energy Pathways grant from the National Science Foundation this fall. Led by Rehnberg Chair Professor Hugh Hillhouse the team, which includes Christine Luscombe (MolES/Materials Science & Engineering), Daniel Gamelin (MolES/Chemistry), Alison Cullen (Evans School of Public Affairs), and Xiaodong Xu (Materials Science & Engineering), will explore the use of nanocrystal and molecular inks to develop low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells with a benign environmental impact.