BioInspired — ��鶹��Ʒ

Research Distinction Awards Presented at BioInspired Symposium

Diane Stirling — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:50:23 +0000

The ’s third annual was held Oct. 24-25, bringing together undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and faculty from Syracuse University, SUNY Upstate Medical University and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, along with other regional research and industry partners.

Doctoral student Cijun Zhang explains his research to BioInspired Symposium attendees. Zhang studies in the Xiaoran Hu functional organic materials lab.

The event featured poster presentations by 79 undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Several researchers presented “lightning talks” on topics such as how and how the human body reacts; fabricating and creating and new technologies to address��problems from clean energy to robotics to medicine. Guest speakers from several universities made special presentations. Awards were presented to recognize researchers in multiple ways.

Three recipients were chosen in the Best Overall Poster category:

’25, a dual mathematics and physics major in the (A&S), for “.” (Principal investigators are , physics professor, and Antun Skanata, research assistant professor of physics.)
, a doctoral student in physics in A&S, for “.” (Principal investigator is , William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics.)
, an M.D./Ph.D. student in cell and developmental biology at SUNY Upstate Medical University, for “.” (Principal investigator is , associate research professor of biology.)

Two presenters were recognized as Stevenson Biomaterials Poster Award winners:

, a biomedical and chemical engineering doctoral student in the (ECS), for her work on “.” (Principal investigator is , associate professor of .)
G’21, a mechanical and aerospace engineering doctoral student in ECS, for “.” (Principal investigator is , associate professor of .)

Two researchers received awards recognizing Best Lightning Talks:

, a doctoral student in chemistry in A&S, whose topic was “.” Her work involves testing to find an improved diagnostic biomarker��for prostate and other cancers. (Principal investigator is , professor and director of biochemistry.)
, a doctoral student in biomedical and chemical engineering in ECS, for her research on bone tissue, described in “.”(Principal investigator is , professor of biomedical and chemical engineering.)

A project by , “,” was recognized as having the best commercialization potential. Can is a biomedical and chemical engineering doctoral student in ECS. (Principal investigator is Mary Beth Monroe.)

Receiving honors for her “social impact” initiative was , G ‘22, an assistant teaching professor in the , for her work, “ The project explored an interdisciplinary collaboration between the University’s Departments of Chemistry and Architecture that aimed to foster societal impact through sustainable innovation in architectural materials.��(Her collaborator was , associate professor of chemistry in A&S.)

Winston Oluwole Soboyejo, SUNY Polytechnic Institute President, asks Alexia Chatzitheodorou, a graduate research assistant, about her work on “Shape Morphing of Twisted Nematic Elastomer Shells.” Soboyejo was one of several university representatives to speak at the symposium.

Winner of the People’s Choice Award was , a biomedical and chemical engineering doctoral student in ECS. His project, “”

His research examines how hemostatic materials with antibacterial and antibiofilm properties can reduce infection rates and enhance the healing of traumatic wounds. (Principal investigator is Mary Beth Monroe.)

Best Publication Awards went to:

G’22, a graduate of the applied data science program who is now a doctoral student in bioengineering and biomedical engineering in ECS. He is exploring the use of hiPSC-CMs to study and understand cardiomyocyte biology through biology with artificial intelligence. His paper, “,” published in Cell Reports Methods in June, presented new methods for investigating the physiological functioning of cardiac organoids using machine learning algorithms.

, a doctoral student in bioengineering at ECS, studies wound healing and tissue regeneration. His paper, “,” was published in the journal ACS Applied Biomaterials in February.
, a doctoral student in bioengineering at ECS, received an honorable mention. His paper, “” was published in the journal ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering in June.

The Building Blocks of Future Smart Materials

News Staff — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 13:04:27 +0000

How do cells take the shape they do and perform their functions? The enzymes and molecules that make them up are not themselves living—and yet they are able to adapt to their environment and circumstances, come together and interact, and ultimately, create life. How exactly all of that happens involves some very big questions, the answers to which will be crucial in paving the way for new biotechnologies and other advancements.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a private, nonprofit grantmaking organization, started its to begin to answer some of them. The program’s stated goal is “To sharpen our scientific understanding of the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from inanimate matter, and to explore the conditions under which physical principles and mechanisms guide the complexification of matter towards life.”

To that end, the program awarded (left) and (right), professors in the in the and members of the BioInspired Institute, a three-year grant to explore what they’ve described as a fundamental unanswered question about the functionality of cells and the energy and entropy landscape of cell interiors.

Jennifer Ross (left) and Jennifer Schwarz, professors in the Department of Physics, received a three-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Matter to Life program.

“There is a lack of quantitative understanding of the principles governing the non-equilibrium control knobs inside the cell,” Ross and Schwarz explained in their proposal. “Without this knowledge, we will never understand how cells work, or how we can replicate them in synthetic materials systems.”

They’ve chosen to focus their work on one very particular aspect of the biology of cells, the concentrations of protein molecules within them known as protein condensates, and specifically their liquid-liquid phase separation, which they describe as the “killer app” for the sculpting of energy and entropy in the cell.

“Liquid-liquid phase separation is when two liquids separate, like oil and water,” Ross says. “The proteins separate out [into droplets] and make what we think of as membrane-less organelles. We’re interested in how both energy-using systems and entropy-controlling systems can help to shape those organelles.”

They’re hoping to gain an understanding of how cells self-organize without a “manager”—in this case, a membrane to act as a physical containment system—as well as how they react and adapt to their environment.

“This droplet formation is so sensitive to temperature and its surroundings,” says Schwarz. “The cell knows, ‘A ha!’ The temperature is increasing, so the environment is slightly different. So…I’m going to adapt.”

Ross is serving as principal investigator, and with graduate student assistance, will be performing reconstitution experiments to explore these processes, while co-principal investigator Schwarz and her team will be delving into the theoretical side of the science using predictive simulations. The three-year grant will also fund a paid undergraduate and two local high school students through summer programs.

The hope is that a better understanding of cell behavior at this level could ultimately lead to breakthroughs in the development of smart synthetic materials. “Imagine a road-paving material that could identify when a pothole develops and heal itself,” Ross says.

It’s just one example of countless possibilities for learning from biological systems.

Story by Laura Wallis

Bio Artist Eduardo Kac to Present Wali Lecture at BioInspired Institute Symposium Oct. 24

Diane Stirling — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 18:02:47 +0000

The creator of the term “bio art,” an expressive form that interprets scientific principles and concepts through artistic installations, exhibitions and performances, is the keynote speaker for the University’s annual in the Sciences and Humanities.

Eduardo Kac

, an internationally recognized contemporary artist and poet, will speak on��, at 4:30 p.m. in the Life Sciences Complex atrium. His talk, “Rockets for the Sake of Poetry,” will feature highlights of his 40-year artistic career, his development of bio art and insights about his space artworks. This year’s lecture is hosted by the and its research focus group.

‘Bio Art’ Developer

Kac uses biotechnology and genetics to create and explore scientific techniques. In the early 1980s he created digital, holographic and online works that anticipated today’s global culture of information that is constantly in flux. In 1997, he coined the term “bio art,” which launched a new art form.

“GFP Bunny,” a rabbit bred to glow a fluorescent color under special lights

Among his famous works are the transgenic rabbit , for which he used and a jellyfish protein to create a live rabbit that glows a fluorescent green color under blue light.��In “,” he combined his own��DNA with that of a petunia flower to form a new “plantimal.”

“Natural History of the Enigma,” transgenic flower with artist’s own DNA expressed in the red veins

His pieces have been shown around the world and, in one��instance, out of this world: his , “,” was . Kac’s “” was also realized in outer space with assistance from French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

His career also spans poetry, performance, drawing, printmaking, photography, artist’s books, early digital and online works, holography, telepresence and space art. He is a professor of art and technology at the and a Ph.D. research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive Arts at the University of Wales in Newport, Wales.

BioInspired Focus

As an institute for material and living systems, BioInspired hosts researchers who examine topics in complex biological systems and develop and design programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation. They include faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars from life sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry who work in three focus areas: �� and��

Last year, the institute added a fourth focus area, Posthumanities: Arts and Sciences, to push the boundaries of traditional scientific inquiry through activities and collaborations between the arts and humanities and the science-based disciplines.

The Posthumanities’ focus area coleaders, Boryana Rossa, of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and G. Douglas Barrett, of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, spearheaded the proposal to invite Kac as the 2024 Wali Lecture keynote. They worked with BioInspired leaders Jay Henderson, institute director; Heidi Hehnly-Chang, associate director, and Jeremy Steinbacher, operations director.

The Wali Lecture represents a partnership of the Department of and the Syracuse University . It is part of the 2024-25 Syracuse Symposium “.”

Kameshwar C. Wali

The lecture was established in 2008 by his daughters to commemorate Wali’s vision and leadership to recognize their parents’ dedication and contributions to the University and the greater community. Wali was the Steele Professor of Physics Emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences and internationally recognized as a theorist for research on the symmetry properties of fundamental particles and their interactions, as well as for his work as an author. He joined the University in 1969. He previously was at Harvard and Northwestern Universities, the University of Chicago, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France and the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy. As a fellow of the American Physical Society, whose India Chapter named him Scientist of the Year in 2022, he received ��ܲ��’s Chancellor’s Citation for exceptional academic achievement and was one of the founding members of the .

BioInspired Wins NSF Grant to Develop Graduate Training Program in Emergent Intelligence

Wendy S. Loughlin — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 13:55:27 +0000

Syracuse University’s has been awarded a $3 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for the creation of an interdisciplinary training program for doctoral students in emergent intelligence.

The program, NRT-URoL: Emergent Intelligence Research for Graduate Excellence in Biological and Bio-Inspired Systems (EmIRGE-Bio), will support the integration of research and education on emergent intelligence in both biological and bio-inspired systems and allow doctoral students to work and experience team-building across disciplinary and departmental boundaries.

Lisa Manning speaks at a previous BioInspired Symposium. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

“Many of society’s most pressing challenges—including food security, sustainability and supporting aging populations—will require breakthroughs in biotechnology and bio-inspired science,” says , William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), who is principal investigator (PI). “This program will train a new generation of scientists and engineers who can evaluate and harness complex systems, such as biological tissues or next-generation materials, to drive intelligent responses such as sensing, actuating and learning, leading to breakthrough technologies.”

Co-PIs are , associate professor of biology and chemistry in A&S; , associate director of BioInspired and Renée Crown Professor in the Sciences and Mathematics and associate professor of biology in A&S; , Samuel and Carol Nappi Research Scholar and associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS); and , associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in ECS.

BioInspired director , professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in ECS, says, “the Research Traineeship Program is currently one of—if not the most—competitive funding programs at the National Science Foundation. Receipt of the award speaks to the existing strength of graduate education in BioInspired fields at Syracuse University and to the exciting new opportunities and programming that Lisa and the team designed and proposed and now stand poised to deliver.”

The EmIRGE-Bio program will feature advanced core disciplinary courses in areas foundational to biotechnology and bio-inspired design; the development of two new courses utilizing team-based learning paradigms; and a longitudinal professional development program. It will also include a STEM entrepreneurship course offered by the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, an internship program and a co-curricular workshop series on project management and technology transfer.

Some 115 Ph.D. students from fields that span the life and physical sciences and engineering are expected to take part in the training, which the research team says will address a STEM workforce gap identified by local and national partners in industry and academe.

“Emergence in biology and bio-inspired design is one of the University’s signature areas of strength, and we have seen that borne out by the success of BioInspired since its founding in 2019,” says Interim Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer . “This initiative draws on that strength and supports our long-term strategic goal to transform STEM at Syracuse and enhance graduates’ potential for success in a swiftly evolving marketplace.”

Adds , vice president for research: “The NRT award will advance BioInspired in ways that are core to Syracuse University’s identity: recruiting and retaining a diverse student population, advancing cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and education and providing our students with the entrepreneurial skills needed in the 21st century workforce.”

Interim Provost Lois Agnew Adds Julie Hasenwinkel, Elisa Dekaney to Leadership Team

Wendy S. Loughlin — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 14:27:31 +0000

Interim Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer today announced the appointment of two new associate provosts, who will join the Academic Affairs leadership team effective Aug. 1. Julie Hasenwinkel will serve as associate provost for academic programs, and Elisa Dekaney as associate provost for strategic initiatives.

“Syracuse University is so fortunate to count outstanding teachers, scholars and administrators like Julie and Elisa among its faculty members, and I am truly grateful for their willingness to serve in these important roles,” Agnew says. “Their past leadership experiences and fresh perspectives position them to make a positive impact not only on the Academic Affairs team, but also across the University and in the local community.”

Julie Hasenwinkel

As associate provost for academic programs, Hasenwinkel will support teaching, learning and student success. Her portfolio will include oversight of a wide range of University offices and programs in these areas, including the , the and . She assumes the role from Agnew, who was named interim vice chancellor, provost and chief academic officer July 1.

, a Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence, is currently chair of the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering in the (ECS). She is also a faculty affiliate of the . She has served as ECS associate dean for academic and student affairs and senior associate dean.

Her professional and scholarly areas of expertise include faculty development in teaching and learning; engineering education and active learning pedagogies; student success initiatives; orthopedic biomaterials; and biomaterials for nerve regeneration. She holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University, an M.S. in bioengineering from Clemson University and a B.S.E. in biomedical engineering from Duke University.

“I’m very excited to take on this role and to have the opportunity to work with colleagues across the University and the leadership team in Academic Affairs to enhance our academic programs, student success, experiential inquiry and teaching and learning excellence,” Hasenwinkel says. “I look forward to implementing the goals of the academic strategic plan and exploring innovative ways that we can meet the current and future needs of our students so they can thrive at Syracuse University and beyond.”

Elisa Dekaney

In the role of associate provost for strategic initiatives, Dekaney will work to strengthen the academic experience through strong connections with campus and community-based programs, particularly in the arts and humanities. In this role, she will oversee University-based cultural organizations like the , and , among others. Dekaney will also have oversight of the University’s study abroad and study away initiatives. She assumes the role from Marcelle Haddix, who was recently named dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

, now the associate dean for research and global engagement and a professor of music education in the , is also a Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence.

Her scholarly research focuses on aesthetic response to music, world music and cultures, International Phonetic Alphabet, Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian culture and clinical simulation applied to music education. She holds a Ph.D. in choral music education from Florida State University, a master’s degree in choral conducting from the University of Missouri-Kansas, a bachelor’s degree in sacred music (piano) from the Seminário Teológico Batista do Sul do Brasil and a bachelor’s degree in communications from the Universidade Federal Fluminense.

“I am honored to join Interim Provost Lois Agnew and the entire Academic Affairs team. This role presents an incredible opportunity to collaborate with Syracuse University faculty, staff and students in driving innovative projects and fostering a culture of excellence in an environment welcoming to all,” Dekaney says. “I am committed to advancing our strategic goals with a strong focus on diversity and inclusion. By ensuring that our initiatives reflect these core values, we can create a transformative educational experience that benefits all members of our community.”

Wasserstrom Prize for Graduate Teaching Presented to Physics Professor Christian Santangelo

Caroline K. Reff — Mon, 13 May 2024 14:53:56 +0000

, professor and director of graduate studies in the in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and member of the , is the 2024 recipient of the William Wasserstrom Prize in recognition of his exemplary mentorship of graduate students. A&S Dean Behzad Mortazavi conferred the award on Santangelo at the Graduate School doctoral hooding ceremony on May 10.

Christian Santangelo

The prize is awarded annually to a faculty member who exemplifies the qualities of William Wasserstrom, a professor of English who died in 1985. Wasserstrom was a scholar known for his broad interests and profound impact on learning, with a particular teaching interest in the graduate seminar. Since his death, Wasserstrom has been memorialized with this award by A&S for outstanding success as a graduate seminar leader, research and dissertation director, advisor and role model for graduate students.

Santangelo joined Syracuse University in 2019 and was named physics director of graduate studies in 2021. His research interests focus on soft condensed-matter physics and materials geometry, extreme mechanics, 4D printing and self-folding origami, design of mechanical metamaterials and topological effect in nonlinear systems. He teaches Physics 1, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics and Advanced Statistical Mechanics.

He has co-authored 75 peer-reviewed articles, been quoted in multiple publications related to his research, presented at dozens of conferences and symposia and has received nearly $4.5 million in external grant funding for his work.

Santangelo recently served as “March Meeting” program chair for the (DSOFT) of the American Physical Society. He was also the co-lead of the Smart Materials focus group within the BioInspired Institute and a member of the College Level Liberal Arts Core Committee at A&S.

Santangelo has received several other awards and honors throughout his career, including the Glenn H. Brown Prize from the International Liquid Crystal Society, a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the Early Career Award from the APS DSOFT and he was named a fellow of the American Physical Society.

“Professor Santangelo is certainly an example of the level of excellence Professor Wasserstrom represented, and a person whose extraordinary commitment to the mentorship of graduate students is deserving of recognition,” says Mortazavi. “His scholarship and the guidance and knowledge he has provided as a mentor in graduate education has positively impacted the physics department, its students and the entire college since he joined the University five years ago. It is an honor to present him with this award.“

Santangelo has mentored 20 graduate students and post-docs and has served as a research advisor for 12 undergraduates. Professor Mitchell Soderberg, associate chair of the Department of Physics, notes that a common theme heard about Santangelo is his “knack for helping students develop as scholars—not by knowing all the answers but by helping them to recognize the best questions to pursue.”

Former students and colleagues submitted enthusiastic nomination letters that spoke to Santangelo’s qualifications for this award.

“As a mentor, Chris struck a perfect balance of being available for guidance and allowing independence. By imparting principles explicitly and through action, I learned from Chris how to identify interesting scientific problems, find strategies for tackling them, and navigate uncertainty and communication results,” says former student Salem Mosleh, a research associate at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. “He makes sure students get exposure to the scientific community, allowing me to attend conferences and meet collaborators—which helped me get my position at Harvard.”

“As his first Ph.D. student, I was fortunate to have Professor Santangelo as my mentor, and I can confidently say that he has a natural talent for selecting research problems that are interesting, challenging and relevant in the modern context of theoretical physics,” says Marcelo Dias, who is a senior lecturer in structural engineering at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “Professor Santangelo’s extensive mathematical expertise and practical approach to research have contributed to my career development. His interest in interdisciplinary topics has led to collaboration with many researchers throughout my career.”

Undergraduate Spearheads Study Using Physics to Understand How Cells Self-Sort

News Staff — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 20:38:19 +0000

Physics alumna Erin McCarthy ’23, right, was lead author on a study published in Physical Review Letters, which uncovered mechanisms that cause particles to sort spontaneously into different groups. Professor M. Lisa Manning, left, was a co-author.

Erin McCarthy ’23, physics summa cum laude, is a rarity among young scientists. As an undergraduate researcher in the College of Arts and Sciences’ , she guided a study that appeared in March 2024 in . It is the most-cited physics letters journal and the eighth-most cited journal in science overall.

McCarthy and postdoctoral associates Raj Kumar Manna and Ojan Damavandi developed a model that identified an unexpected collective behavior among computational particles with implications for future basic medical research and bioengineering.

“It’s very difficult to get a paper into Physical Review Letters,” says , co-author and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics, as well as founding director of the . “Your scientific peers must judge it as exceptional.”

McCarthy, a New Jersey native, chose Syracuse because of its “tremendous energy,” she says. “The educational and the research side of things was amazing. I came planning to be a physics major who was premed. I loved physics and biology, and I wanted to be involved in healthcare and medicine. And I got lucky in that I met Dr. Manning as a freshman, and she introduced me to computational biophysics. I started in research during my freshman year, which is extremely unusual.”

“Erin learned coding from scratch, and then did hours and hours of simulations, which took a lot of perseverance,” says Manning. “It’s just a fantastic testament to her work ethic and brilliance that this paper appeared in such a prestigious journal.”

Erin McCarthy standing in front of the Physics Building during 2023 graduation weekend.

The research team used computational physics modeling to figure out the underlying mechanisms that cause particles to sort spontaneously into different groups.

Learning how particles behave in physics models could provide insight into how living biological particles—cells, proteins and enzymes—remix themselves in development.

In the early stages of an embryo, for example, cells start out in heterogeneous mixtures. Cells must self-sort into different compartments to form distinct homogenous tissues. This is one of the major collective cell behaviors at work during development of tissues and organs and organ regeneration.

“Cells need to be able to organize themselves properly, segregating themselves to do their jobs,” says McCarthy. “We wanted to understand, if you remove chemistry and look strictly at physics, what are the mechanisms by which this reorganization can happen spontaneously?”

Previous physics investigations found that particles separate when some receive a jolt of higher temperature. As one population of particles becomes injected with energy at a small scale, it turns active—or “hot”—while the other population is left inactive, or “cold.” This difference in heat causes a reorganization among the two populations. These models are simplified versions of biological systems, using temperature to approximate cellular energy and movement.

“Hot particles push the cold particles aside so they can take over a larger space,” says co-author Manna. “But that only happens when a gap exists between particles.”

Previous modeling identified self-sorting particle behavior at less-packed, intermediate densities.

But the Syracuse team found something surprising. After injecting energy into a population of high-density particles, the hot particles did not shove cold ones around. The hot particles lacked space to do so.

That is important because biological particles—proteins in cells and cells in tissue—typically live in tight, crowded spaces.

“Your skin, for instance, is a very dense environment,” says McCarthy. “Cells are packed so closely together, there’s no space between them. If we want to apply these physics findings to biology, we must look at high densities for our models to be applicable. But at very high densities, the difference in activity between two populations does not cause them to sort.”

There must be some other self-sorting mechanism at play in biology. “Temperature or active injection of energy does not always separate things, so you can’t use it in biology,” says Manning. “You must search for some other mechanism.”

To Manning, this study illustrates the strengths of Syracuse University. “The fact that an undergraduate spearheaded this research speaks to the awesome quality of students we have at Syracuse University, who are as good as those anywhere in the world, and to the exceptionalness of Erin herself,” says Manning.

Manna, the postdoctoral mentor for the last part of McCarthy’s project, was essential in driving it to conclusion.

“The study wouldn’t have happened without him,” says Manning. “This demonstrates that we are able to recruit outstanding postdoctoral associates to Syracuse because we are such a great research university.” Manna is now a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics at Northeastern University.

McCarthy, a research technologist in a biological lab at the Northwestern University School of Medicine, plans to start applying for graduate school.

“At Syracuse,” says McCarthy, “I learned how much I love research and want it to be a part of my future.”

Story by John H. Tibbetts

Aerodynamics of Avian Flight: ECS Professor Studying Impact of Strong Wind Gusts

Kwami Maranga — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 18:34:17 +0000

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Kasey Laurant (left) and student Cody Van Nostrand ’24 running an experiment in the water channel lab.

Boasting an impressive wingspan of over seven feet, the golden eagle is one of the largest birds of prey in North America. In addition to being cunning, skilled hunters and their ability to soar effortlessly for hours, golden eagles might also utilize strong gusts of wind to assist their flight – an ability that piqued the interest of , an aerospace and mechanical engineering professor in the .

During her Ph.D. studies at Cornell University, Laurent conducted research on golden eagles by recording their acceleration as they flew, and the study formed the foundation for her dissertation on bird and drone flight. She also participated in Cornell’s Raptor Program, which provides a home for injured or non-releasable birds for research, training and rehabilitation. This experience gave her valuable insights into bird flight and behavior.

“Slowly throughout my Ph.D., I became more of a bird person. That’s what motivates my research here at Syracuse University,” Lauren says.

Laurent’s research aims to enhance flight and aerodynamics by measuring wind speeds and unsteadiness within air flows. Her work’s interdisciplinary nature also enables collaboration with biologists to explore ideas for improving aerodynamics by learning from nature.

“If you step outside on a windy day, you’ll feel the wind coming from various directions and at varying strengths at random intervals,” says Laurent. “If we measure the wind at a single point in time, that value will be random, but if we measure the wind over a long period of time and evaluate the statistics of how the wind changes over time, we’ll find patterns.��My research looks at how these patterns, or signatures, may be deduced by looking at the locomotion of animals in turbulent environments. Will a bird fly a certain way in the turbulent atmosphere?”

Kasey Laurant (left) and Cody Van Nostrand ’24 conducting an experiment in the lab.

As Laurent puts together a proposal for gust soaring seen with golden eagles, she’s also interested in gathering data from crows, goshawks, and turkey vultures, large birds that also use strong wind gusts to aid their flight.

“Goshawks fly through the forest and can maneuver very fast in different environments.�� When flying close to treetops, turkey vultures’ wings have an angle to them, allowing them to restabilize. It would be difficult to replicate this in man-made vehicles since they’re not flexible and don’t have joints like birds, but there’s still much we can learn.”

Studying how birds utilize wind and atmosphere to aid their flight would assist in improving the flight of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs.) Smaller aircraft often face issues when encountering wind gusts, causing them to lose control and potentially crash. Understanding how to maneuver around gusts could open up new possibilities for aircraft to fly in without sustaining damage from wind gusts and even utilize gusts to their advantage, similar to birds.

This research can be useful in creating smaller and lighter UAVs for various applications, including search and rescue missions. The main challenge with drones is that they have a limited range, which requires them to return to a base to change batteries and repeat the process. If the drones have a longer lifespan, they can continue with their search without the need to land or replace the battery.

“If we find a way to let the gusts move aircraft around, power won’t be an issue. We’ll just need to know how to maintain stability in that gust,” Laurent says. “Most research looking at flight in turbulence aims to develop methods to reject gusts, but it seems, according to the eagles, that may not be the best approach. We can learn a lot from nature to improve aerodynamics and locomotion.”

Record Five Syracuse University Students Selected for Prestigious 2024 Goldwater Scholarship

Kelly Homan Rodoski — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 14:35:35 +0000

Five Syracuse University students have been selected for the 2024 Goldwater Scholarship, the preeminent undergraduate scholarship awarded in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics in the U.S. This is the first time Syracuse has had five students selected for the cohort and the third consecutive year the University has had at least three scholars selected in one year.

The recipients are:

Julia Fancher, a sophomore physics and mathematics major in the (A&S) and a member of the ;
Sadie Meyer, a sophomore biomedical engineering major in the (ECS) and mathematics major in A&S;
Kerrin O’Grady, a junior biomedical engineering major in ECS and neuroscience integrated learning major in A&S;
Serena Peters, a junior chemistry major in A&S; and
Gianna Voce, a sophomore computer science major in ECS and neuroscience Integrated learning major in A&S.

“The fact that five students from Syracuse were selected as Goldwater Scholars this year is a testament to our University’s robust support for undergraduate research and the high quality of faculty mentoring here.” Jolynn Parker, director, Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising

All five are research grant recipients from the .

The��was established by Congress in 1986 to honor U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, the five-term senator from Arizona. The purpose of the program is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers by awarding scholarships to students who intend to pursue research careers in these fields.

The Goldwater Foundation received 1,353 nominations this year from around the country and 438 students were selected for the scholarship.

Each Syracuse University Goldwater Scholarship nominee worked with the (CFSA) to prepare their application. A faculty committee, headed by James Spencer, professor of chemistry in A&S, selected ��ܲ��’s nominees for the national competition.

“We’re so proud of Julia, Sadie, Kerrin, Serena and Gianna. They are exceptional young scientists and it is gratifying to see them honored with this award,” says Jolynn Parker, CFSA director. “The fact that five students from Syracuse were selected as Goldwater Scholars this year is a testament to our University’s robust support for undergraduate research and the high quality of faculty mentoring here.”

Julia Fancher

Fancher, a physics major, is also minoring in computer science and draws on those skills to create effective theoretical models of astrophysical phenomena.

“I have always loved space, and I now get to use physics and math to learn more about distant galaxies and black holes,” she says.

As a first-year student, Fancher joined the high-energy astrophysics lab of Eric Coughlin, assistant professor of physics. With Coughlin’s guidance, Fancher researches tidal disruption events, which occur when a star is destroyed by the tidal field of a black hole.

Fancher has published two papers in national journals on this topic and presented her research at the local Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics and the national American Astronomical Society conference in January 2024, and was a finalist in the undergraduate AAS Chambliss poster competition. She participated in the “Education and Inclusion in Post-Apartheid South Africa” program through Syracuse Abroad last summer.

Fancher plans to enroll in a doctoral program that focuses on computational and analytical astrophysics, with the goal of becoming a professor at a research university to conduct research in theoretical high-energy astrophysics.

“I aim to build my own astrophysics lab focusing on discovering possible mechanisms of observed astrophysical transients through a combination of analytical methods and computational modeling,” Fancher says.

Sadie Meyer

Meyer grew up surrounded by research with widespread impacts on healthcare and recognized the importance of such work early on. She developed a strong purpose to advance new approaches to women’s health and infertility, specifically with a biomedical engineering perspective.

In her first semester on campus, wanting to get more involved with research, Meyer joined the laboratory of James Henderson, professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and director of the . The lab specializes in functional shape-memory materials and biocompatible platform development.

Meyer has learned material synthesis and combined mathematical approaches with experimental design to conduct characterizations of programmed shape memory polymer topography to serve as a dynamic cell culture substrate. Her current project analyzes bacterial response to shape-memory actuated 3D silk wrinkled surfaces as a strategy for biofilm prevention. Meyer is third author on a manuscript published in February 2024 in the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute journal, “Polymers.”��She will present her research at the 50th Northeast Bioengineering Conference on April 4 at the Stevens Institute of Technology. This summer, she will participate in a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Northwestern University’s Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental Resource Facility. There, she will study the ultrastructure of yeast mitochondria, working toward a better understanding of cellular function, health and evolution.

Meyer plans to enroll in a Ph.D. program with strengths in regenerative medicine, biomaterials and mechanobiology. “After earning my Ph.D., I will pursue a faculty position where I can oversee a lab of my own and conduct research to address challenges in fertility and reproductive health,” she says.

“Being selected for the Goldwater Scholarship encourages and supports my ambitions for further inquiry in my fields and makes a tremendous difference to my development as a researcher,” she says.

Kerrin O’Grady

In high school, O’Grady volunteered at a camp for neurodivergent children and adults. “I have seen the need for adaptive and customizable everyday devices for individuals with impaired motor control,” she says.

She is now pursuing degrees in biomedical engineering and neuroscience, with a minor in philosophy. “As a bioengineer, I am eager to support communities that may not have the same opportunities I have been afforded,” she says.

O’Grady has engaged in research in the Henderson Lab since the beginning of her sophomore year. There, she has focused on creating silk-wrinkled topographies on 3D shape-memory polymeric scaffolds and optimizing the attachment and proliferation of mammalian, specifically neuronal, cells on the scaffolds. Her current work focuses on using silk-wrinkled shape-memory polymeric conduits to aid in peripheral nerve injury repair.

O’Grady plans to enroll in a Ph.D. program in biomedical engineering, focusing on neuro-engineering. After completing her Ph.D., she aims to pursue a career focused on neural engineering research, working closely with the neurodivergent and physically disabled communities.

“I want to lead experiments and to create devices and repair in vivo damage, similar to the work that Argonne National Laboratory is conducting on repairing spinal cord damage by injecting a treatment directly into paralyzed mice,” she says. O’Grady will continue this work at the University of Victoria this summer through a Fulbright MITACS research internship. There, she will work in a lab on 3D bioprinting neural tissues from stem cells.

“The Goldwater Scholarship will help me in a financial sense and will provide me with a community of dedicated students who have similar passions and goals as me,” she says.

Serena Peters

Peters is pursuing a major in chemistry because of her interest in applications for environmental sustainability. She has contributed to a research project with Professor Jonathan French quantifying students’ sense of belonging in general chemistry courses. Currently, in Professor Timothy Korter’s lab, she is using high-complexity experimental and computational techniques to study the polymorphism of two antiviral compounds, acyclovir and ganciclovir.

Peters purposefully chooses assignments that allow her to delve deeper into the realm of sustainable chemistry. “Whether presenting on how zeolites can be employed for nuclear waste cleanup or writing a paper on innovative carbon capture strategies, I consistently integrate environmental chemistry into my academic pursuits,” she says.

Peters plans to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry with a concentration on applications for environmental sustainability. Her career goal is to work in aquatic cleanup as a research professor at a university.

“I aspire to guide undergraduates who, much like myself, may harbor uncertainties about venturing into the field of research. I hope to continue researching in the field of environmental chemistry, specifically using different forms of spectroscopy to analyze water contaminants. My goal is to foster a research environment that demonstrates that research is an inclusive pursuit open to anyone, regardless of their background or identity,” she says.

“The Goldwater Scholarship has helped me build my confidence. I long wondered if research was for me, partially since it’s such a male-dominated field. However, receiving this scholarship has shown me that I am capable and I deserve to be a researcher as much as anyone else,” Peters says.

Gianna Voce

Voce has always loved the problem-solving of computer science and its endless possibilities to intersect with other fields. “Computer science was originally inspired by the human brain and continues to be influenced by neuroscience, so seeing the parallels between my two majors is fascinating to me,” she says. “I love seeing the ways two seemingly disconnected fields interact and discovering new ways for them to do so.”

Voce transferred to Syracuse from Clarkson University; she has sought out research opportunities since the summer before her freshman year, when she participated in a PreFrosh Summer Research Experience through Clarkson’s Honors Program. There, she studied the effects of commonly used fluorescent dyes on tendon mechanics, research that was published in the Journal of the Mechanics of Biomedical Materials.

In the summer of 2022, she participated in an REU at Texas State University focused on cybersecurity in connected vehicles. She helped create a reinforcement learning algorithm that could successfully identify which vehicles had been compromised by a cyberattack for networks that were more than 90% corrupted. She published and presented this research at the Association for Computing Machinery REUNS 2023 conference in Washington, D.C., and at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ International Conference on Consumer Electronics 2024 in Las Vegas. She will be studying abroad in Florence this summer through Syracuse Abroad.

After transferring to Syracuse, Voce joined the lab of Qinru Qiu, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, where she researches algorithms for neuromorphic computing. Her team focuses on developing software and artificial neural networks to run on Intel chips.

Voce plans to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science or neuroscience with a concentration in computational neuroscience. After obtaining her degrees, she plans to take a research position within the tech industry, working as either a computational neuroscientist or a machine learning engineer. “I aim to contribute novel insights toward the development of artificial intelligence systems that mimic the qualities of biological neural networks with the goal of increasing efficiency and accuracy in AI learning,” she says.

“The Goldwater Scholarship is an incredible honor that will not only assist me in my education but provide the opportunity to be a part of an amazing network of researchers that offer inspiration to pursue this career path,” Voce says.

CFSA seeks applicants for the Goldwater Scholarship each fall; the campus deadline is mid-November each year. Interested students should contact CFSA at��cfsa@syr.edu.

ECS Professor’s Nature-Inspired Research on Banned Species

Kwami Maranga — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:01:12 +0000

Apple snails are one of the most invasive species on our planet. Consuming several plants that provide food and habitats for various wildlife, and disrupting entire ecosystems, these snails have earned a permanent ban from the United States, only allowed in the country for research. Along with the damage they leave in their slow path of destruction, these shelled creatures also possess an ability unique to their species.

By wiggling its flexible foot underwater, an apple snail can create a flow that brings floating food particles to itself, a process known as “pedal foot collection,” by biologists. Fascinated by the snail’s unique ability, this would inspire the latest research conducted by , a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor in the . Pandey’s findings were published in the high-impact science journal .

Anupam Pandey

“One of my research interests is understanding how soft, highly deformable, solid materials interact with adjacent liquid flow,” Pandey says. “Organisms that live underwater exploit this interaction for locomotion and feeding. Apple snails have evolved to leverage their proximity to the water-air interface to transport or pump liquids.”

To understand the process behind pedal foot collection, Pandey designed a robot the size of a centimeter that oscillates rhythmically and mimicked the apple snail’s motion. He then placed the robot underwater in a tank and sprinkled Styrofoam particles on the surface to see if it could collect it, discovering that the robot functioned similarly to a pump.

“We found that our bio-inspired robot was able to drag particles from distances that are five times its size. But more interestingly, we found an optimal speed at which pumping maximizes,” explains Pandey. “This optimal speed seemed to depend on robot geometry as well as the properties of the liquid it’s submerged in. Combining experiments and modeling, we predicted the optimal conditions under which the robot pumps the most liquid.”

In addition to understanding the role speed and liquid play in how the robot collects small objects and pumps liquid, Pandey also tracked the pattern of Styrofoam particle movement through long exposure photography, which he color-coded to make it easier to see how the particles moved.

While the small, oscillating robots have the potential for numerous applications, one notable benefit is as a collection device. Pandey believes that they could help address issues involving the collection of microplastics in oceans, which tend to remain at the water’s surface due to their small size.

Most plastic collection devices create strong disturbances at the water surface and cause microparticles to mix in the water. These microplastics travel to other water bodies, causing more plastic pollution which harms plants and animals and inevitably ends up in our food chain. However, devices like the undulating robot operate near the water’s surface with minimal interference and could potentially provide a solution to this problem.

“What’s great about this research is how interdisciplinary it is. Biologists may be interested in this, and it has several potential applications in engineering liquid flows at small scales, sensing and actuation of floating objects or even microplastics in water bodies,” Pandey says. “It will not only advance understanding of liquid transport near surfaces but lay the groundwork for future research as well.”

BioInspired Adds Research Subgroup Blending Arts, Sciences, Humanities

Diane Stirling — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:09:49 +0000

A new subgroup focused on the study of topics has been formed at BioInspired Institute. It is designed to provide space and funding for research and creative activities that push the boundaries of traditional scientific inquiry and innovation through activities and collaborations between the arts and the humanities and the science-based disciplines that have been the core of the institute’s activities.

Posthumanities is an area of inquiry—not a discipline as much as a collaborative relationship between disciplines—in which researchers and artists examine the historical concept of the human, questioning its definition and adapting it based on contemporary developments and knowledge.��Where human thinking, skills and characteristics were once only able to be performed by human beings, today’s technology and scientific advancements, such as robots, artificial intelligence, genetics and bioengineering, are changing the reality of those previous interpretations.

The “Posthumanities: Arts and Sciences” subgroup joins three other areas of focus at the institute: , and .

Leading the subgroup’s events and programming are faculty co-chairs , associate professor of art video in the , and , assistant professor of the television, radio and film in the .

Boryana Rossa

Rossa is an interdisciplinary artist and curator working in bio-art, experimental film, video art and performance art. Her work focuses on the social implications of science and technology through a cyberfeminist (feminist approach to cyberspace, the Internet and technology) lens. A researcher and artist, Barrett teaches audio production, experimental music and media studies. His scholarship focuses on art music, experimentalism and fine arts interdisciplinary movements after World War II using musicology, art history and critical theory approaches.

G. Douglas Barrett

, BioInspired Institute director and professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the , says hosting a new focus area underscores the importance of recognizing how the diverse fields that are part of the University’s research and creative enterprise are interconnected. “As an interdisciplinary institute, I think we’re ideally positioned to catalyze collaborations of this kind at diverse and perhaps sometimes seemingly disparate interfaces between the University’s existing strengths, and to help lead the mission of interdisciplinary collaboration and focus on emerging technologies,” he says.

Bioinspired Associate Director , Renée Crown Professor in the Sciences and Mathematics and associate professor of biology in the , has developed a Bio-Art Mixer program with Rossa as an arts, humanities and sciences collaboration. Hehnly says the new subgroup “is a visionary approach to science communication and education that amplifies the institute’s mission to address global challenges through interdisciplinary exploration and creativity. It offers exciting opportunities for innovative research projects, engaging public events and stimulating new ways of thinking about scientific concepts.”

Bio-art installation: “The Mirror of Faith,” 2019, ULTRAFUTURO (Boryana Rossa and Oleg Mavromatti). Detail. Photo by Boryana Rossa.

Rossa has on campus and worldwide where the arts and sciences intersect, and with Hehnly, founded the . “The arts, sciences and technology have a common origin in trying to understand the world and communicate with it through their inventions. Historically, they have deeply influenced each other. Sharing both an intellectual and physical space facilitates easier cross-borrowing of skills and technologies,” Rossa says. “Occupying a common space with knowledge that is otherwise separated in the academic structure can also more easily spark curiosity.”

Barrett says that the fields of media studies, critical theory, musicology, art history, ethnography and comparative literature have become increasingly relevant to the emerging practical and theoretical problems raised by advances in biology, engineering and the natural sciences. “Humans have always been the centerpiece of the humanities—language, art, music, philosophy—all sorts of areas once thought of as only human-centered endeavors. Now it seems that science and engineering more and more challenge that boundary,” he says.

Bio-art installation: “The Mirror of Faith,” 2019, ULTRAFUTURO (Boryana Rossa and Oleg Mavromatti). Detail. Photo by Boryana Rossa.

The subgroup will examine the use of emerging science and technology in the fine and performing arts; the ethics and politics of biotechnology, informatics and artificial intelligence; and creative work that addresses climate change. The co-chairs are planning several spring events and exhibits, including:

��A bio-art exhibition at the Life Sciences Building representing trauma mapping by artist
A March bio-art mixer dedicated to bioinspired product design featuring the work of , professor of practice in industrial and interaction design in the
Guided tours of “Assembly,” an exhibition curated by founders and , including the work, “,” developed by Rossa and
Ongoing residency projects in , including “Glow Me Glow Me Not,” which considers genetic research within the perspective of the biological determination of human behavior
��Ongoing research and practice in intermedia art and experimental music, including Rossa’s collaborative bio-art projects and talks based on Barrett’s new book, “”

Rossa’s art is included in an exhibition at the running through May 12. An and takes place on Feb. 22.

Those interested in being an active member of the research subgroup are welcome to contact Rossa (bddragoe@syr.edu) and Barrett (dbarrett@syr.edu). The group also has an online and is developing a mailing list for routing information about programming and events.

‘There is a Place for You Here’: Recruiting Local High School Students for Physics Lab Internships

Diane Stirling — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 19:16:08 +0000

To second-year environmental engineering major Emma Kaputa, one good turn deserves another.

As a student in the (SCSD), she was chosen for a six-week summer program that allows high schoolers to work as paid interns in Syracuse University physics labs. Kaputa wanted others to have the same positive research experience she had enjoyed, so, after her first year on campus, she returned to her former high school to recruit more students for the program.

The program that left an impression on was Syracuse University Research in Physics (SURPh), which aims to inspire students to take up science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) studies and potentially pursue careers in those areas. About two dozen high schoolers have participated in the program over the past two years. They work on cutting-edge research in University physics labs alongside (A&S) faculty.

, professor and chair of physics, leads the program. Assisting her have been Henninger High School science teacher Melanie Pelcher, economics master’s student Devon Lamanna ’23 and Yudaisy Salomón Sargentón, physics department operations specialist. Funding comes from the , the , A&S’s ��and the��.

Undergraduate researcher Emma Kaputa studied biofilm growth in a biophysics lab the summer before entering college.

Working With Biofilms

The program was devised by , an SCSD alumnus who is now a dual physics and economics senior at Syracuse. After joining Ross’ research lab, he recognized that other city school students might have the same dream to work in a science lab, while lacking a way to get a foot in that door. Together with Ross, he formulated the program as a way to facilitate the process.

Ruell Branch originated the idea to recruit high schoolers for research internships.

A grant recipient, Kaputa had already decided to attend Syracuse when she was selected for the internship. That first summer, she worked in assistant professor ’s exploring biofilms—slimy clusters of bacteria that colonize surfaces. She enjoyed the experience so much that she remained in the lab throughout her first year on campus. Eventually, Kaputa accompanied Patteson, a member of the BioInspired Institute, to SCSD’s Nottingham High School to help recruit the next cohort of interns.

��“I learned so much that first year—science skills, poster presentations, networking. I benefitted a lot from the critical thinking that was required. It was fun to go back to the high school and encourage [my former classmates] to apply. I’m really glad to have had that door opened for me and I wanted to extend that to my classmates,” Kaputa says.

A Published Scientist

Kaputa researched how bacteria colonize and spread on surfaces.

Patteson calls Kaputa “a really bright and creative student who has made remarkable progress in our group.”�� She says the program makes it possible for high schoolers to experience real science scholarship. The work Kaputa and her lab mates did—characterizing the mechanical properties of colonies of bacteria—was in the American Chemical Society Journal, with Kaputa listed as a co-author.

Kaputa’s continuing work in the lab came with additional opportunities. She presented at the BioInspired Institute’s 2023 annual symposium, winning the Most Social Impact award for her poster about the SURPh program. This semester, she will present about staining biofilms with fluorescence at the ’s annual meeting. She also mentored a new group of high school students in the biofilm lab.

Kaputa’s summary of the SURPh internship program won the “Most Social Impact” prize at the 2024 BioInspired Symposium.

Opening Doors

“One of the program’s main goals is to open doors for people who might not otherwise get into science, so it was exciting for me to mentor other women in STEM,” Kaputa says. “I enjoyed being able to show them that there is a place for you here and that you can be successful here.”

How does someone majoring in environmental engineering become deeply involved in physics research?

“There is a lot of physics in engineering,” Kaputa says. “In the coming decades, being at the intersection of these fields will be critical to finding solutions to issues like climate change. I’m hopeful that having a background in multiple fields will give me a unique and useful perspective.�� It’s exciting to be at the forefront. Life sciences blended with math and physics-biophysics is everything I love.”

It’s important that the interns are compensated, Kaputa says. “This being a paid position is a reason why someone might be able to do summer research. In some families, high schoolers are responsible for providing income, so they need to work over the summer. An unpaid role could be a huge barrier. Adding the paid internship element makes this a lot more accessible, and I think that’s amazing,” she says.

Her advice for others contemplating a science lab internship at Syracuse: “When opportunity knocks, answer. Put yourself out there and show up both physically and mentally. And when given the chance, remember to thank the community that helped get you there, and try to provide the same opportunity to others,” Kaputa says.

Rachel Steinhardt Awarded NSF Grant to Study Brain Chemistry

News Staff — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 19:40:29 +0000

, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, has been awarded a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation for her project, .

One of the most perplexing challenges in neuroscience is how to explain the brain’s ability to learn and change itself. This function of the brain enables a large slate of behaviors and mental states, including sleeping, wakefulness, mood and attention. And while it’s understood that connections between cells are at the heart of this neural activity, how those connections work, change and fuel these behaviors remains a mystery.

Rachel Steinhardt

This project aims to better understand how individual cells communicate to create brain activity. The will probe two key chemicals involved in this phenomenon—dopamine and serotonin. Steinhardt’s team will examine the chemicals’ molecular behavior to better understand how they fuel the neural activity that drives brain functions like sleep, learning and memory.

Conventional imaging tools like MRIs can’t offer adequate insights into this process because they don’t capture the smallest scale of neural activity. So, Steinhardt will develop and use new tools that will allow her to specifically investigate the molecular level of the brain, which will enable her to make discoveries that wouldn’t be possible through traditional imaging methods. These innovative chemical tools will include genetically engineered molecules and light that can stimulate individual cells and illuminate key molecular interactions that are involved in certain neural activity.

While conventional methods examine neural activity by focusing on the brain as a whole, this bottom-up experiment will look at individual cells to make discoveries about how the neural network functions. This research project should help build a fundamental understanding of how serotonin and dopamine control different behavior, including sleep, mental illness and addiction. This fundamental science could be applied to things like more effective treatments for mental illness. Some of Steinhardt’s other research focuses on the molecular chemistry of conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder.

This story was written by Emily Halnon.

American Physical Society Honors Professor Alison Patteson

Kerrie Marshall — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 19:56:15 +0000

Alison Patteson (photo by Marilyn Hesler)

, assistant professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been recognized by the American Physical Society (APS) with a national prize. Patteson received the 2024 , which recognizes outstanding achievement by a woman physicist in the early years of her career.

Patteson is a member of the�� and leads an institute focus group for mechanics of development and disease. Her research group studies biophysics and soft matter—specifically, how cells navigate and respond to the mechanical nature of their physical environment. She and her team are currently investigating how the structural protein vimentin affects cell migration and are also exploring the physical factors that control the growth of biofilms, which are slimy clusters of microorganisms including bacteria and fungi that can adhere to wet surfaces.

Learn more about��to find new solutions to challenges like SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19.

“Ali Patteson is an outstanding researcher, educator and service member in the Syracuse Physics Department,” says , professor and chair of physics. “Not only is her research excellent, but she is also a valuable collaborator within the department and Syracuse University community. And, she is a wonderful mentor and departmental contributor. She is truly a model of the teacher-scholar model we hope to all embody in Syracuse physics.”

APS President Robert Rosner cites Patteson’s important research contributions in characterizing the physics of living systems, including demonstrating how mechanics influences the collective behavior of bacteria and how intermediate filaments in a cell’s cytoskeleton impact its mechanics, migration and signaling. “This APS honor embodies a distinguished recognition within the academic community and necessitates adherence to the highest standards of professional conduct and integrity,” says Rosner of the award, named for the 1963 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Maria Goeppert Mayer.

A Year of Achievements

Patteson has garnered several additional grant awards in 2023 recognizing her research. There were two in February including a��2023 Cottrell Scholar award, an honor that ranks her among the country’s best faculty researchers and teachers from the fields of astronomy, chemistry and physics. Currently, only two other New York state universities have more Cottrell-awarded faculty: Columbia and Cornell. Also, Patteson was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, honoring U.S. and Canadian researchers who exemplify the next generation of research leadership.

“I’m deeply honored and grateful to receive the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award, which would not have been possible without the support of my students and Syracuse community,” says Patteson.

About the Award

The award is presented to a woman, no later than seven years after she received a Ph.D., each year to recognize scientific achievements that demonstrate her potential as an outstanding physicist. It comes with a monetary prize of $5,000 and travel support to give three lectures in her field of physics and at the meeting of the APS to receive the award. The presentations are attended by students and can have a meaningful impact on their academic and professional trajectory. Patteson will travel to Minneapolis in March 2024 to accept the award and give a presentation.

Originally from Germany (now an area in Poland), born in 1906,��was a physicist and mathematician who proposed the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus which explained “why certain numbers of nucleons in the nucleus of an atom cause an atom to be extremely stable.” She was a trailblazer, both in her field and for women in science, as one of only four women to win a Nobel Prize in physics.

Patteson joins , associate professor of physics and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics, who��received this award in 2018, for her research into soft, living matter. Manning and Patteson are the only two Syracuse faculty to receive the annual award since it began in 1986.

Physics Professor Honored by the American Physical Society

Dan Bernardi — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 17:34:40 +0000

Jennifer Schwarz

, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). She joins�� to receive the distinction over the 100 years that the award has existed. The fellowship recognizes members who have made advances in physics through original research and publication or who have made significant contributions in the application of physics to science and technology.

The APS honors each of the Fellows with a dedicated citation for their work. Schwarz’s reads:��“For influential contributions to the statistical physics of disordered systems, particularly in the development of models concerning correlated percolation, as well as models related to rigidity transitions in both living and nonliving matter.”

Schwarz is a trailblazer in her research, an inspirational teacher and mentor, and a leader in her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. A professor of physics at Syracuse since 2005 and a member of the��, her research examines rigidity and shape transitions in living and nonliving matter as well as the emergent properties of learning in physical networks to make apt comparisons with the more established neural networks. By advancing knowledge of the morphology and mechanics in what is known as disordered systems, this work has implications ranging from understanding how the structure of human-derived brain organoids differs from the structure of chimpanzee-derived brain organoids to how cancer cells move throughout the body to predicting when avalanches in a frictional granular packing will occur.

To date, Schwarz’s body of work includes more than 70 publications/pre-prints and she has served as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on federally funded grants totaling more than $3 million. She was among a team of researchers awarded an�� in 2021 to explore the use of anti-vimentin antibodies to block cellular uptake of the coronavirus. She was also awarded an Isaac Newton Award for Transformative Ideas During the COVID-19 pandemic from the Department of Defense in 2020 to build multiscale computational models for brain organoids early on in development.

As a longstanding advocate for diversity and inclusion in STEM, Schwarz led an initiative in 2022 establishing Syracuse University as a partnership institution of the��. This effort aims to increase the number of physics Ph.D.s awarded to students from traditionally underrepresented groups by creating sustainable transition programs and providing students with research experience, advanced coursework and coaching to prepare them for a graduate school application.

, professor and current department chair of physics, who was named an APS Fellow in 2018, says: “Jen Schwarz is the most collaborative member of the department, having worked with almost the entire soft matter and biophysics group. She is also highly creative and versatile in the theoretical and simulation techniques she applies to problems. Indeed, I feel it is not an overstatement to say she is a genius working on varied topics such as brain form and function, active matter, cells and tissues, and sand piles! In addition to her outstanding research contributions, Jen has also been a leader advocating for social justice and equity in the physics department.”

Along with Schwarz, other recent APS Fellows from Syracuse include Stefan Ballmer, professor of physics (2021), Lisa Manning, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics (2019) and Christian Santangelo, professor of physics (2019).

Learn more about this year’s class of��.

The BioInspired Institute’s Growth Helps Fuel Student and Faculty Research (Podcast)

John Boccacino — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 14:05:46 +0000

Syracuse University takes great pride in its R1 designation as a world-class leader in research according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

One of the visible examples of how the University is leading the way in research excellence is the , an interdisciplinary institute whose members examine complex biological systems, developing and designing programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation.

BioInspired serves as a framework for Syracuse University’s talented faculty and student researchers, supporting researchers from such disciplines as life sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry. It collaborates with both industry partners and other academic institutions, including , and others.

Helping the current and next generation of Syracuse researchers achieve their goals fuels , who served as BioInspired’s founding director beginning in April 2019, and , who took over as director on July 1. The two have frequently collaborated to provide a roadmap for successful research endeavors on campus.

Lisa Manning

“BioInspired is at the intersection of materials and living systems. The idea is there’s types of materials called biomaterials that interact with living systems, and there are types of materials that are bioinspired, which means they have features or functions or can execute tasks like intelligent new types of materials that act like living systems,” says Manning, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. “There’s this idea that organisms are actually secretly a material. By thinking about living systems as materials or having mechanical interactions, we can come up with new hypotheses that might even someday drive treatments for a disease.”

Jay Henderson

“We’re trying to figure out ways to solve really big problems like antimicrobial resistance to antibiotics or how we can better treat injuries when they occur,” says Henderson, professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “How can we use materials to try to do those things? Some of the biggest challenges facing our society might have solutions rooted in the materials we could use to address them, whether it’s treating an injury or a disease, or capturing energy in some way that it can’t currently be captured to address things like global warming or combating COVID. These are problems we’re going to continue to face in the future.”

On this “’Cuse Conversation,” Henderson and Manning share how BioInspired embraces an interdisciplinary approach to research, discuss the importance of introducing students to research opportunities early in their academic careers and explain how BioInspired and Syracuse University are helping more women and students from underrepresented populations get involved in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

They also explore the Cluster Hires Initiative—a key part of the intended to significantly invest in faculty recruitment and retention in areas of distinction for the University—preview the second annual BioInspired Symposium, scheduled for Oct. 19-20, and explain how they became passionate about research.

Check out featuring Henderson and Manning. A transcript [PDF]��is also available.

Jay Henderson and Lisa Manning discuss BioInspired’s interdisciplinary approach to research, the importance of introducing students to research opportunities early in their academic careers and what BioInspired and Syracuse University are doing to get more women and students from underrepresented populations into STEM fields.

Satisfy Your Research Curiosity at BioInspired Institute Symposium Oct. 19 and 20

Diane Stirling — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 19:00:29 +0000

Are you interested in knowing how living cells function? Do you wonder how scientists grow human tissues in the lab? Have you pondered how robots are programmed to work? If science piques your interest, delve into the topic at the research symposium at the Life Sciences Complex.

During two days of talks, poster sessions and presentations, the symposium will showcase the work of undergraduate and graduate students, doctoral associates and faculty affiliated with the University-based research institute. The event is free and open to the public. .

We sat down with , BioInspired Institute director and professor of in the , to learn more about the projects and activities that will be featured at the symposium.

Sea Urchins Are Struggling to ‘Get a Grip’ as Climate Change Alters Ecosystems

Dan Bernardi — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:14:28 +0000

When driving through a rainstorm, traction is key. If your tires lack sufficient tread, your vehicle will slip and slide and you won’t have the grip needed to maneuver safely.

When torrential rains hit nearshore, shallow water ecosystems, sea urchins experience a similar challenge. Heavy precipitation can alter the concentration of salt in ocean waters causing lower salinity levels. Even a slight change in salinity can affect the ability of sea urchins to securely attach their tube feet to their surroundings—like tires gripping the road. This becomes a matter of life and death for the small spiny creatures, as they rely on their adhesive structures to move in the wave-battered rocky area near the seashore.

Syracuse University biologists co-authored a study exploring how sea urchin adhesive abilities are affected by differing levels of water salinity.

The survival of sea urchins is vital for maintaining balance within marine ecosystems. Sea urchins are responsible for grazing around 45% of algae on coral reefs. Without sea urchins, coral reefs can become overgrown with macroalgae, which can limit the growth of corals. With the importance of coral reefs for coastal protection and preservation of biodiversity, it is critical to safeguard the sea urchin population.

As global climate change causes weather extremes ranging from heat waves and droughts to heavy rains and flooding, the large amounts of freshwater pouring into nearshore ecosystems are altering habitats. A team of biologists, led by��, assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’��, studied the impacts of low salinity and how it alters sea urchins’ ability to grip and move within their habitat. Garner, who is a member of Syracuse University’s��, studies how animals attach to surfaces in variable environments from the perspective of both the life and physical sciences.

The team’s study, recently published in the��, sought to understand how sea urchin populations will be affected by future extreme climatic events.

Biology professor Austin Garner holds a sea urchin.

“While many marine animals can regulate the amount of water and salts in their bodies, sea urchins are not as effective at this,” says Garner. “As a result, they tend to be restricted to a narrow range of salinity levels. Torrential precipitation can cause massive amounts of freshwater to be dumped into the ocean along the coastline causing rapid reductions in the concentration of salt in seawater.”

The group’s research was conducted at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL). The study’s lead author,��, who is a graduate student in Garner’s lab at Syracuse, traveled to FHL along with Garner and researchers from Villanova University to conduct experiments with live green sea urchins. They worked alongside former FHL postdoctoral scholar Carla Narvaez, who is now an assistant professor of biology at Rhode Island College, and Villanova University professors Alyssa Stark and Michael Russell.

At FHL, the researchers separated sea urchins into 10 groups based on differing salinity levels within each tank, from normal to very low salt content. Among each group, they tested metrics including righting response (the ability for sea urchins to flip themselves over), locomotion (speed from one point to another) and adhesion (force at which their tube feet detach from a surface). In Garner’s lab at Syracuse, he and Moura completed data analysis to compare each metric.

The team found that sea urchin righting response, movement and adhesive ability were all negatively impacted by low salinity conditions. Interestingly, though, sea urchin adhesive ability was not severely impacted until very low salinity levels, indicating that sea urchins may be able to remain attached in challenging nearshore environmental conditions even though activities that require greater coordination of tube feet (righting and movement) may not be possible.

Graduate student Andrew Moura (right) and former Villanova University undergraduate student Jack Cucchiara check salinity levels among the 10 different groups of sea urchins at Friday Harbor Laboratories.

“When we see this decrease in performance under very low salinity, we might start seeing shifts in where sea urchins might be living as a consequence of their inability to remain stuck in certain areas that experience low salinity,” says Moura. “That could change how much sea urchin grazing is happening and could have profound ecosystem effects.”

Their work provides critical data that enhances researchers’ ability to predict how important animals like sea urchins will fare in a changing world. The adhesion principles Garner and his team are exploring could also come in handy for human-designed adhesive materials—work that aligns with the BioInspired Institute’s mission of addressing global challenges through innovative research.

“If we can learn the fundamental principles and molecular mechanisms that allow sea urchins to secrete a permanent adhesive and use it for temporary attachment, we could harness that power into the design challenges or our adhesives today,” says Garner. “Imagine being able to have an adhesive that is otherwise permanent, but then you add another component, and it breaks it down and you can go stick it again somewhere else. It’s a perfect example of how biology can be used to enhance the everyday products around us.”

Students Will Present Their Summer Research Wednesday and Thursday

Kelly Homan Rodoski — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 19:00:35 +0000

More than 100 undergraduate students who have been engaged in research and scholarly and creative pursuits over the summer will present their projects and findings at a showcase being hosted virtually and on campus Aug. 9 and 10.

The��, organized by the (SOURCE), celebrates the culmination of undergraduates’ summer efforts and the array of topics they examined through many research and creative programs across campus.

A student gives a poster presentation during the 2022 event. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

The University community is invited to attend two presentation events. Nine students are presenting their work virtually on Wednesday, Aug. 9, from 2 to 4 p.m. on Zoom. Another 100 students will present in a poster session Thursday, Aug. 10, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Panasci Lounge in Schine Student Center. A celebration picnic will follow on the Huntington Beard Crouse patio.

Students include participants in SOURCE initiatives as well as other programs, including the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP); Chemistry and BioInspired Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs; the SUNY Upstate Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program; Renée Crown University Honors Program; Women in Science and Engineering (WISE)-supported students and others.

Most of the presenters are undergraduates at Syracuse, although visiting students from other colleges who have worked with Syracuse University or SUNY Upstate faculty through several programs will also share their summer work, says Kate Hanson, director of the SOURCE. Over 225 students across all the campus programs were research-active this summer, working both in-person and remotely.

Participating students are from a variety of disciplines, primarily STEM fields. Among the topics undergraduates have been examining this summer are:

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Substance Abuse: A Literature Review and Future Directions
A Frequency Feedback and Color Transfer Approach to Improved Coherence in Video Style Transfer With Diffusion Models
Functional Characterization of Systemic RNA Interference in C. elegans
Media Coverage of Sickle Cell Disease and Hydroxyurea Use, Access, Side Effects and Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Content Analysis
Solid State Solar Collector for Electricity Generation in Concrete Sidewalks
The Role of the KIT Tyrosine Pathway in Primordial Follicle Formation in Neonatal Mouse Ovaries

“The SOURCE Summer Research Symposium brings together students working with mentors and programs across the University to share and celebrate their summer research work,” says Hanson. “By engaging in research and creative activity during the summer months, students truly focus on their projects and make immense strides while developing valuable skills and building strong relationships with faculty mentors.”

Student Researchers

Catherine Solis, a senior biology and neuroscience major in the , has been researching the behavioral and cognitive effects of early life adversity in adolescent CD-1 mice through maternal separation with , associate professor of psychology. “I am focusing on how spatial and working memory deficits develop over time in the mice to adulthood in order to correlate how early life adversity in humans (neglect, abuse and the foster care system) affect human children in real life,” Solis says. “Ultimately, our lab aims to understand the environmental and social factors leading to the development of such cognitive disorders as ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder].”

Catherine Solis

Solis has also worked on projects in the lab studying the effects of both pharmacological and nonpharmacological solutions, and plans to begin drug studies to determine the difference in environmentally induced early life adversity mouse models and drug induced models.

She is a participant in the LSAMP program, which promotes educational opportunities for students from underrepresented communities to study and pursue careers in STEM fields.

“I have been with LSAMP for a year now and I’m excited to continue with it for my senior year; the program has greatly contributed to my professional development in college so far and preparation for graduate school applications,” Solis says. “LSAMP has allowed me to grow as a student and researcher, participate in and present at two national conferences and has led me to realize I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience after my undergraduate studies.”

Mrigayu Ghosh, a sophomore biomedical engineering and biochemistry major at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, has engaged in research with , associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and Samuel and Carol Nappi Research Scholar in the , through the program. Shikha Nangia, the program’s director, played a pivotal role in securing funding for the grant.

Mrigayu Ghosh

Ghosh, a seasoned researcher through previous opportunities, has been working on the purification and characterization of extracellular vesicles from mesenchymal stem cells for applications in tissue regeneration.

“I’ve wanted to research stem cell biology for a long time, so I’m really fortunate to have this experience,” he says. “I love the potential of stem cell research and am looking forward to bringing back what I’ve learned to UT and continuing my research in Dr. Aaron Baker’s lab, which studies the mechanobiology of stem cells.”

After graduating from UT, Ghosh plans to pursue a Ph.D. and embark on a career as a professor. “I’m grateful to have enhanced my research, writing and presentation skills throughout this program as all the skills I’ve acquired will be highly relevant in my academic and professional career moving forward,” he says.

Quinn Carletta, a sophomore graphic design major in the , has been working with fellow students Michaela Fry and Mattea Vecera and , assistant professor of television, radio and film, on research for a documentary film through the . Carletta has worked to creating slide and presentation decks and social media content.

“Working with Professor Hamilton has given me a new perspective on how I can work with clients in the future,” Carletta says. “Similarly, it has impacted how I approach working on new projects since I have a better grasp on the questions to ask before starting a design request now.”

James Henderson Named Director, Heidi Hehnly Named Associate Director of BioInspired Institute

Diane Stirling — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:30:12 +0000

, professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the , has been appointed as director of the Syracuse University , , vice president for research, has announced.

Henderson has served as associate director of BioInspired for the past three years, working in conjunction with founding director , the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. Henderson assumed the director role July 1.

Brown also announced that , Renée Crown Professor in the Sciences and Mathematics and associate professor of biology at the has been appointed to succeed Henderson as associate director of the Institute.

New BioInspired Institute leaders Jay Henderson and Heidi Hehnly

BioInspired is an interdisciplinary research institute whose members examine complex biological systems, developing and designing programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation. The Institute supports researchers from life sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry disciplines who work on complex biological systems focused on ,��and��.

BioInspired projects have included collaborations with the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, SUNY Upstate Medical University and other educational institutions and industry partners. Syracuse University is completing a substantial renovation of laboratory space in the Center for Science and Technology that will provide physical space for new and existing collaborations.

“Syracuse University is enthusiastic to support the BioInspired Institute’s faculty, its world-class research projects and the new initiatives and opportunities that will flourish under Jay Henderson’s leadership. We are also very pleased to have a researcher of Heidi Hehnly’s acclaim join with him to help lead the Institute,” Brown says. “We are also extremely grateful to founding director Lisa Manning for her innovative and tenacious leadership in launching BioInspired efforts and maintaining robust research activity for faculty and students despite the challenges of the COVID-19 years.”

Jay Henderson has been named director of the BioInspired Institute. (Photo by Alex Dunbar)

Henderson joined Syracuse University in 2008 as a member of the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute. He has been a member of the BioInspired Institute’s executive committee since 2019. He holds a courtesy appointment as an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology and as an affiliate at the Syracuse VA Medical Center. He has been part of the University’s Aging Studies Institute since 2014. For several years he directed the graduate program in bioengineering and has been a member of SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Cancer Research Institute since 2010. His research group uses imaging, cell biomechanics, mechanobiology and computational tools to develop and apply functional pe-memory materials to mechanical and bio-mechanical cell and tissue function and repair.

Heidi Hehnly is the new associate director of the BioInspired Institute. (Photo by Marilyn Hesler)

Hehnly came to Syracuse University from SUNY Upstate Medical University in 2018 as an assistant professor of biology. She was promoted to associate professor in 2021 and was named one of two inaugural Renée Crown honors professors in fall 2022. Her research specializes in the mechanics of cellular division and how and when cells in the body choose to divide.

Brown says Manning has guided BioInspired “from its earliest stages to its current incredible level of nationally and internationally acclaimed scholarship and achievements. The Institute has become one of the University’s most successful and prolific research institutes and is a prime example of the value and promise of interdisciplinary, co-located labs and researchers.”

“I am very grateful for Lisa Manning’s support in aiding my transition to this position,” Henderson says. “Her expertise as an individual scientist and as a leader at BioInspired has helped establish one of the most successful research institutes on campus. I look forward to ensuring that investment in material and living systems through BioInspired continues to distinguish Syracuse University as a leading research institution.”

Hehnly says she “is honored to be offered the opportunity to help lead the BioInspired Institute. The Institute has been a great asset to the scientific community at Syracuse University in promoting research and education. As associate director, I aim to expand upon the good work that has already been done with the hope of creating more opportunities for scientific research to flourish here.”

M. Lisa Manning, BioInspired Institute founding director

“I was honored to serve as the founding director of the BioInspired Institute and help to launch��innovative interdisciplinary programs over the past five years,” Manning says. “I am really looking forward to seeing the Institute continue to grow and excel under the outstanding leadership of Professors Henderson and Hehnly.”

New Initiatives, New Spaces

Henderson says future initiatives include creating new lab spaces uniquely designed to enhance collaborative research by co-locating faculty from different departments and colleges. He also plans to work with the to establish a new model for core research facilities on campus and with nearby institutions.��Henderson also wants to pilot a new undergraduate program supporting underserved groups in STEM activities, research and education.

“The collaborative programs and labs from which this institute has been built have always provided a fantastic environment for training. These new endeavors will strengthen the University’s ability to offer undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral trainees a world-class, uniquely collaborative environment to pursue science interests in a way that isn’t possible at many places,” he says.

Key Achievements

Key Institute achievements of the last several years include bringing in more than $40 million in sponsored research, researchers receiving more than 45 patents and faculty having 650-plus peer-reviewed articles published in top journals.

Researchers have been named to journal editorial boards and as guest editors and have been awarded numerous prestigious grants and fellowships, including 10 National Science Foundation Early Career awards and Sloan Fellowships. Faculty have also been recognized for teaching excellence at departmental, university, and external levels and have been named to advisory boards of established and startup companies such as Ichor Therapeutics, Xeragenx, Balchem Corp. and the Central New York Research Corporation.

BioInspired Institute Awards 2 Cross-Institutional Project Grants

Diane Stirling — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 20:32:21 +0000

Syracuse University’s has awarded a new round of intramural grants to two interdisciplinary, cross-institutional research projects.

One project looks at how polar fungi physically adapt to survive in extreme climate environments.��Its researchers are working to determine how the fungi copy and transfer DNA code at the genetic, molecular, biophysical, cellular and organismal levels.

The second project examines how shape-memory polymers react to both synthetic and biological stimuli and how various treatments affect the materials’ makeup and characteristics. The research team is studying the processes organisms use to successfully adjust their molecular structure to overcome energetic barriers.

The intramural funding program was established in 2020 as part of BioInspired’s mission to promote world-class, interdisciplinary research, increase scholarly output and improve project competitiveness for funding from major national research agencies, according to , the institute’s director of operations.

This year’s competition invited applicants to submit projects that would build teams specifically for large, interdisciplinary, center-scale grants. Grants are capped at $60,000 per award and cover one or two years of study. In addition to Syracuse University, SUNY Upstate Medical University and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) are contributors, offering matching funds to support one or two investigators at up to $15,000 per faculty member for a $30,000 maximum from each institution, Steinbacher says.

“The BioInspired Institute is thrilled to make these two awards. Not only are the projects exciting, but they also lay the foundation for successful extramural funding of much greater magnitude,” Steinbacher says. “We are delighted that both projects feature matching funds from our neighbors, ESF and Upstate. We are grateful to those institutions’ research leadership, Vice Presidents for Research John Stella and Dave Amberg, respectively, for sharing our vision of collaborative, interdisciplinary projects spanning our institutions. We thank them, our proposal reviewers and everyone who submitted proposals for their interest in and support of the institute.”

This year’s funded projects are:

Alaji Bah – Upstate Medical University

“Using the Co-Evolution of the Ess1-CTD Axis in Polar Fungi to Investigate the Role of Phase Separation as a Mechanism for Adaptation to Extreme Environments”

Principal investigator is , assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Upstate Medical University.
Co-principal investigators are , associate professor of physics at Syracuse University; , professor emeritus of biochemistry and molecular biology at Upstate Medical University; and , chief science officer at Ichor Life Sciences Inc. and an assistant research professor in Syracuse University’s physics department.
Team members have backgrounds in molecular genetics, protein biochemistry, biosynthesis, biophysics, materials characterization, computational biology and bioinformatics.
The $60,000 award funds a one-year study.

Jay Henderson – Syracuse University

“Integrated, Interdisciplinary Experimentation and Simulation to Study Multiscale Spatial and Temporal Control of Stimuli-Responsive Materials”��

Principal investigator is professor in Syracuse University’s Department of .
Co-principal investigators are , assistant professor of at Syracuse University; , professor of polymer chemistry and director of the Michael Szwarc Polymer Research Institute at SUNY-ESF; and , assistant professor of chemistry at Clarkson University.
Team members have expertise in cellular biomechanics, computational analysis of cells, shape-memory polymers, wound-healing materials, living polymerizations and novel polymer architectures.
The $60,000 award funds a two-year study.

Projects are awarded based on:

Novelty, uniqueness, originality and conceptual adequacy of the hypothesis, research question or problem
Clarity of objectives, suitability and feasibility of methodology; probability of success
Qualifications of project personnel, adequacy of facilities and potential to advance diversity and inclusion
Potential success for funding as a multi-investigator or part of a center-type grant
Possibility that the project will lead to fundamental advances, new discoveries or technological developments that have national and international significance

Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Zhao Qin Recognized as International Association of Advanced Materials Fellow

News Staff — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 19:59:14 +0000

, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the , is an International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) Fellow in recognition of his contribution to the advancement of materials to global excellence. He will deliver an IAAM Fellow Lecture in the Advanced Materials Lecture Series 2023.

Founded in 2010, IAAM has been the leading advocate for advancements in advanced materials science, engineering and technology. With its focus on social implications, the non-profit scientific organization encourages scientists to consider the broader impact of their work and aims to foster open and informed conversations in science, engineering and technology.

The primary aim of the organization is to optimize the resourcefulness of the world of science to improve the quality of human life by conducting high-quality research. Boasting a roster of over 7,500 scientists and invited speakers from over 100 countries, IAAM’s Advanced Materials Lecture Series hosts talks by renowned scientists, promoting innovation and sustainability for an eco-friendly world.

Zhao Qin

“I am deeply honored to be named as an IAAM Fellow. This recognition is a testament to our group’s dedication and hard work on material innovation studies by integrating multi-scale computational modeling and experiments. It is also a reflection of the exceptional support and commitment of my students and colleagues. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my students, whose enthusiasm and eagerness to learn have constantly inspired me to strive for excellence in my teaching and mentorship,” says Qin.

“Their inquisitive minds and unwavering determination have been instrumental in shaping my approach as an educator. Additionally, as a junior faculty member, I am incredibly grateful to my colleagues in my department and school for their invaluable collaboration, guidance, and encouragement throughout this journey. Their expertise and unwavering support have fostered an environment of growth and innovation, enabling me to reach new heights in my research endeavors,” adds Qin.

Engineered Magic: Wooden Seed Carriers Mimic the Behavior of Self-Burying Seeds

Alex Dunbar — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 02:44:41 +0000

A vegetable plant growing next to its E-seed carrier. This seed was planted in a lab at Carnegie Mellon University in order to observe the effect on the seed of helpful fungus also carried in the E-seed.

Before a seed can grow into a tree, flower or plant, it needs to successfully implant itself in soil—a delicate and complex process. Seeds need to be able to take root and then remain protected from hungry birds and harsh environmental conditions. For the Erodium flower to implant a seed, its stalk forms a tightly wound, seed-carrying body with a long, curved tail at the top. When it begins to unwind, the twisting tail engages with the ground, causing the seed carrier to push itself upright. Further unwinding creates torque to drill down into the ground, burying the seed.

Inspired by Erodium’s magic, Professor Teng Zhang worked with Lining Yao from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and a team of collaborators to engineer a biodegradable seed carrier referred to as E-seed. Their seed carrier, fashioned from wood veneer, could enable aerial seeding of difficult-to-access areas, and could be used for a variety of seeds or fertilizers and adapted to many different environments.

The carriers also could be used to implant sensors for environmental monitoring. They might also assist in energy harvesting by implanting devices that create current based on temperature fluctuations.

Teng Zhang

“This is a perfect example demonstrating the beauty and power of bioinspired design. We learn from nature and eventually achieve superior performance by leveraging the freedom of engineering design,” says Zhang, who also serves as an executive committee member of the .

The team’s research appeared in the .

The project is led by Lining Yao, director of the��in the School of Computer Science’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute at CMU. Zhang developed models and performed simulations to explain the working mechanism of the wood actuators and the benefits of E-seed design.

The key authors of the paper also include Danli Luo, a former research assistant at the Morphing Matter Lab; Shu Yang, a materials scientist from the University of Pennsylvania; Guanyun Wang, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Morphing Matter Lab and now a faculty member at Zhejiang University; and Aditi Maheshwari and Andreea Danielescu from Accenture Labs.

drone dropping seed carriers

“Seed burial has been heavily studied for decades in terms of mechanics, physics and materials science, but until now, no one has created an engineering equivalent,” says Yao. “The seed carrier research has been particularly rewarding because of its potential social impact. We get excited about things that could have a beneficial effect on nature.”

“Gaining insight into the mechanics of wood and seed drilling dynamics leads to improved design and optimization,” says Zhang. “I am excited to see, by embracing cross-disciplinary collaborations, mechanics can play a critical role in making our society more sustainable.”

Story by Byron Spice and Alex Dunbar

Physics Department’s Alison Patteson Named Cottrell Scholar

Diane Stirling — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 16:39:42 +0000

Assistant Professor has been recognized with a 2023 award, a prestigious national honor that ranks her among the country’s best faculty researchers and teachers from the fields of astronomy, chemistry and physics. A faculty member at Syracuse University since 2018 and a member of the , Patteson

Alison Patteson

are presented by the , a 121-year-old foundation that recognizes excellence and innovation in research along with academic leadership skills. Selection introduces scholars to a national network of outstanding scholar-educators and mentors who meet yearly to discuss research, pedagogy and student development.

Pathways to Science Careers

Patteson’s award comes with funding of $100,000 over three years. With the Cottrell award support, Patteson and her team will explore the growth of biofilms, which are slimy clusters of microorganisms including bacteria and fungi that can adhere to wet surfaces.

For the award’s educational component, Patteson will mentor Syracuse City School District high school students by bringing them into labs on campus for a physics department open house and recruiting students to the , a key step on the pathway to STEM careers. She will also develop a new course for undergraduate and graduate students at Syracuse University, Public Engagement in Physics and STEM. The class will help students create their own demonstration materials, disseminate them in a public setting, then self-assess their impact.

Alison Patteson and her research team study biofilm growth and cell migration in the physics department’s PattesonGroup Lab.

Advancing Teaching��and Research

Three other faculty at Syracuse have earned Cottrell Scholar awards. Duncan Brown, University and was recognized as a Cottrell Scholar in 2010; , director of the University’s and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics, was selected in 2015; and , professor and chair of the , received the honor in 2010 while at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst before coming to Syracuse.

“The Cottrell Scholar award reflects Professor Patteson’s outstanding commitment to teaching excellence and research innovation,” says Brown. “Professor Patteson’s dedication to inclusion and excellence in teaching exemplifies how our faculty create outstanding experiential learning for our students while conducting research that bolsters the University’s reputation as top-tier research institution.”

“This is such a well-deserved award for Professor Patteson,” says Manning. “She is a world-renowned researcher plus she cares deeply about teaching well and about broadening the diversity of students in physics through her teaching and outreach efforts. Her work exemplifies ��ܲ��’s commitment to providing a great liberal arts education while driving Carnegie R1-level research forward.”

Ross says, “This is not only a major award and a��significant��grant,��being a Cottrell Scholar is also about a set of values that we embody as professors—the ideal teacher-scholar��that demonstrates excellent teaching in addition to research innovation.��The Cottrell Scholars are also��a wonderful network of mentors��for both research and teaching since they are from both��research-intensive universities,��like Syracuse, as well as from predominantly undergraduate institutions.”

Biofilm, Cell Activity

Patteson’s research team examines the mechanical effects of substrates on biofilms to assess how various surface types promote or hinder biofilm growth. The project will allow researchers to gain a better understanding of how bacteria can fundamentally remodel the world around them to grow and survive, which could have implications for better predicting how they spread. Patteson is also studying the behavior of bacteria through a grant from the National Science Foundation and a recent five-year from the National Institutes of Health to understand how the protein filament vimentin functions in cells as they move, which has implications during processes like cancer growth and wound healing.

Patteson’s award ranks Syracuse in the top four universities in New York State having multiple faculty members named as Cottrell award winners. At present, only two other universities in New York have more Cottrell-awarded faculty: Columbia and Cornell.

Crown Honors Professors Hehnly, Nisenbaum Recognized

Dan Bernardi — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 23:45:42 +0000

On Friday, Jan. 13, the University’s first Renée Crown Professors in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) were formally recognized. Heidi Hehnly, associate professor of biology, is the Renée Crown Honors Professor in the Sciences and Mathematics, and Karin Nisenbaum, assistant professor of philosophy, is the Renée Crown Honors Professor in the Humanities.

Heidi Hehnly (second from right), Renée Crown Honors Professor in the Sciences and Mathematics, is pictured with (from left) Honors Director Danielle Taana Smith, Chancellor Kent Syverud, Associate Provost Jamie Winders and A&S Interim Dean Lois Agnew.

The event was held at the Goldstein Faculty Center and speakers included Chancellor Kent Syverud; Jamie Winders, associate provost for faculty affairs; Lois Agnew, interim dean of A&S; Danielle Taana Smith, Honors program director and professor of African American Studies in A&S; and Professor Hehnly (Professor Nisenbaum was unable to attend).

The professorships are made possible thanks to a generous gift from the family of esteemed alumna and Trustee Emerita Renée Schine Crown ’50, H’84. Both Renée Schine Crown and her husband Lester attended the installation virtually.

Through the professorships, Hehnly and Nisenbaum will each serve a term of three years, teaching Honors courses and helping guide Honors students in their thesis research projects.

, who joined the Department of Biology in 2018, specializes in the mechanics of cellular division. She is also a member of the interdisciplinary and director of the . With nearly $3.5 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health and others, Hehnly and her team are addressing urgent health needs relating to developmental disorders, genetic mutations and cancer-causing genes. Hehnly is also dedicated to leading interdisciplinary learning opportunities, such as the University’s first .

Hehnly’s 2022-23 Honors course, Light Microscopy and Illustration in Cell and Developmental Biology, focuses on fundamental principles in cell and developmental biology, such as mechanisms of embryonic development, cell division, tissue formation and maintenance, and the display of cells through imagery.

In recognition of her interest in microscopy, Chancellor Syverud presented Hehnly with a book titled, “The Microscope; Its History, Construction and Applications; Being a Familiar Introduction to the Use of the Instrument and the Study of Microscopical Science.” Noted as one of the most important books for the medical professional when it was published in 1854, it was once declared an essential read by the American Medical Association.

Karin Nisenbaum

joined the Department of Philosophy in 2021. Her research centers on topics at the intersection of ethics and metaphysics in the philosophy of Kant, in post-Kantian German Idealism, and in 19th- and 20th-century Jewish thought. She also has longstanding interests in phenomenology, existentialism and critical theory. Her 2018 book published with Oxford University Press, “For the Love of Metaphysics: Nihilism and the Conflict of Reason from Kant to Rosenzweig,” presents a new perspective on the history of German Idealism, focusing on the role of the principle of sufficient reason.

In 2022–23, Nisenbaum is teaching two Honors classes: Introduction to Ethics, in which students confront difficult moral decisions and consider how different philosophers would approach these decisions; and Philosophy and Literature, in which students consider the literary style of selected philosophical texts such as Plato’s Republic and the philosophical significance of foundational literary works such as Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

In April, Professors Hehnly and Nisenbaum will host the first Renée Crown Honors Symposium. The symposium panelists are Angela Breitenbach, a philosopher who teaches at Cambridge University, and Suzanne Anker, a contemporary visual artist and bio art pioneer based in New York City. Breitenbach and Anker’s engagement on campus will expose students to scholars at the forefront of interdisciplinary research in the sciences and humanities.

BioInspired Institute Showcased in The Washington Post

Daryl Lovell — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 16:57:27 +0000

Research connections to the natural world are a key cornerstone of the BioInspired Institute. The work of BioInspired scientists, especially the work connected to animals, was featured in the Washington Post article “.” It was included in the Post’s KidsPost science section.

BioInspired Institute director and Kenan Professor of Physics, , and assistant professor were interviewed for the piece. “There are so many fun and unique and interesting ways” that animals have evolved “to solve problems, and some of these solutions are ones humans never thought of,” says Manning.

Getting to the ‘Point’: Powerful Computing Helps Identify Potential New Treatments for Coronaviruses

News Staff — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 22:52:21 +0000

Atanu Acharya

Coronaviruses, such as the one that causes COVID-19, have numerous protruding spikes salting their surfaces. When a coronavirus raises one of these spike proteins—like opening a finger to full length—it becomes capable of invading a human cell. The pointed spike can insert its key-like domain into a keyhole protein (ACE2) in the outer wall of a human cell, binding to it. And the spike protein becomes a gateway for infecting a cell.

In those moments, however, a coronavirus reveals its Achilles’ heel.

Coronavirus surfaces are mostly coated with sugars or glycans. In recent years, researchers have learned that glycans offer coronaviruses camouflage protection from antibodies, which are proteins that protect you when a potentially harmful substance enters your body. Antibodies need an exposed beachhead for an assault on a coronavirus, but glycans conceal landing areas (epitopes) and help thwart attacks.

A team of researchers have been searching for un-sugared locations on coronavirus spikes where antibodies have a better chance to attach and stop infections of human cells.

“We tested and compared seven known antibodies, and some of them work well in grabbing onto the exposed part of the spike protein,” says , assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and member of the . “Different antibodies target different spots on the spike protein.”

As a co-first author, Acharya recently published a study in with lead author James C. Gumbart, associate professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Acharya performed this research while a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech and is continuing his studies of coronavirus antibodies at his .

To simulate un-sugared locations exposed on opening and closing spike proteins, the team used the fastest computer available in the United States to model the corona of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2—the virus which caused COVID-19. The supercomputer, Summit, is housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

“We used this ‘computational microscope’ to look at atomistic details of the entire route as the spike opens and how antibodies can play a role by attacking this gateway when that happens,” Acharya says. “We wanted to understand why one antibody is better than the others and why some antibodies are more successful in attacking parts of the spike protein.”

Antibodies race to stop a coronavirus infection from crossing the spike gateway and entering a cell. And the coronavirus races to complete the infection process before antibodies destroy it. Sometimes this continues even when the spike key has entered the cell’s keyhole. “There are moments when antibodies can attack the coronavirus spike even when it has already attached to the cell,” Acharya says

In his lab, Acharya hopes to find a “pan-coronavirus” antibody that could treat multiple variants of the novel coronavirus and future coronaviruses.

A big mystery in developing antibodies for treatment is the complex role of glycans. These sugars are more than just shields against invading antibodies. Glycans also have multiple roles in opening and closing spike proteins. For instance, glycans function as sticky material, helping to hold a spike in an “up” position, allowing the coronavirus a chance to bind to a cell.

“Glycans play a role in stabilizing the open state of the spike protein that is crucial for infecting the cell,” says Acharya.

Glycans can also help hold a spike in a closed position, limiting its capacity to become a gate for infection.

The infectious capability of a coronavirus might depend on how rapidly it can transition its spike protein from a closed state to an open state and continue holding there to invade a human cell despite threats from antibodies. Therefore, researchers want to identify the most potent and fast-acting antibodies for the job, ones that can immediately identify the best place on the spike protein to attack.

Story by John H. Tibbetts��

Biology Professor Investigates Polar Bear Paw Design Principles

Dan Bernardi — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 17:59:16 +0000

Using the solutions observed in nature to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation is at the heart of research by .��, assistant professor of biology and member of BioInspired, specializes in functional morphology—studying the form and function of animals and then applying it to bio-inspired designs in a wide range of applications.

Garner recently co-authored a paper in the exploring design principles on polar bear paws, which allow them to have better traction on ice compared to other bear species. The work identifies a new nature-based method that could be incorporated into human engineering challenges associated with traction, namely for products that slip on snow and ice such as tires and shoes.

Garner took part in the research as a Ph.D. student at the University of Akron. His collaborators were Ali Dhinojwala, the H.A. Morton Professor of Polymer Science in Akron’s School of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, and Nathaniel Orndorf, a 2022 Ph.D. graduate from Akron who now works as a senior material scientist at the tire company Bridgestone Americas.

The team scanned bear paw prints using a surface profilometer to evaluate their features

They used actual samples and replicas of bear paw pads from museums, taxidermists and other collections, and imaged them using a scanning electron microscope and a surface profilometer, instruments that can measure surface texture and features. The team also created 3D printouts of the structures to vary diameter and height of features and tested them in the lab to see how they reacted to snow conditions.

The group specifically studied the hard bumps on the foot pads of bear paws called papillae, which have long been thought to help them grip ice and keep from slipping. The team discovered that the papillae on polar bears were taller than other species—up to 1.5 times. Importantly, the taller papillae of polar bears help to increase traction on snow relative to shorter ones.

Even though polar bears have smaller paw pads compared to the other species (likely because of greater fur coverage for heat conservation), the taller papillae of polar bears compensate for their smaller paw pads, giving them a 30-50% increase in frictional shear stress—or lateral grip.

“This is exciting interdisciplinary work that studied a long-held belief that the micro-structures on polar bear paw pads were an adaptation to increase traction on ice and snow,” says Garner. “Our work shows that the papillae themselves are not an adaptation for this because other bears have them, but the unique dimensions of polar bear papillae do confer an advantage in traction.”

The team now hopes that other scientists and manufacturers can apply their research to product design. For example, snow tires now have deeper treads than all-season tires, but this research could also suggest design modifications for increased traction.

Read the team’s full paper, “,” in the Journal of the��Royal Society Interface.

Nature-Inspired Designs Could Offer Solutions for Global Challenges

News Staff — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 16:45:50 +0000

Bioinspired research draws from the natural world to develop solutions for global challenges. But it can be difficult to turn these research ideas into actual materials and methods that can be applied to real world problems in areas like construction, energy and health care. That’s why , the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and director of the at Syracuse University, led a workshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October to explore new paths to transform this research into industry applications.

“We always want to think about how to take our discoveries and figure out how to make them useful to the world,” Manning says. “But, as scientists and engineers in academia, it’s not always easy to translate research into products that are ready for market ourselves.”

She explains that one of the greatest challenges can be developing low-cost, large-scale models for widespread use.

Physics Professor Lisa Manning leading a discussion at the Convergence Accelerator workshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Photo courtesy of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University)

Manning’s leadership role reflects the national recognition that ��ܲ��’s BioInspired Institute has earned since it was founded in 2019. The BioInspired Institute includes faculty from across life sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry–and stands out as an example of interdisciplinary collaboration happening at Syracuse.

To help address the nationwide need for translatable outcomes from basic research, Manning helped organize a workshop sponsored by the (NSF) as part of its , which funds interdisciplinary collaboration–or convergence–to advance innovative solutions for the most pressing issues. NSF identified bioinspired design as a promising candidate for this program and tapped Manning to lead a workshop to explore its potential. Manning will be lead author on a national report that will outline why bioinspired design is an ideal field to advance through this program. If successful, bioinspired design would be named into the next cohort of Convergence Accelerator tracks.

“Bioinspired design has many applications across a wide range of industries including medicine, manufacturing, energy and sustainability,” she explains. “There’s a large group of scientists and engineers that are already working in this space but rarely interact with one another–and it’s clear that convergent interactions between these groups could drive innovation. The NSF Convergence Accelerator could fast-track this research and discovery into applied uses.”

Examples of bioinspired designs include hybrid biomaterials that can stimulate wound healing and serve as scaffolds for engineered tissues, climate-friendly manufacturing of cells and proteins, color-changing materials inspired by butterfly wings, systems for energy harnessing and storage that are inspired by living systems, and autonomous robot swarms modeled after schools of fish that can be used for environmental and infrastructure monitoring, like engine inspections and tidal patterns.

Leading researchers gathered to talk about the potential to advance bioinspired design through NSF’s Convergence Accelerator program. (Photo courtesy of Jeremy Steinbacher)

The workshop connected 40 different stakeholders with diverse interests across bioinspired design– including researchers and policymakers from academic, nonprofit, government and other institutions, and representatives of organizations like nonprofit research group Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub, biotech firm Gingko Bioworks and federally funded bioindustrial manufacturing research institute BioMADE. Participants met to identify the most promising opportunities for translating bioinspired research into industry applications–and the most difficult barriers to doing so, such as funding or prototyping. And they identified some of the most advanced current research projects that could offer benefits in the next few years if accelerated through this program.

“There’s a huge opportunity to promote translational work and ignite bioinspired design efforts across the nation,” she says.

��ܲ��’s , assistant professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the , also attended the workshop. Monroe specializes in using bioinspired design to create materials for treating wounds that stop bleeding more quickly and promote longer-term healing. She collaborates with military and civilian clinicians with a goal of translating her technologies into improved options for traumatic and chronic wounds.

Manning will continue to spearhead follow-up work from the group, including the NSF report, which Manning expects to submit before the end of the year. The NSF will then review it as it selects its next cohort of Convergence Accelerator tracks. If bioinspired design becomes a Convergence Accelerator track, research teams will be able to apply for NSF grants and participate in programming to learn how to bring products to market.

This story was written by Emily Halnon.

Researcher Awarded NSF Future Manufacturing Seed Grant for Scale-Up Manufacturing of Therapeutic Cell Products

Diane Stirling — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 19:43:24 +0000

More new therapeutic treatments for various diseases could be moved into clinical trials—and potentially faster into mainstream medical use—if scientists could find ways to manufacture exponentially higher quantities of the stem cell components needed for medical testing.

Spearheading work to make those cell manufacturing process discoveries is Associate Professor Zhen Ma, the Carol and Samuel Nappi Research Scholar in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. He is working with a newly awarded $500,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) future manufacturing seed grant and coordinating the project with bioengineering experts at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

Zhen Ma

Ma’s project is examining new ways to ramp up the quantity of extracellular vesicles (EVs), produced from mesenchymal stem cells that can be manufactured in a lab to meet the therapeutic critical need for biological products. The cells have the ability to use EVs to communicate with other cells by transferring proteins, lipids and nucleic acids using EVs as a compartment. EVs produced by mesenchymal stem cells can inhibit inflammation, modulate immune responses, reduce cell die-off, and enhance tissue repair and regeneration.

At present, EV manufacturing capacity remains far below desired needs, according to Ma. “We are currently at the beginning stage, in that engineers can manufacture perhaps a hundred thousand cells in a lab, although the capacity needed to scale-up production of more than one million cells a day is the level needed to bring EV use to bear in the clinical trial stage,” he says.

Mesenchymal stem cells, produced by Tackla Winston, a former graduate student in Zhen Ma’s lab

With the NSF future manufacturing seed grant, Ma and his research partners are looking to boost EV production in what would technically be described as integrating human induced pluripotent stem cells for scalability in the donor cell source, genome engineering for scalability in EV biogenesis and advanced nano-membrane technology for scalability in EV purification. It is a project that can be potentially transformative in EV biomanufacturing due to several technological advances that would improve not only the scalability but the consistency and therapeutic potency of next-generation EVs, Ma says.

Partnering With RIT

The project is unique because of its cross-disciplinary, multi-institution nature, as well. As principal investigator on the project, Ma is partnering with co-principal investigators affiliated with RIT. They are Thomas Gaborski, professor and director of RIT Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Ph.D. program, and Karin Wuertz-Kozak, Kate Gleason Endowed Full Professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Tissue Regeneration and Mechanobiology Lab at RIT. Also involved is Aslan (Mehdi)��Dehghani, lead extracellular vesicle (EV) scientist and bioengineer in the Corporate Research team of Sartorius Stedim North America, one of the largest global biotechnology firms. The company provides solutions to biopharmaceutical industries and laboratories to simplify and accelerate progress in bioprocessing. Dehghani, current collaborator and former trainee of Gaborski, will provides his expertise in EV purification to this collaborative project.

Zhen Ma with students in the biomedical engineering lab.

Ma says that in addition to the immediate effort to find ways to boost levels of manufacturing EVs in labs, the team also has a longer-term goal. That is to gain a fundamental understanding of the biogenesis process, regulatory mechanism, physiochemical properties and biological functions of EVs to further advance the biomanufacturing of therapeutic EVs from various stem cell types. That work calls for new expertise in EV biology, bioreactor design, biomanufacturing processing and quality controls.

Courses and Internships

In addition to the research aspects of the initiative, the team’s work is designed to benefit graduate and undergraduate students who are studying and working in the labs at both academic institutions. Those goals are being achieved by the development of new courses to be conducted jointly at both Syracuse University and RIT campuses, and by leveraging existing programs at both institutions for outreach activities, Ma says. The close industrial collaboration the project creates with Sartorius Stedim North America will also present industry internship opportunities to graduate students, he says.

Ma’s expertise focuses on stem cell engineering, cardiac tissue engineering and 3D organoid technology. In his research lab, he is working on improving the diagnosis and treatments used for human heart diseases. His research includes developing next-generation cardiac organoid models through the combination of stem cell biology, micro/nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Tianjin University and a Ph.D. at Clemson University, and did postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, before coming to Syracuse University.

BioInspired Institute Research Labs Spur Graduate Student Projects

Diane Stirling — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:12:36 +0000

Two graduate student researchers in the BioInspired Institute research cluster were among 57 students and post-doctoral fellows presenting posters and talks at the institute’s first symposium earlier this month.

We caught up with Thalma Orado, a first-year Ph.D. student in Assistant Professor Era Jain’s drug delivery lab, and Yikang Xu, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Professor Dacheng Ren’s biofilm engineering lab. Orado (bioengineering) and Xu (biomedical and chemical engineering) in the College of Engineering and Computer Science offer insights about why they chose Syracuse University, what’s best about graduate student life here, their research work and their career plans.

Thalma Orado

Why did you choose Syracuse for your graduate studies?
I came here from Kenya when my husband entered the master’s program in African American studies. He finished in 2021 and now works in Syracuse. He introduced me to someone who suggested that with my background in biochemistry I should apply to the doctoral program. My mother is a professor of science ed—she earned a Ph.D. at Syracuse in 2014, and it’s always been my interest to pursue science. The sciences are what produce solutions to problems in this world.

What’s the best thing about your graduate school experience so far?
My advisor [Era Jain]! She is very supportive and understanding. I’m very busy as a Ph.D. student, researcher, teaching assistant, wife and mother to two young children. At some point I was overwhelmed and almost gave up. My advisor told me, “We are not giving up, we are pursuing this [degree] through to the end.” It’s very clear she’s not giving up on me. So, if she’s not ready to quit, then who am I to quit? It’s good to have advisors and mentors; they help shape us and encourage us our doctoral journeys.

What is your research about?
My project examines factors that create pain and inflammation in such diseases as osteoarthritis. Cells produce an abundance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in osteoarthritis, which causes pain and inflammation. But with a specific hydrogel created in Olga Makhlynet’s chemistry lab, we can leverage the ROS�� chemicals and help alleviate the inflammation. We are studying how the hydrogel behaves with the chosen drug. Once the drug is in the hydrogel, it can stay in the knee joint longer, and that’s important. With increases in the aging population, something like this can make a big difference to people all around the world.

What is your advice for other graduate students?
Graduate school and all it entails can be a lot to bear, so acknowledging what’s stressing you is important. The next step is finding resources to help support you. Being open to other people about what you’re experiencing allows them to help you along the way. It’s difficult to do it alone but it’s amazing how much you can accomplish in life if you put your mind to it. In Swahili we have a saying, “Once you put the water in for a bath, you have to take the bath, because you’ve already [invested] the water.” So, don’t be afraid to commit. If you feel you have a calling or a passion, go for it and figure out the rest as you go along. You just have to be brave in life, I guess.

Yikang Xu

Why did you decide on Syracuse for your doctoral program?
I was at Ohio State looking at schools for graduate research, and the Syracuse University website and biomedical and chemical engineering program interested me. I was offered a generous tuition scholarship after I applied for the master’s program, and I thought, if they want me, I’m here! And after a semester here, my principal investigator invited me to transfer to the Ph.D. program. I’m really glad that I took that opportunity.

What’s been the best thing about your graduate school experience?
The Syracuse Biomaterials Institute [now called the Syracuse Biomaterials Innovation Facility] is really good. There are common spaces for different departments and colleagues from completely different fields there, and always someone to bounce an idea off. The clashing of the minds when you have people of different backgrounds coming at a project from different angles is especially helpful. That helps me by ensuring that I don’t feel overly confident. It helps me realize there are things I don’t know and there are always things you can learn from other people.

What is your research project?
We have engineered a wireless electrochemical biosensor system that provides rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing. It provides fast and potentially low-cost testing for antimicrobial resistance.

The project is working out pretty well, and that’s good, since we went into it not knowing if it was going to work. The direction for my initial project was for me and my principal investigator to take a shot in the dark—buy the equipment then see if the experiment works. I’ve spent most of my three years here polishing my idea, optimizing my system and making the results better and better. Now, I have a very sensitive working system and my journal article is drafted and ready to go out soon. After all these years, the work is paying off.

What is your advice for other graduate students?
Learn to think critically; it’s a skill everyone eventually has to learn. You need to do that long-term because a solution could be hidden anywhere. There is competition among people working toward the same goals, so you have to be more thorough to come out on top in what you want to achieve.

I’ve seen colleagues who have worked on a project for two to three years with seemingly discouraging results, but very rarely did they give up. You have to overcome your fear because even if the hypothesis is refuted, you have to work to prove that, too. As a scientist, you want to find out the truth. If your solution doesn’t work well, no one wants that, but you just have to start over, you have to start again on something else.

��

BioInspired Institute’s First Symposium Provides Continuing Inspiration for Research Cluster Initiative

Diane Stirling — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 16:03:24 +0000

Energy. Excitement. Enthusiasm. Opportunity.

Those words convey the atmosphere evident at last week’s inaugural BioInspired Institute symposium and the sentiments of students, faculty, staff, University leaders and external stakeholders attending the event to describe the research cluster’s efforts of the past three-plus years.

In celebration of academic excellence and institutional collaboration, nearly 140 attendees overflowed the Life Sciences Building atrium, where 57 undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows presented posters illustrating their interdisciplinary research projects. The work of institute members spans the fields of life science, engineering, physics and chemistry and is focused in bioengineering and biomedical projects involving smart materials, development and disease, and cell form and function.

As the first in-person conference the institute has been able to host, the event represented the diversity of projects being undertaken by undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, along with faculty from dozens of interdisciplinary research labs. The unique collaboration features initiatives by faculty and students in the College of Arts and Sciences and College of Engineering and Computer Science, and uniquely also includes researchers and centers at neighboring institutions SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and SUNY Upstate Medical University.

Fifty-seven students presented project posters. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

Setting A ‘High Bar’

Chancellor Kent Syverud expressed enthusiasm at how the institute has intertwined diverse interdisciplinary interests, generated projects bridging two University colleges and forged new working relationships among colleagues at three different academic institutions. He said that the institute’s successful evolution is precisely the type of cooperative effort envisioned when the research cluster was first developed and that the College of Arts and Sciences and College of Engineering and Computer Science have “set a high bar for what a collaborative partnership can achieve.” The institute also “has lived up to many dreams already” in work seeking cures for cancer, bioprinting organs and developing smart mesh that communicates medical information, he said. The BioInpsired team is growing quickly too because Invest Syracuse funding has allowed the hiring of 11 new cluster-dedicated faculty this year, with plans in progress to hire 12 more, Chancellor Syverud said.

Postdoctoral fellow Ashis Sinha presents his lightning talk to the audience. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer Gretchen Ritter said the institute’s pursuits, path and progress, despite two years of COVID challenges since its 2019 founding, is “on this dynamic trajectory that, for me, is a model for a lot of the work that we want to do at the University more broadly.” Ritter said she is deeply encouraged by the institute’s record of training 120 students and post doctoral fellows, engaging over 60 faculty from three different institutions, and significantly boosting the dollar value of grants received. All of those markers “are evidence of the power of this interdisciplinary approach,” she said.

M. Lisa Manning, director of the institute and William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, enjoyed seeing how the conference facilitated interactions among researchers from various disciplines, allowed visual presentations of the breadth of research underway and generated connections between interdisciplinary collaborators.��“Biochemists find they can better understand neurodegenerative diseases when they think about the involved proteins as a material that self-segregates due to physical interactions,” Manning said. “And biomedical engineers can develop better biomaterials for healing wounds by incorporating new anti-microbial compounds.”

Making Connections

Postdoctoral fellow Ashis Sinha, who came to the institute in 2021 after earning a Ph.D. from Upstate Medical University the year before, presented a poster and a lightning talk on how molecular mechanisms contribute to Rhett syndrome pathology and new therapeutic interventions.��For him, the symposium presented an opportunity to connect with many other researchers. “I work in a neuroscience/biology lab and to learn about the research being undertaken in the physics and biomaterials divisions was intriguing,” Sinha said. “It was also challenging to prepare my presentations with enough detail to convey the challenges of my project and highlight key findings for a non-biology audience. It was a great learning experience.”

Fourth-year doctoral student Jingjing Ji researches behaviors of elastin-like polypeptides and how proteins repel water. (Photo by Diane Stirling)

Another presenter, fourth-year doctoral student Jingjing Ji, said participating in the poster session offered the chance to help her learn to communicate about and understand the relevance and importance of her research. She said she appreciated gaining feedback on her work, which looks at the behaviors of elastin-like polypeptides and how proteins repel water. “I am so glad my modeling work was highly praised by the researchers in the poster session. Now, I am developing an interactive web-based online platform to perform the calculations which will offer a user-friendly interface to the research community.”

Win Thurlow, executive director of Syracuse-based biomed industry association MedTech and a BioInspired external advisory board member, said he was impressed by the array of research that is taking place at the institute. “Today has been an exciting day to really witness the depth of the scholarship and to harness the collaborative nature of what’s going on here,” Thurlow said. “It really has the power to be transformative with respect to where we go in the biomed industry and where we go in terms of medical developments. This is exactly the kind of path that we need to take as we look to grow this industry locally, regionally and nationally.”

M. Lisa Manning, institute director, with symposium award winners, from left: Nicole Maurici, Maryam Ramezani, Nghia LeBa Thai, Nicholas Najjar, Amber Ford, Lauren Mayse, Gargi De, Ashis Sinha and Professor of Biology Susan Parks. Not pictured is award winner Mengfei He. (Photo by Angela Ryan.)

Remarkable Energy

Jeremy Steinbacher, the institute’s director of operations, echoed that positive assessment. “The enthusiasm and positive energy at the event was remarkable. We truly got a chance to show��everyone what we have been doing for the last three-plus years in building community and supporting them with programming,” Steinbacher said. “Hopefully, we set a vision for the future and generated even more enthusiasm for continuing to build the institute.”

Awards were presented for poster and presentation talks. The top poster award went to Maryam Ramezani (biomedical and chemical engineering). Lauren Mayse (biomedical and chemical engineering and physics) was awarded second place; third place went to Nicole Maurici (SUNY Upstate Medical University); and Amber Ford (chemistry) received an honorable mention. ��Nicholas Najjar (chemistry) was named as the researcher whose project has the best chance of commercialization. His work involves promising therapeutic substances that may help alleviate nausea, emesis and anorexia in patients undergoing chemotherapy. Nghia LeBa Thai (biomedical and chemical engineering) won the Stevenson Biomaterials Award, with Gargi De (civil and environmental engineering) winning second place. Two awards were presented for lightning-talks to Mengfei He (physics) and Ashis Sinha (biology).

Mihovilovic Skanata Awarded McKnight Neuroscience Grant for Larval Fruit Fly Brain Research

Diane Stirling — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 21:01:58 +0000

An assistant professor of physics in the has won a prestigious award to advance her two-photon microscopy research on neural activity in the brains of fruit fly larvae.

Mirna Mihovilovic Skanata

, who joined Syracuse University last fall and serves as part of its ��was awarded $200,000 over two years. She is one of chosen nationally for the 2022-23 award from among a highly competitive pool of 90 applicants. The McKnight grant rewards groundbreaking technologies to map, monitor and model brain functions and recognizes a project’s ability to fundamentally change the way neuroscience research is conducted.

Mihovilovic Skanata says the award will permit her to acquire equipment and accelerate developing a new high-precision two-photon microscope technology to conduct research on neural brain activity in freely behaving, freely moving larval fruit flies. She aims to achieve a circuit-wide understanding of how brains compute and how correlated neural activity generates behaviors (such as how decisions are formed in a brain). She also wants to understand how those neural correlates are modified during learning or when impacted by a neurological disease.

Manipulating Minds

The high precision and high magnification of the two-photon microscope helps researchers study larval fruit fly brains that are small and compact, measuring about 200-by-100 microns in size and having about 10,000 neurons, making them small enough to be studied at the individual cell level. While optical manipulation of neural activity is routinely performed in many model organisms, and while imaging neural activity in some freely moving organisms has been attained, simultaneous manipulation and imaging in a freely moving animal is a challenge due to the complexities arising from the deformations of the brain during motion.

The new system uses an algorithm to adjust for the motion of a larva’s brain, giving it a unique capability to read and manipulate the mind of a freely moving animal as it explores its sensory environment. Before this technique was developed, it was necessary to immobilize or dissect larvae, which meant observations were much more limited in scope as the animal was unable to express behaviors, according to Mihovilovic Skanata.

Movement Decisions

“It’s a great honor to receive this award,” Mihovilovic Skanata says. “This improvement in our ability to monitor neural activity helps us understand how the animal makes decisions and compare what we see when it is moving freely, versus being restrained or immobilized. If you have an animal that is transparent, it is exciting because you can use light to read out neural activity as well as use light patterns to activate specific neurons. With this technology we will be able to do both things at the same time while also observing the resulting changes in behavior.”

“It’s wonderful to see this recognition for the innovative work of Assistant Professor Mihovilovic Skanata,” says Lois Agnew, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Her research and teaching are wonderful new additions to the physics department, and I look forward to her findings. It is exciting to think that studying larval brain activity may eventually lead to improvements for human brain conditions.”

Before joining Syracuse University, Mihovilovic Skanata served from 2014-21 as a postdoctoral fellow in Marc Gershow’s lab at New York University’s Department of Physics. She also spent six years as a graduate researcher in the group of Derek Stein in the Department of Physics at Brown University and was a CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) summer undergraduate researcher in the group of Michael Doser there in 2006. She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, in 2008 and both a master’s degree and Ph.D. in physics from Brown University in 2009 and 2014, respectively.

BioInspired Institute Hosts Inaugural Research Symposium Oct. 7

Diane Stirling — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 18:48:57 +0000

faculty and student researchers, along with campus leaders, community biotech and biomaterials workforce innovators and institutional research partners will gather to discuss progress, celebrate discoveries and build community at the inaugural on Friday, Oct. 7.

The conference takes place from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Life Sciences Complex atrium. It is the first time the institute has been able to host an in-person gathering of like-minded individuals for a formal scientific conference since waves of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 postponed original plans.

Attendees will focus on the institute’s work developing drugs, designing smart materials, examining mechanical forces to control living tissues and forming new insights and technologies to advance interdisciplinary research related to challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation.

Registration is required and the deadline is Monday, Oct. 3. For full details, a and to register, visit the BioInspired .

Scheduled to speak are ; Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer ; College of Arts and Sciences Interim Dean and Interim Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs in the College of Engineering and Computer Science . Institute Director , William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and Associate Director , associate professor of , will recap activities and achievements of the past three years.

Lisa Manning, BioInspired Institute director

Manning says the event will highlight work by rising star faculty members, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who are learning and working in the institute’s labs. Projects include those like Assistant Professor Mary Beth Monroe’s efforts to develop new anti-microbial materials to staunch wounds and promote healing and Assistant Professor Alison Patteson’s study of cancer cell migration and work to identify new targets for anti-viral therapies.

Keynote: Nanoscience Researcher

, director of the at the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York, will present a keynote address detailing the current state and future direction of large-scale interdisciplinary research and what substantial financial support can mean to those types of institutes and their researchers.

The event also features two graduate student and postdoctoral researcher poster sessions and student and faculty lightning talks. Prizes will be awarded for best overall posters and for the research concept having the best commercialization potential. Two Stevenson Biomaterials poster awards will also be presented.

Showcasing Hard Work

“Faculty, students and postdocs in the BioInspired Institute have been working hard over the past few years to drive forward cutting-edge collaborative research at the intersection of materials and living systems, and we are so excited to have this opportunity to celebrate that work and share it with the broader University community,” says Manning. “We’re also bringing in industry experts with the goal of driving our research toward societal impact and contributing to the local biotech and materials workforce.”

Jeremy Steinbacher, BioInspired Institute director of operations

Big Gathering, Big Picture

, the institute’s director of operations, says the conference also helps cement the institute’s vision across the University, within the surrounding community and with its external advisory board. “It gives people a context for what’s happening at the institute and those conversations help everyone see the big picture of what we are doing here and why,” Steinbacher says. “It’s an important step for growing our community and building trust and transparency with our members. It’s also a great opportunity for students to get feedback on their work from researchers just down the hall, from folks across campus and from those outside of the University.”

He says the institute looks forward to hosting an annual conference to maintain community-building momentum and help build efforts toward attaining large interdisciplinary funding mechanisms.

, the University’s vice president for research, says the full-day symposium is an exciting opportunity for BioInspired to showcase the innovative research being performed by its faculty and students. “BioInspired is performing transformative research at the national and international level. The symposium is a wonderful opportunity for the Syracuse University community to learn more about the impact of this research. It will stimulate the exchange of ideas between researchers at Syracuse and beyond.”

Mary Beth Monroe, assistant professor of biomedical and chemical engineering (Photo by Marilyn Hesler)

The University’s BioInspired Institute arose from the “bioinspired science and technology” cluster proposal, one of 10 the University developed to promote world-class interdisciplinary research. Its mission is to quantitatively understand and control complex biological systems and design smart materials to address grand challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation. Its three focus areas are smart materials, mechanics of development and disease, and form and function.

Alison Patteson, assistant professor of physics (Photo by Marilyn Hesler)

Following the event, institute leaders will hold discussions with members of its external advisory board. They include Denis Discher, the Robert D. Bent chaired professor and director of the Physical Sciences Oncology Center, the University of Pennsylvania; Barry Goldman, founder and CSO, Pluton Bio; Ahna Skop, professor of genetics at University of Wisconsin-Madison; Adam Summers, associate director, Friday Harbor Laboratories and associate professor of biology at the University of Washington; Kandice Tanner, senior investigator in the Laboratory of Cell Biology at the National Cancer Institute; Win Thurlow, executive director of MedTech, a New York-based bio/med trade association; Ulijn, from Hunter College at the City University of New York; and Rae Robertson-Anderson, University Professor at the University of San Diego. Local collaborative partners include SUNY Upstate Medical University and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Professor Zhao Qin Receives NSF CAREER Award to Support Mycelium Research

Alex Dunbar — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 12:22:49 +0000

The future of construction materials may exist just inches below the surface of a typical lawn. In between the rocks and soil, a vast microfiber network is constantly assimilating wood chips along with plant waste. You may not see the network building, but you do see what it produces once mature–mushrooms.

“When temperature and humidity produce the right conditions, mushrooms grow out of the mycelium network that has existed beneath the ground,” says Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Zhao Qin.

Professor Zhao Qin

Qin has been researching the structure of mycelium and the potential for it to be used in other adhesive applications. He sees it as an interface between material science, civil engineering and environmental engineering.

“It is like a glue that integrates wood chips and waste material and then assimilate all these pieces together,” says Qin. “Around cliff areas, people are looking to stabilize the soil. Mycelium is doing this all the time.”

Qin received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for his project, “Multiscale Mechanics of Mycelium for Lightweight, Strong and Sustainable Composites.” He seeks to reveal the fundamental principles that govern the multiscale mechanics of mycelium-based composites and integrate research into an educational program. Mycelium, produced during mushroom growth as the main body of fungi, plays an essential role in altering soil chemistry and mechanics, enabling a suitable living environment for different plant species.

He and his research team are building a computational model to show how mycelium blends wood chips and waste into complex microfiber structures.

“Once we have a computational model we can optimize the process,” says Qin. “We plan to generate the culture for Mycelium to grow in the lab. Then we generate conditions like temperature or pressure so we can characterize the strength of the material.”

When temperature and humidity produce the right conditions, mushrooms grow out of the mycelium network that has existed beneath the ground.

Eventually, Qin wants to take these natural materials into the lab to see if it can be processed into a composite for infrastructure uses.

“A composite version of mycelium could require less energy to produce and be biocompatible,” says Qin. “It could be used for construction – think about similar properties to medium-density fiberboard�� but integrated by a mycelium network rather than an adhesive. We want to see what is possible once we know how the mycelium achieve these mechanical properties.”

Qin says Syracuse University is the perfect environment for his research. He will be collaborating with��Professors Daekwon Park and Nina Sharifi from the School of Architecture.

“This is a fantastic research institution. My colleagues here in Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Architecture are very supportive, we have excellent facilities and outstanding graduate students,” says Qin. “Once we set the recipe for these materials, we can apply that to real world applications in construction and architecture.”

“Our department is thrilled to see Dr. Qin’s work recognized by the NSF,” says civil and environmental engineering department chair Andria Costello Staniec. “His work is significant for modeling of bioinspired materials and will contribute to the development of eco-friendly composite materials that have wide applications in civil engineering and beyond.”

As part of the NSF grant, Qin is involving K-12 students in research and also plans to develop an educational exhibit related to mycelium study at the Museum of Science and Technology in downtown Syracuse.

“We will design educational programs that will help aspiring young engineers and scientists to learn by playing,” says Qin.

“Dr. Qin’s research is an outstanding example of the kind of research that ECS seeks to grow,” said College of Engineering and Computer Science Dean J. Cole Smith. “He is showing how to leverage his foundational excellence in science and engineering to construct effective composite materials. Furthermore, he is engaged in deep collaborations with some of our truly fantastic colleagues in the School of Architecture. I am so personally excited to see Dr. Qin recognized for the promising and innovative researcher that he is.”

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Professor’s Research Team Receives Multiple Awards at Society for Biomaterials Conference

Alex Dunbar — Mon, 09 May 2022 19:07:34 +0000

Biomedical and chemical engineering Professor Mary Beth Monroe and her team of students at the Society for Biomaterials conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

Biomedical and chemical engineering Professor�� attended the Society for Biomaterials (SFB) 2022 meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, with Ph.D. students Anand Vakil, Henry Beaman, Changling Du and Maryam Ramezani, master’s student Natalie Petryk ’21, G’22 and undergraduate students Caitlyn Greene ’22, Grace Haas ’23 and Avery Gunderson ’23. The national conference included more than 850 presentations from all over the world. The Monroe lab’s research abstracts and presentations were recognized in several competitions that took place during the conference, highlighting the excellent biomaterials work at Syracuse University.

Henry Beaman receives a Ph.D. Student Award for Outstanding Research.

Student Award for Outstanding Research:��This is the highest student award that SFB gives, recognizing student researchers who have shown outstanding achievement in biomaterials research. Henry Beaman, a fourth-year Ph.D. student, was one of two students selected in the Ph.D. student category. Beaman was recognized for his work on shape memory polymer hydrogel foams with cell-responsive degradation mechanisms for Crohn’s fistula filling. Natalie Petryk was selected in the master’s student category. She was recognized for her work on tuning the interconnectivity of shape memory polymer foams using off-the-shelf foaming agents. Published manuscripts from both projects are featured in a special issue of the .

Student Travel Achievement Recognition (STAR) Award: STAR awardees are selected based on abstracts by each Special Interest Group (SIG) within SFB to recognize research excellence with an aim of developing future leaders within SFB. Out of more than 850 abstracts, there are 25 STAR awardees and 25 STAR honorable mentions. Maryam Ramezani, a third��year Ph.D. student, received a STAR award based on her research on bacteria-responsive shape memory polymers. Caitlyn Greene, a senior undergraduate, received honorable mention based on her work on incorporating antimicrobial phenolic acids into shape memory polymer hydrogels.

Dr. Rena Bizios Poster Award:��This award program honors Rena Bizios, a founding and active member of the BIoInterfaces SIG and�� recognizes outstanding BioInterfaces research by graduate students. Anand Vakil, a fourth-year Ph.D. student, received first place for his work on temporally-controlled drug release from shape memory polymers. Natalie Petryk won second place in the competition for her research on tuning foam interconnectivity.

Natalie Petryk receives a Master’s Student Award for Outstanding Research.

Biomaterials Education Challenge: This competition involves presenting a poster with an educational module that is designed for middle school students. The objectives are to

Improve widespread understanding of biomaterials-related science and careers in the middle school population.
Encourage SFB student chapters to participate in K-8 outreach efforts.
Reward the communication skills and creativity of the next generation of biomaterials researchers and educators.

As representatives of the Syracuse University SFB student chapter, Maryam Ramezani and Anand Vakil earned first place in this competition for their presentation on using cakes to teach concepts about polymers and foam fabrication. This award provides $1,500 for the student chapter to use for further development of outreach activities.

Viewing a Microcosm Through a Physics Lens

Dan Bernardi — Mon, 02 May 2022 20:35:54 +0000

“What can physics offer biology?” This was how��, assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ physics department and a faculty member in the , began the explanation of why her physics lab was studying bacteria.

Serratia marcescens biofilms grown on soft (left) and stiff (right) polyacrylamide (PAA) hydrogels. These images reveal the conclusion that biofilms grow faster as substrate stiffness increases.

In a paper published by��, a new journal from Oxford Academic, Patteson and graduate student , along with the collaboration of Professor�� of the biology department, describe the surprising findings from their recent work with bacterial colonies that has potential to help shape further understanding of all living systems and improve outcomes in medicine and health.

Patteson and her team wanted to investigate what makes a biofilm—or a colony of microorganisms that bond together—grow and flourish on some kinds of surfaces but not others.

In the past, scientists investigating this question typically grew the colonies on gels made from agar, an extract of red algae. “It’s a substance popular in culinary applications because it makes things gelatinous and adds texture,” says Patteson. “We call it a complex material because it is a solid but has properties like a fluid.” This mixture of properties, she explains, means that teasing out exactly which aspects make the bacteria behave a certain way more difficult. “Are they sensing the solid part or the fluid part?” she says.

Instead, Patteson’s team synthesized transparent gel substrates that could be tuned to a specific stiffness, that would allow them to take time-lapse videos of bacterial colonies growing on them. “We’re able to probe how much deformation the gel undergoes under a certain amount of strain,” says Patteson.

Tiny creatures, big surprises

“One of the things we found is that when a biofilm grows out, it’s actually strong enough to exert force on the substrate,” Patteson continues. “We typically think of biofilms as really slow-growing things, but if they’re on something soft, they can actually disrupt it.” This has implications for disease; it means that tissue damage during and following infection might not just be caused by reactions of the body’s immune system, but from the bacteria exerting strain on it.

The left image depicts how each small part of the hydrogel moved based on the movement of embedded fluorescent beads. To the right, a mathematical model of an elastic solid is used to calculate the stress exerted by the bacteria.

Besides design and manipulation of the gels, Patteson and Asp apply physics to biology in the ways that they process the images, measure the boundaries of the biofilms, and calculate how quickly the boundaries expand. “We study mechanics and soft matter systems, so we have equations that describe how something deforms under certain amounts of stress,” says Patteson. Unlike with the less controllable agar, Patteson’s team can now make calculations to measure the forces that the biofilms are putting on the gels. Indeed, by mapping the stress, the team was able to show how biofilms exert more pressure on a stiff surface than on a softer one. “It makes sense, in a way,” says Patteson, “if you tried to climb a sticky wall instead of a slippery wall, you could exert more force on it. We don’t exactly know why in the case of the biofilms, but it makes sense that they’re able to exert more force and move faster.”

“Bacterial organisms, by biomass, are the most predominant life form on the earth,” says Patteson, acknowledging this overlap in interest with Welch, from whose lab they procured the strains of bacteria. “We’re motivated to study them because they intersect with the human world,” says Asp. “Biofilms will grow and be very sturdy, sometimes in places that we don’t want them, whether that’s in patients with disease that are immunocompromised, or in water treatment plants, or on the hulls of ships.”

Looking ahead

It’s easy to sense the team’s respect for these microscopic organisms as they speak—indeed, Patteson suggests that they might hold a key to understanding much more about organisms big and small. “We spent 10, 20 years sequencing the human genome, but that’s not enough for us to understand how the body works,” she says. “Just because we know the genome, we still can’t predict how things will behave. This is where soft matter and physics can enter in. And there are a lot of tools for understanding that we have just begun to utilize.”

-Story by Leslie Porcelli

(Bio)Sensing Protein Interactions

Dan Bernardi — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 20:25:11 +0000

Cartoon of a biological nanopore-based sensor (gray), which detects WDR5 (red) one molecule at a time. The detection signal (bottom) shows a cartoon of what the raw sensor signal looks like. (Courtesy: Lauren Mayse)

The job of a protein hub inside the nucleus of a cell is similar to a chef in a kitchen. Both need to manage multiple tasks efficiently for a successful outcome. For the chef, if they spend too much time chopping vegetables and neglect the main course cooking on the stove, the result is a burnt dish. Similarly, if the protein hub spends too much time interacting with one protein and is not given a break to accomplish its other important tasks, it can lead to disease states such as cancer.

Researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences’ have been studying a protein hub, called WDR5, which is responsible for many important functions within the nucleus. WDR5 has recently been heavily investigated because it is a promising target for anti-cancer drugs. But until now, not much has been known about how WDR5 interacts transiently with other proteins inside the cell because the necessary technology to study WDR5 did not exist. Using a highly sensitive engineered biosensor, researchers have uncovered new information on how WDR5 connects and disconnects with other molecules.

The collaborative project was funded through a four-year,��(R01) from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), awarded to��, professor of physics, in 2018. The culminating results of the team’s work have been published in the leading journal��. The research team also includes Lauren Ashley Mayse and Ali Imran, both graduate students in Movileanu’s lab, as well as other researchers at SUNY Upstate Medical University, Ichor Therapeutics and the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

How It Works

The goal of the team’s study was to create an ultra-sensitive device capable of detecting and quantifying WDR5. They designed, developed and validated a nanopore-based biosensor, which creates a tiny hole (nanopore) in a synthetic membrane and can identify proteins in solution at single-molecule precision.

The biosensor’s channel-like base creates a small hole in the synthetic membrane and allows ionic solution to flow through it. When the sensor recognizes a specific molecule, in this case WDR5, the ionic flow changes. This change in flow serves as the signal from the sensor that the targeted protein has been found.

“The idea behind this concept was to design nanopores that are equipped with hooks that pull certain proteins from a solution,” says Movileanu, who is also a member of the��. “By being able to fish them from a solution one at a time, we can better understand how these proteins function.”

A Tool for Detection

The team revealed new details about the conditions under which WDR5 starts and stops talking to other proteins, which is known as protein association and dissociation. This will allow researchers to better understand how these multitasking molecules carry out their various responsibilities.

“Proteins need to talk to each other for brief periods,” says Movileanu. “In the majority of cancers, you have a situation where at least one protein sits on another protein or talks to another protein for much longer than needed. Many biotechnology companies want to develop drugs that perturb those interactions.”

Mayse shares that their study uncovered new information about WDR5’s unique interface, where a peptide must wiggle into its deep and donut shaped cavity. Their discovery will help researchers develop more effective drugs to target WDR5. “We found that our sensor can recognize WDR5 with a weak connection, a medial connection and a strong connection to a peptide,” she says. “This shows that a potential drug must be able to prevent all three different ways a peptide can associate with WDR5.”

Biosensors like the one developed in Movileanu’s lab could one day lead to more accurate and efficient methods of scanning chemicals in the body, providing an opportunity for doctors to detect diseases much earlier than what is attainable today.

“In many diseases, there are markers, chemicals in our body that change quite a bit in a noticeable way when diseases, such as cancer, start to develop,” says Movileanu. “By integrating these sensors into nanofluidic devices that are scalable, we are not too far from being able to scan many markers from a sample of blood.”

Dacheng Ren Elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows

Alex Dunbar — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:13:48 +0000

Dacheng Ren

The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) announced the election of Dacheng Ren to its College of Fellows. Ren is the associate dean for research and graduate programs at the College of Engineering and Computer Science, and Stevenson Endowed Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering.

Ren was nominated, reviewed and elected by peers and members of the AIMBE College of Fellows for outstanding contributions to the understanding and control of bacterial biofilms and medical device associated infections.

The College of Fellows is composed of the top two percent of medical and biological engineers in the country. The most accomplished and distinguished engineering and medical school chairs, research directors, professors, innovators and successful entrepreneurs comprise the College of Fellows.

“It is a true honor to join other outstanding colleagues in the AIMBE College of Fellows. Microbial biofilms cause persistent infections that respond poorly to antibiotics, such as those associated with implanted medical devices,” says Ren. “There is a lot to be done to address this grand challenge and I look forward to making more contributions.”

“This is a great honor for Dacheng who is not only one of Syracuse University’s most innovative researchers but a strong supporter and mentor to other researchers across our university. He has been remarkable in his capacity to continue leading a preeminent research program while supporting the college’s research and graduate student enterprise via his role as associate dean. We are proud to celebrate this recognition of his work,” says College of Engineering and Computer Science Dean J. Cole Smith.

AIMBE Fellows are regularly recognized for their contributions in teaching, research and innovation. AIMBE Fellows have been awarded the Nobel Prize, the Presidential Medal of Science and the Presidential Medal of Technology and Innovation, and many also are members of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. A formal induction ceremony will be held during AIMBE’s 2022 Annual Event on March 25.

Ren will be inducted along with 152 colleagues who make up the AIMBE Fellow Class of 2022. For more information about the AIMBE Annual Event, visit www.aimbe.org.

Women in Science Day Profile: Biomaterials Engineer Developing Smart Materials of the Future

Daryl Lovell — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 15:09:26 +0000

Scientist is developing materials for healing the human body that could make a tremendous difference in life or death situations.

These biomaterials—easy to use and highly effective—could control bleeding within wounds, especially critical in instances where time is of the essence such as on the battlefield, in an ambulance or in rural locations, far from the nearest hospital.

Monroe, an assistant professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS), and her lab work extensively with shape memory polymers (SMPs). These smart materials can be shaped into a temporary shape when a stimulus, such as heat, is applied to them. Monroe compares the materials to a kitchen sponge in terms of feel and flexibility.

ECS assistant professor Mary Beth Browning Monroe holds shape memory polymers, a material that can be used for wound healing.

“You can imagine if you have a big sponge and you cool it down in a really small shape, you can then stick that into a gunshot wound. It would be easy to fit in there because it’s really small,” Monroe says. “But then once it reheats to body temperature, it expands out and fills up that wound. It hits all the wound walls and is there for the healing process.”

Monroe’s SMP research is a continuation of the work she started years ago. Now in her own lab at Syracuse, she works to give back to other students by connecting with women graduate students and instructors and participating in campuswide peer mentoring opportunities for those in the STEM fields.

Mentorship opportunities and connecting women with other scientists that look like them are important steps to close the gender gap that has existed in STEM fields for years. That persistent gap is one of the reasons that the International Day of Women and Girls in Science was established in 2015 by the United Nations. Celebrated each year on Feb. 11, the annual effort recognizes the role of women and girls in science not only as beneficiaries, but also as agents of change.

“I’ve been very lucky to have a lot of strong female mentors in my life throughout all my training,” Monroe says. “That’s kind of rare in engineering because there aren’t a whole lot of women. I love the idea that I could be that to even just one woman in my lab group.”

Professor Monroe shows an example of SMPs inside her lab.

Monroe sees endless possibilities for the biomaterials she’s working with. Applicable uses include making the materials degradable so they can disappear in the body, engineering material that’s anti-microbial to reduce infection risk, and formulating a smart material with pain reliever components to provide comfort to a patient before they’ve reached the hospital. She hopes the wound healing technology could be in clinics or in the field in the next five to 10 years.

“Harnessing the body’s natural ability to heal itself is really the goal of tissue engineering,” says Monroe. “What drives me and makes me really excited is thinking about how these can be applied and make a difference in patients’ lives.”

BioInspired and Ichor Therapeutics Partner for Project Management Training

Ellen de Graffenreid — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 22:38:07 +0000

The does cutting-edge work in complex biological and material systems, but from its inception, leadership and faculty were committed to providing students and postdoctoral fellows with more than just technical training.

“As faculty, we know that we educate skilled scientists and engineers,” says BioInspired Director Lisa Manning, Kenan Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences.

“But what helps them stand out in the job market are a set of softer skills. To be polished, well-rounded scientists and engineers, there are things that aren’t taught in many programs.”

That’s why the BioInspired Institute recently partnered with to offer project management training. Ichor Life Sciences is a local biotechnology company that studies the fundamental mechanisms of aging to develop therapies to help people live longer and healthier lives. It’s the kind of company that Syracuse graduates interested in working in the biotechnology industry might aspire to join after they complete their degrees.

BioInspired’s director of operations, Jeremy Steinbacher, says that project management is at the center of what experienced research scientists do—but they often don’t recognize it. Steinbacher should know, as he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University. He has worked as a faculty member with the U.S. Department of Defense and consulted for industry in his area of expertise.

“Partnering with Ichor Life Sciences to offer project management training is hugely beneficial to students and postdoctoral fellows. They bring a real-world focus to the key highlights of project management that really speak to our students’ training here at Syracuse University,” he says.

Kelsey Moody, the company’s chief executive officer agrees. He says, “It was our privilege to take part in the project management workshop series with Syracuse University’s BioInspired Institute and support its mission to provide real world training to students and faculty in the life sciences.”

Project management is just one of the that the BioInspired Institute offers, but Amanda Campbell, who is completing her Ph.D. in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, says it attracted her attention because, “I know how crucial ��the skill set is and how valuable it is to future employers, especially in the private sector. I want to become more proficient in the lingo and tools used in project management.”

Campbell’s Ph.D. research focuses on naturally dissolved methane in groundwater, which can change over time and make it difficult to assess impacts of natural gas production. She found that some well water changes significantly and one sample is not necessarily representative of overall conditions, implying that water wells should be tested on at least three different occasions to be able to identify those that naturally change. She has also developed a model that can predict which domestic water wells are likely to have naturally high methane concentrations based on water chemistry. The work has implications for the oil and gas industry, and she appreciates the applied aspect of it. She says her career aspiration is, “to solve problems, whether that is in private industry, through consulting or in the government sector.” She learned that project management tools don’t just help solve problems more efficiently but can also help scientists sell trust in their expertise. “Stakeholders don’t need to be as informed as you are, but they do need to know that you understand their problem and can solve it for them.”

“These are skills that many scientists and engineers learn on the job,” says Jay Henderson, associate director of BioInspired and associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering. “In deciding how BioInspired could really add value for our students and postdoctoral trainees, our faculty identified skills like project management, research communication and scholarly publishing as key assets that can help Syracuse-trained scientists and engineers stand out in the job market.�� You can have the best technical skills and still struggle to succeed without the ability to gain trust, organize big projects and communicate about your research.”

Physicist and Chemist in College of Arts and Sciences Awarded NIH MIRA Grants

Dan Bernardi — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 20:57:12 +0000

Alison Patteson (left) and Davoud Mozhdehi

Researchers from the College of Arts and Sciences’��and�� have been awarded Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) grants from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funding, awarded to Alison Patteson, assistant professor of physics, and Davoud Mozhdehi, assistant professor of chemistry, supports research that increases understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention.

Patteson and Mozhdehi, both members of the��, a collaboration of researchers from Syracuse University addressing global challenges through innovative research, are working to learn more about the function and design of proteins that play a key role in diseases such as cancer. Each MIRA award will fund research in their labs over the next five years.

Understanding a Key Structural Protein

Since coming to Syracuse University in 2018, physics professor��and�� have led cutting-edge studies on the structural protein vimentin. Often expressed in a cell’s cytoskeleton during cell motility (movement), vimentin plays a key role in protecting the cell’s nucleus and DNA from damage as it migrates through dense tissue during processes like cancer growth and wound healing. By knowing more about vimentin’s role in protecting cancerous cells as they spread through the body, Patteson says her group’s research could help pinpoint drugs that could slow the growth of cancer.

Collective cell migration through a collagen matrix. The red dots indicate cells’ nuclei enmeshed in an actin filament network (blue). (Photo courtesy of Minh Thanh)

With her��, Patteson seeks to broaden understanding of vimentin’s function in cells as they move. She says the grant will help her team tackle three objectives: determine how vimentin affects the cytoskeleton (structure that helps cells maintain shape) during migration; explore how vimentin helps the cell adhere to its surroundings; and identify the mechanisms by which vimentin helps facilitate collective cell migration through the three-dimensional network surrounding cells called the extracellular matrix.

“Our aim with this grant is to understand how vimentin regulates cell motility,” says Patteson. “We’ve seen proof that it does but we don’t understand why.” She says their research will answer important questions including: Why do motile cells express vimentin? And, what advantage does vimentin give to the cell?

“Vimentin is very understudied and this funding will help us answer some big questions about how this protein is influencing the cell and in turn how biological processes such as cancer and wound healing are affected,” says Patteson.

Thanks in part to her MIRA grant, Patteson and her colleagues recently developed one of the first��3D simulations capturing how cells containing vimentin move through body tissue. In the absence of vimentin, their model showed a breakdown of the cell’s nucleus as it moved through narrow channels. In simulations with vimentin, the cell was much more resistant to deformation and the inside of the nucleus and its DNA was protected.

Greasing the Proteins’ Wheels

Proteins are the body’s workhorse machinery and play a key role in maintaining the structure and function of cells, building and repairing tissue, and fighting disease-causing bacteria and viruses. To carry out these diverse roles, cells decorate their proteins with accessories that give them unique properties. For example, almost a third of human proteins are modified with fats, a process known as lipidation, which is critical for the smooth running of the intricate cellular machinery. Despite the essential role of lipidation in all aspects of biology, current technologies to create lipidated proteins are out-of-date, time-consuming, expensive and have a low synthetic yield, says��(Dave Moz), assistant professor of chemistry. The ability to quickly generate lipidated proteins would allow researchers to deepen the understanding of their role in various diseases.

The MIRA grant supports development of ground-breaking technologies that can significantly simplify and streamline the synthesis of lipidated proteins. The team is genetically engineering bacteria (which do not normally lipidate their proteins) with lipidation machinery from human cells for scalable and inexpensive production of lipidated proteins. One significant advantage of this technology platform is its customizability.

“It is like operating a virtual machine that can run user-defined programs parallel to the bacteria’s native operating system,” says Mozhdehi. This capability enables researchers to change the structure of both proteins and lipids quickly, creating libraries of lipidated proteins hundreds of times faster than currently possible.

The grant will fund the work of undergraduate students, graduate students and a postdoctoral researcher over the next five years in Mozhdehi’s lab. So far, this work has culminated in two manuscripts and two patent applications, a feat that highlights the innovative and potentially transformative nature of the project. The MIRA grant will also support the purchase of a new light scattering instrument that will help researchers reveal the structure-function paradigm of lipidated proteins by evaluating their biophysical properties.

The platforms developed by this grant synergize and build on the lab’s recent efforts to create��, exciting new directions recently funded by a grant from the��National Science Foundation to Mozhdehi and Shikha Nangia, associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Mozhdehi’s team is now developing a new class of lipidated protein switches (liposwitches), which can shuttle between membrane and cytoplasm to regulate cell behavior. “Creating these liposwitches would help us mimic the sophistication of biology,” says Mozhdehi. “Being able to take a protein, move it back and forth, and control the response of a cell could have major implications for treating chronic pain and diseases like cancer and diabetes.”

These advancements can foster the development of next-generation biomaterials and therapeutics that can rival biology’s exquisite capabilities. “I foresee a great potential to contribute to the growth of the bioeconomy via biotech startups and commercialization,” Mozhdehi says.

A&S Physicists Develop One of the First Models Capturing Dynamics of Confined Cell Movement

Dan Bernardi — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 23:55:18 +0000

The process of normal cell division in the human body is quite simple: start dividing in response to a signal, such as a wound, and stop when enough cells have been produced and the skin is healed. But cancerous cells ignore the stop signs. They grow and spread rapidly, proliferating even in cramped locations.

The protein vimentin (green) helps protect a cell’s nucleus and DNA during migration. (Image courtesy of Maxx Swoger)

Similar to navigating through a large crowd of people, moving through dense tissue is no easy task. Any normal cell would die during the process, but many cancerous cells have a cage-like protein that helps them protect their nucleus and DNA. That protein, called vimentin, is often expressed in intermediate filaments (one of the three structural elements of the cell) during cell movement. And now, College of Arts and Sciences’ researchers are finding out more about this protein, which could eventually help with cancer treatment or wound healing.

In the past, the role of vimentin remained largely unclear, but researchers in the college have developed one of the first models that captures the dynamics of confined cell motility and shows how vimentin helps protect the cell’s nucleus during migration. The team, which includes lead author , a graduate student in physics; , assistant professor of physics; and , professor of physics, recently had their results published in the New Journal of Physics. Their model sheds light on the function of a protein that is a major player in cancer growth, and their results could one day help researchers determine better ways to stop the spread of cancer.

Cell migration is a fundamental process that contributes to building and maintaining tissue. During wound healing and cancer metastasis, two instances when cells are known to be on the move, they depend on the skeleton of the cell, known as the cytoskeleton, for protection and to generate force. The cytoskeleton is made up of a network of proteins, and one in particular—vimentin—is often present when cells decide that they want to travel.

“When a cell is stationary, it is known that the vimentin protein expression is very minimal,” says Gupta. “Conversely, when the cells become migratory, expression of this protein increases.”

In Patteson’s lab, researchers have been recreating what a cell goes through as it migrates to observe how vimentin plays into the process. By squeezing cells with and without vimentin through narrow microchannels on collagen gels, they mimic in 3D the way cells navigate through small pores in real tissue. In their observations they found that the presence of vimentin in the cytoskeleton was crucial for the survival of cells moving through 3D space, something that researchers were previously unable to detect using traditional two-dimensional experiments on glass or plastic.

Using Patteson’s experimental results, Gupta and Schwarz developed a model that captures the effects of the vimentin protein on the cell’s cytoskeleton and the nucleus. That model enables the team to regulate the forces that the cell generates and the stiffness of the nucleus, providing visual proof of Patteson’s lab experiments.

“Without vimentin, we found that the cells are very soft and the nucleus becomes deformed as it moves,” says Gupta. “In the simulation with vimentin, the cell is much more resistant to deformation and the inside of the nucleus and its DNA is protected.”

By understanding vimentin’s role in protecting cancerous cells as they spread through the body, Patteson says their research could help pinpoint drugs that could slow its growth.

“In theory treating cancer with drugs that target vimentin could be an option,” says Patteson. “By targeting vimentin, the cell will not be able to go from one place to another efficiently, stopping the spread of cancer in its tracks.”

The team says another possible application could be with wound healing, where drugs that stimulate vimentin expression could be administered to speed up the movement of cells to the wound area, essentially accelerating the tissue restoration process.

Read the team’s .

Funding that contributed to their work includes a National Science Foundation-Division of Materials Research grant and an Isaac Newton award from the Department of Defense belonging to Schwarz; a National Institutes of Health Maximizing Investigator’s Research award belonging to Patteson; a Syracuse University graduate fellowship awarded to Gupta; and a Syracuse University CUSE grant and Syracuse BioInspired grant awarded to Patteson and Schwarz.

BioInspired Institute Partners With Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Ellen de Graffenreid — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 13:13:03 +0000

The BioInspired Institute focuses on leading-edge research in materials and living systems and trains students at the undergraduate and graduate level. When the United States faced a reckoning on racism and structural inequities, BioInspired’s faculty and staff asked, “How can we support diversity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering and mathematics?” In a town hall meeting, consensus was built around a recommendation that the Institute create a research experience for undergraduates that could help diverse young scientists progress through their education and training.

“As an Institute, we pledged to develop and implement actionable plans to promote diversity in our ranks and support people of color. The CAREER program is the first effort to come out of this commitment, and we are thrilled to have launched this pilot program with our partners at Hampton University and North Carolina A&T,” says Lisa Manning, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and director of BioInspired.

“We looked at programs here at Syracuse and at other institutions, and what seemed to be missing were pre-college and post-baccalaureate programs that would really help promising students transition well from high school to college, succeed during college and then proceed to similar success in graduate school admissions and job placement,” says Jay Henderson, associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and associate director of BioInspired.

As both Henderson and Manning have previously worked with Hampton University, a historically black private research university in Hampton, Virginia, and with faculty at North Carolina A&T State University, a historically black public research university in Greensboro, North Carolina, Henderson reached out to colleagues at each institution to create a virtual summer program to help students embrace the opportunity to do original research as undergraduates. Their goals are to strengthen high school-to-college pathways in STEM, providing research opportunities, mentoring and other supports to keep diverse students in STEM during their undergraduate careers and provide professional development and networking to enable a successful transition to graduate school.

The result, known as the CAREER (Career Acceleration via Rigorous Educational Experiences in Research) , is a one-week intensive experience that took place over the Discord online collaboration platform. CAREER programming included interactions with researchers, help developing a personal statement, discussions of how scientific research works and career planning for incoming undergraduate students.

“We covered topics like creating a professional profile and resume, reaching out to faculty for opportunities, taking advantage of resources on campus and how to apply for financial support for summer research during college,” says Henderson.

Fourteen students drawn from Hampton, North Carolina A&T and Syracuse University participated in the summer program.

Melanie Salas, a first-generation college student from Syracuse, plans to attend veterinary school after graduation. She chose to participate to meet potential mentors and test out her commitment to STEM to see if it is the right fit. “The most valuable part of the program was seeing the support that professors give students. I have already been accepted into a lab to work with Professor Latha Ramalingam in the Falk College. I also learned to never be afraid to seek help. There is always someone willing to help, but it’s on us to reach out.”

While students gained from what they experienced during the program, faculty development is another program goal. “We want to improve how we mentor diverse students and increase collaborations between minority-serving and predominantly-white universities,” says Henderson.

After this summer’s successful pilot, program faculty plan to look at outcomes, such as how many students participate in research during the year and each summer, internship and fellowship applications and long-term outcomes such as successfully earning a STEM degree and admission for graduate programs. Faculty at all three institutions hope to form collaborative research programs where students can get real-world experience in multi-institutional scientific research.

“Our next step is to seek additional funding,” says Henderson. “We’re investing our time and expertise because we believe that STEM disciplines can only gain from broader representation. The partnerships with Hampton and North Carolina A&T can help us broaden the pool from which we recruit graduate students and postdocs and the program has already taught us ways we can improve how we work with undergraduate students.”

Professors Use Machine Learning to Guide the Design of Stable Nanoparticles

Dan Bernardi — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 23:22:06 +0000

Nanoparticles are tiny particles, made of only a few hundred atoms, that are helping to create the world’s newest “smart” surfaces and systems. Nanoparticles are playing a key role in the development of such cutting-edge consumer products as transparent sunscreens and stain repellent fabrics. They are also being designed for biomedical applications like drug delivery inside the body.

Sounds like a miracle substance, right? The hurdle is that identifying one in the lab is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Out of a potential pool of hundreds of thousands of nanoparticles, only a few may actually be viable—meaning they are the right size and will work within a specific temperature range (e.g., body temperature). So how can researchers facilitate the process? Machine learning.

Davoud Mozhdehi (left) and Shikha Nangia

Davoud Mozhdehi, assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), and Shikha Nangia, associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS), have been awarded a to develop a machine learning approach to aid in the discovery and design of new smart nano-biomaterials.

This project stems from the team’s recent effort to . When the group used their theories to make a prediction about the size and stability for the particles to work at certain temperatures, they found out that their model was wrong. Undaunted, that setback motivated them to delve deeper into finding a new way to come up with predictive rules to guide the design of nanoparticles.

Thanks to a , Mozhdehi and Nangia collected preliminary data that contributed to a key part of their new proposal, which established the feasibility of using computers to predict the functional properties of nanoparticles. Their current project combines inputs from simulations and experiments, and uses machine learning to sort through vast amounts of data to better predict the properties for a nanoparticle to respond at specific temperatures.

Their collaborative project will integrate experiments from Mozhdehi’s lab that explore physical properties such as size and shape, and computational simulations from Nangia’s lab.

By incorporating machine learning, Nangia and her students will design algorithms to simulate millions of variations of nanoparticles, based on data from previous experiments and simulations, to speed up the design of temperature responsive nanoparticles. This integrated approach can reduce the design time by 100 to 1,000 times. That is, the work that used to take one year can now be done in one to four days with their new approach.

The team’s method will look to identify patterns in the data in order to determine which nanoparticles are stable at the precise temperatures. Researchers compare their process to Google and Facebook’s algorithms that comb through millions of user datapoints in order to group individuals based on the links they select and the items they purchase online. Their algorithms will cluster particles which look different but behave the same way—like different individuals who click on the same link. Their goal is to extract attributes and evaluate what made certain particles similar and what made them dissimilar in order to develop theories to help model stable nanoparticles.

Once they know more about functional temperatures, Mozhdehi’s lab will then run experiments to determine physical characteristics such as possible size and shape of the nanoparticles. Their results can then be applied back to the machine learning arm of the project to better calibrate those results.

Mozhdehi and Nangia, both members of the , are hopeful that this project will establish a cost-effective method to drive rules that will one day lead to the development of nanoparticles that are stable at a wide range of temperatures. Researchers say this foundational research could lead to the development of future nano-biomaterials that can deliver therapeutic drugs directly to cancerous growths and damaged organs.

Professor Develops Model to Shape the Future of Pasta and Sustainability

Chris Barbera — Fri, 21 May 2021 17:13:49 +0000

Like pasta, the pursuit of global environmental sustainability takes many shapes. In a paper titled “” published as the cover story in the May 2021 issues of Science Advances, researchers found a way to redesign noodles as flat structures that transform into three-dimensional shapes when cooked. Considering humanity’s appetite, it is a breakthrough that could move us toward a green future.

After it is cooked, the noodles look and taste like traditional pasta, but the flat redesigned noodles can be fit into more compact packaging. Smaller packages requiring less material would reduce waste and save space during transportation. Moreover, these shape-shifting carbs could lead to lower carbon emissions.

“Cooking pasta takes energy. This method can shorten the cooking time and that could also contribute to sustainability,” says Teng Zhang, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and a co-author of the study.

The project has been a long-term between Zhang and Lining Yao, director of the Morphing Matter Lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), other researchers at CMU and Zhejiang University. To achieve morphing, grooves are strategically pressed into the surface of smooth, flat dough. In boiling water, the modified grooved side of the dough expands less than the smooth side, thereby morphing the dough into more familiar contorted and tubular noodle shapes.

Yao’s team learned grooves in the pasta would be an effective way to control the shape morphing, but initially they could not explain why. Zhang developed a computer model to answer that question.

“The modeling and simulation of pasta morphing was very challenging. Sometimes you would run a simulation and the simulation would just stop,” says Zhang. “It took us a long time to find the right platform and the right code to set up the model to get a result.”

Zhang’s model uncovered the working mechanism of the research team’s grooved-based approach, which could be a practical solution for the food industry. The next challenge from a modeling standpoint will be to develop a more complex and accurate model that will look at how production of the pasta and cooking technique influence the material structure.

“Now we want to improve the accuracy of the model by looking at how the manufacturing process and the cooking process will modify the material property,” says Zhang. “We want to include the whole process in the modeling platform.”

Zhang’s research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Awarded Grant for Catheter Research Project

Alex Dunbar — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 13:44:39 +0000

For the 75 million people who require a urinary catheter, urinary tract infections are a serious concern. Catheters are prone to colonization by bacterial and fungal pathogens, which causes antibiotic-resistant infections. An infection can also lead to pH changes in the urine and block a catheter due to stone formation with potentially fatal consequences. Catheter associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) that are antibiotic resistant cause 13,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.

College of Engineering and Computer Science professors Dacheng Ren, Stevenson endowed professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and associate dean for research and graduate programs; Teng Zhang, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; and Huan Gu, research assistant professor and Upstate Medical University’s Dmitriy Nikolavsky, MD, associate professor of Urology, were awarded an National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grant for a project aiming to engineer a new urinary catheter using smart biomaterials to reduce catheter associated complications.

“Conventional antibiotics commonly fail to eradicate infections associated with medical devices because of the remarkable capabilities of microbes to colonize these surfaces and form drug-resistant biofilms. To solve this challenging problem, we need new strategies that can provide long-term protections. This R01 project gave us an exciting opportunity to do exactly that,” said Ren, the principal investigator of this project.

Ren’s lab has developed a new strategy designed to make catheters smarter and more resistant to infection. They successfully created micron-sized pillars with supermagnetic nanoparticles on the tip so the pillars can beat in response to an electromagnetic field generated using an insulated copper coil embedded in the catheter wall. By controlling the on and off of an electric current, they could turn the magnetic field on and off, and thus control the beating frequency and beating force of the pillars. This strategy (active topography) worked well, as these moving pillars prevented biofilm formation of multiple bacterial species by up to 99.9% compared to flat control surfaces. A prototype catheter with active topography remained clean for 30 days while the control catheters were blocked by biofilms of uropathogenic��Escherichia coli��within five days in an in vitro test with flow of a medium mimicking urine. Their study was published in a recent issue of��.

Now Ren, Gu, Zhang and Nikolavsky will move forward and study the mechanism of infection control by such active topographies, and further engineer their catheter porotype for in vivo tests in this R01 project. By optimizing micron sized pillars on the catheter wall, they hope to develop a self-cleaning catheter that would be much safer for long term use.

“This strategy is inspired by the motile cilia in human airways that protects our lungs from foreign particles during respiration,” said Gu. “Thanks to the development in materials and surface engineering, we can replicate this defense strategy, make it more robust and adaptable, and apply it to address challenges such as biofilm-associated urinary tract infections in this project.”

Numerical simulations from Zhang’s lab and the collaboration with Nikolavsky in Upstate Medical University’s urology department are key components to the potentially groundbreaking work.

“Biofilms are highly complicated biological materials with active bacteria embedded in polymer networks. This poses challenges and provides opportunities to integrate mechanics modeling and simulations with well-controlled experiments to uncover the working mechanism and design principles of medical devices.”

Zhang has been collaborating with the Ren lab prior to this award and he is also a co-author of the Nature Communications paper.

If successful, the findings from this study may also help solve other infections that involve microbial biofilms, especially those associated with medical devices.

“I am very excited about this design of smart catheters, Bacterial colonization and biofilm formation on catheters, stents and other implantable devices is an enormous problem in medicine,” said Nikolavsky.�� “Creating such smart surfaces on catheters that would actively expel pathogens, could potentially prevent bacterial colonization, catheter-associated urinary tract infections and may save patients with chronic catheters from bladder stone formation and recurrent catheter encrustation and clogging. I expect this will improve medical care and have positive effect on quality of life for many patients and prevent some of the common urological emergencies.”

Bioengineering Ph.D. Student Receives National Recognition for Breakthrough Molecular Computational Tool

Alex Dunbar — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:40:24 +0000

Nandhini Rajagopal

Nandhini Rajagopal’s accomplishments are massive even though her research focuses on small molecules. As part of biomedical and chemical engineering Professor Shikha Nangia’s research group, the Ph.D. student has focused her work on minute interactions between protein molecules in the biological cells that make up all living things. These interactions between proteins are essential since proteins are the building blocks of all living things.

Rajagopal’s work is entirely computational and as part of her research she developed a new algorithm that could determine how two different protein molecules would interact.

“These small proteins are found in every tissue of our body,” says Rajagopal. “Using computers we literally visualize how these molecules move around each other and aggregate.”

Rajagopal’s computational tool can screen all possible orientations for how two proteins would interact with each other.

“How proteins interact has a direct impact on their functions,” says Rajagopal. “I wanted to create an algorithm that would also plot a graph showing an intuitive, easy-to-interpret three-dimensional energy landscape of the two interacting protein molecules.”

“The algorithm produces not only highly accurate results, it is also highly efficient. Nandhini’s algorithm can sample millions of protein-protein interactions in a matter of minutes, which otherwise used to take weeks to simulate,” says Nangia.

Rajagopal was selected to present her computational method at the 2020 Gordon Research Conference (GRC), a premier scientific conference where a select group of researchers meet to discuss cutting-edge research in biological, chemical and physical sciences. Rajagopal’s presentation was well received by the experts in the field and led to multiple national and international collaborations.

The algorithm was published in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation and featured on the cover. For her outstanding work, Rajagopal won several notable awards:

2021 Merck Research Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS) Women Chemistry Committee
2020 ACS Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award for Graduate Students
2021 All University Doctoral Prize from the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
2021 Outstanding Graduate Student in Bioengineering
2021 Research Presentation Award, College of Engineering and Computer Science Research Day
2020 Syracuse University Graduate Student Award for Distinguished Biomaterials Research

Rajagopal is finishing up an externship at Genentech’s pharmaceutical development division and will begin a postdoctoral research position at pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim this summer.

She hopes to continue her current research and see how it could expand to cancer studies.

Keeping SARS2 Out of the Cell

Dan Bernardi — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 16:57:54 +0000

Epifluorescence image of extracellular vimentin (green), here seen with the protein actin (red) and DNA (blue), speeds up delivery of SARS2 to the cell. (Courtesy: Maxx Swoger and Alison Patteson)

As vaccines are distributed worldwide to fight the pandemic, important research at Syracuse University may uncover ways to block it and similar viruses in the future. Alison Patteson, assistant professor of physics, and Jennifer Schwarz, associate professor of physics, recently completed a study that tested the ability of certain antibodies to block SARS2 from entering cells by way of cell-surface vimentin, a protein that is also a pathway for the virus to enter the body. The study was funded by a $196,000 National Science Foundation RAPID Response Research initiative grant.

While bacterial pathogens such as Salmonella and E. coli can survive on their own without a host cell to infect, viruses must get inside cells to replicate and use that cell’s own biochemical machinery to build new virus particles and spread to other cells. But in order for this process to start, the virus must find a way to first adhere to the surface of a cell.

There are two main ways the SARS2 virus enters human cells. When someone infected with coronavirus coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes, the tiny particles they expel are projected into the air. Then, another person inhales those particles into their nose, mouth, airways and lungs. When these particles enter the lungs, they begin searching for cells to attach to. In the case of the SARS2, a spike protein in the virus searches for a cellular receptor called ACE2 to adhere to. Think of the spike protein and cellular receptor like two pieces of Velcro. Once attached, the virus can enter the cell through membrane fusion (where the virus particle merges with the host cell) or endocytosis (where the virus particle is engulfed into the host cell).

Patteson, Schwarz and a team of researchers have identified an important protein in this process called vimentin. Vimentin is a key internal structural protein present in many cell types that protects its nucleus against deformation, rupture and DNA damage. They have uncovered that this molecule also lives on the outside surface or the cell, where it adheres to the spike protein in the virus and helps speed up its delivery to the ACE2 receptor of the cell, acting as a mediator. Finding an antibody that would prevent vimentin and its attached virus spike protein from connecting to the cell surface could halt one of the common ways people contract COVID-19.

Alison Patteson and Jennifer Schwarz

Patteson and Schwarz became interested in investigating this topic after reading reports of vimentin being implicated in SARS1, a respiratory illness that affected many people worldwide in 2003. Their cutting-edge research is one of the first to show that antibodies against vimentin can block cellular uptake of the SARS2 coronavirus.

In a research collaboration with Nascent Biotech, a company currently developing human anti-vimentin antibodies for clinical cancer studies, they reported positive results demonstrating that the same antibodies against vimentin can block up to 80% of host cell invasion. Their results suggest a new target and therapeutic strategy to reduce SARS-CoV-2 attachment and entry into the cell, which could reduce the spread of SARS2.

The Patteson Group is now in the planning stages to test the antibody in living models. According to Dr. Navpaul Singh, Nascent Biotech chief medical officer over viral research, if the anti-vimentin antibody prevents uptake of the virus in animal models, the next logical step would be to test it in humans. “If we have success in humans, we then have a successful therapeutic strategy against COVID-19,” he notes.

Patteson says potential therapeutics could be administered in two ways. One is a nasal spray, which would be used after possible exposure to the virus. The spray would reduce or prevent the virus-carrying vimentin from attaching to the surface of a cell. Another is intravenously, where the antibody would be combined with an antiviral medication like Remdesivir, which prevents the replication of the virus for patients already suffering from COVID-19. Anti-vimentin antibodies could prevent further uptake of the virus to cells in the body.

While these treatments are still in the early stages of development, the team’s breakthrough shines a light on a new way to halt SARS2 and future viruses from entering the cell. Preventing viral invasion of cells using anti-vimentin antibodies could be another tool, along with vaccines, to eventually bring the virus—and future pandemics—under control.

What Drugs Cause Birth Defects? Search for Answers Turbocharges Zhen Ma’s Bioengineering Lab

Ellen de Graffenreid — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 15:41:46 +0000

Zhen Ma arrived at Syracuse University in 2016, fresh from a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley, to set up his own lab. Appointed assistant professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and the Carol and Samuel Nappi Research Scholar in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, he was attracted to the University by the growing core of faculty working on the intersection of materials and living systems. Now, his lab has attracted more than $2.7 million in prestigious grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health to develop a platform and system for testing how various drugs might affect a developing human embryo.

“At Berkeley I was working on a biomaterial-based platform for cell micropatterning—basically we lay down a pattern and human pluripotent stem cells will grow and differentiate as directed by that pattern. When you have a technology you ask, ‘What can we use it for?,’” says Ma.

Induced pluripotent stem cells, reprogrammed from adult human cells, have the potential to develop into any kind of cells in the human body based on biochemical signaling and cues from the physical environment. That’s where the new technology came in.

Zhen Ma

In talking to some of his physician colleagues at UC Berkeley, Ma learned that very little is known about how various drugs affect the development of a human embryo; there’s no way to test the effects ethically in a living system. That got him thinking about whether this biomaterial system could be used to understand how the heart forms in the earliest phases of development. One of the major applications of cell micropatterning and related biomaterial systems is to develop organoids—tiny, self-organized, three-dimensional tissue cultures that are derived from stem cells. These cultures can be crafted to mimic much of the complexity of an organ or to express selected aspects of that organ, such as producing only certain kinds of cells.

At Syracuse University, Ma set up his lab and got to work developing and refining a cardiac organoid model. Using both biochemical and biophysical cues, stem cells are “trained” beginning with a 600 micron diameter pattern that creates a circular colony of stem cells. They then grow and self-assemble in a 3-dimensional chamber. Knowing that changing the shape of that chamber changes the cues that tell the cells how to develop, Ma sought to mimic the developmental shapes of a human heart as they occur naturally during fetal development. “The first stage in the heart’s development is a linear tube of tissue, so we started there,” he says.

His proof of concept earned a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award of more than $400,000 over five years, to continue to develop what Ma calls “heart embryonic development on a chip.” He says, “The goal is to optimize the biochemical and biophysical cues in the system that allows us to create a consistent model over and over. We want to hold everything constant in these living tissue models so we’re confident that changes result from the outside variable we’re testing.”

Studying how drugs affect fetal heart development hasn’t been feasible in a living system until this technology was developed. As he is developing a consistent model, Ma is now moving forward with testing between 30-40 well-known drugs with the goal of developing a risk classification for medications that might be taken during pregnancy. His research has been boosted by a $2.3 million grant over five years from the National Institute of Children’s Health and Human Development (part of the National Institutes of Health) to evaluate the specific effects of how these drugs might disrupt the formation of the correct three-dimensional structures and the capabilities that cardiac tissue has for contracting and expanding.

“We’re really excited because this could provide a pioneering breakthrough in drug discovery, regulation, and safe prescribing during pregnancy,” Ma says.

Zhen Ma

As a new father himself, Ma understands that doctors don’t really know whether a particular drug might hurt a developing fetus. There have been multiple studies of commonly prescribed drugs, such as antidepressants, on fetal health. Yet there are still many unanswered questions. This means that many women don’t have information they need to make decisions during pregnancy and forces difficult decisions as doctors try to balance risks while ensuring maternal and fetal health.

“It’s really exciting to begin work on the real practical application of this model,” says Plansky Hoang, who completed a Ph.D. at Syracuse University this past year and is now a postdoctoral fellow in the Ma Lab. “There’s the potential to really understand what goes wrong in fetal development that leads to birth defects–whether as the result of exposure to a drug or a genetic factor.” As a postdoctoral fellow, Hoang hopes to better understand how different cell types work in the model and whether it will be possible to model genetic diseases that give rise to congenital heart defects.

Ma’s lab has benefited from the development of the and the collaborations available across the University. He’s collaborating with , assistant professor of biomedical and chemical engineering, on a project that was awarded one of BioInspired’s first six seed grants. Their goal is to create microgels, materials formed from a network of crosslinked polymers, that will enable them to develop a synthetic model of a blastocyst—one of the earliest structures formed in mammalian development. Because this is the point in development where human embryonic stem cells begin to differentiate, the ability to develop a synthetic model could have many uses in basic scientific research. The goal of BioInspired seed grants is to fast-track promising research ideas, funding proof of concept or preliminary studies allowing faculty to generate the data that will result in external funding.

“The more we can work on this technology, the more applications it may have,” says Ma. “Combining materials and living systems is opening doors to solving problems with applications we couldn’t have imagined just a decade ago.”

This research is funded by National Science Foundation, Award# 1943798 and National Institutes of Health/DHHS, Award #1R01HD101130-01.

Syracuse Native Finds Career in Team Science

Ellen de Graffenreid — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 15:35:56 +0000

Plansky Hoang ’15, G’20 is the youngest of seven children born to immigrant parents in Syracuse. She attended Henninger High School and came to Syracuse University as an undergraduate to major in biomedical and chemical engineering. “When I started college, my goal was to graduate and get a job in industry,” says Hoang. “I interned at a pharmaceutical company and wanted to do that kind of work.”

Plansky Hoang

Others at the University had different ideas for her. As an undergraduate, Hoang worked in Dacheng Ren’s lab. The Stevenson Endowed Professor and associate dean for research encouraged her to go to graduate school, so she applied and was accepted to Syracuse University’s Ph.D. program. When professor Zhen Ma arrived at Syracuse University in 2016, she joined his lab to follow her interest in pharmaceutical research.

Hoang earned a Ph.D. working with Ma on validating his lab’s cardiac organoid model, focusing on the drug response and fetal toxicity response of the model. She was awarded a predoctoral fellowship for this work from the American Heart Association. “Professor Ma is a very active mentor, which is great in scientific research,” Hoang says. “His lab is not so big, so I got a lot of contact with him as a graduate student. He’s open to ideas and problem solving with you.” In Ma’s lab, she learned how to build professional relationships. “This is really a team science approach and it’s great to be part of a strong team,” she adds.

Having joined the Ma lab at the beginning, Hoang ended up being the senior graduate student in the lab. “I love having the opportunity to mentor undergraduate students and the idea of training the next generation of scientists. It’s very rewarding to feel like you’re contributing to someone else’s research,” she says.

Hoang decided to stay on as a postdoctoral fellow in the Ma lab in large part because she remains interested in the research and wishes to finish work that is still underway. “I’m looking at single-cell RNA sequencing to better understand how cell types develop in the model,” says Hoang. “Knowing the genetic profile can direct how the organoids grow, so we can customize the model based on the disease or drug of interest.” The organoids are a platform where scientists can test drugs and other disease models in a living system with a huge potential to safely understand how genetic and environmental factors affect development. “To tell the truth, I’m a little possessive of the research since I was here at the beginning. I want to see it through,” Hoang says.

Her other reasons for remaining at Syracuse University as a postdoctoral student include the opportunity to continue to mentor graduate students and undergraduates and because the location allows her to stay near her elderly parents. As a first generation student, she’s also another first among her seven siblings. “I’m the first with a Ph.D. I have a sister who is a physician, a brother who is a certified public accountant,” says Hoang. “We are pretty high achieving.” She credits the University with providing world-class scientific training while also being available for family needs. “My parents like having me around. I didn’t have to compromise, I have had wonderful mentors and the opportunity to do really new and exciting research as a biomedical engineer,” she adds.

Hoang’s future career aspirations include continuing to teach or running a core laboratory facility. “I like the interaction with people who are learning how to do team science and the ability to contribute to their research,” she says.

Hehnly Lab Awarded $1.2M NIH Grant to Research Critical Tissue Formation

Dan Bernardi — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:49:33 +0000

Heidi Hehnly (Please note, this image was taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and does not reflect current public health guidelines.)

A key process during the development of an embryo is tissue morphogenesis, where the number of cells in an organism increase through cell division and tissues begins to take shape. Heidi Hehnly, assistant professor of biology, has been awarded a from the National Institutes of Health for her group’s research to determine the mechanisms behind the formation of tissues with a lumen, which is a hollow passageway. Organs with these tubular passageways include the heart, kidney and gastrointestinal tract.

The placement of these organs in an organism are determined through left-right (LR) patterning. When that process gets disrupted, it can result in developmental disorders such as . Hehnly and her team will identify the role of cell division, specifically the last stage known as cytokinesis, during tissue development of the Kupffer’s vesicle (KV), the organ responsible for LR patterning in the zebrafish.

They hypothesize that the structure that connects daughter cells during the last stages of the cell division process is essential to helping the cells “decide” where lumen passageways should form. That structure is also crucial for determining when to extend small hairlike cilia into that luminal space within a developing tissue. The left-right beating movement of these cilia within the KV lumen play an important role in establishing precise left-right asymmetry in the developing embryo.

The team’s results may identify molecular targets for treatment of developmental disorders associated with LR patterning defects, such as situs inversus, where major visceral organs are reversed or mirrored from their normal positions, and heterotaxy, where internal organs are not arranged properly in the chest and abdomen.

In addition, identifying the cellular mechanisms associated with cilia formation will likely pinpoint the cause of certain ciliopathies, which are human disorders that arise from the abnormal function of cilia that extend from the top of the cell into the lumen. Patients suffering from these disorders can experience defects in LR asymmetry, congenital cardiac defects, and/or formation of cysts in multiple organs.

This is the second NIH grant at Syracuse University, the first being a that expands upon Hehnly’s research program into the origins of ciliopathies. She also received a $562,000 grant from the Department of Defense to research the role of a protein called Polo Like Kinase 1 (PLK1) in prostate cancer.

A&S Researchers Awarded $2.1M Grant to Study Causes of Congenital Heart Defects

Dan Bernardi — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 15:27:01 +0000

Congenital heart defects are the most common type of birth defect, affecting nearly 1 percent of births in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors have been unable to lower that number due to a lack of knowledge about their source. Thanks to a ��from the National Institutes of Health, an interdisciplinary team of researchers will work to advance the understanding of causes of birth defects.

Panel A shows the usual organization of the notochord (green) and the KV (red) in a developing embryo. In panel B, a laser was used to destroy cells in the notochord near the KV, to test the hypothesis that the notochord pushing contributes to KV motion.

The team includes principal investigator (PI) Lisa Manning, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and founding director of the BioInspired Institute; co-PI Jeff Amack, Upstate Medical University; co-investigator Heidi Hehnly, assistant professor of biology; and Paula Sanematsu, postdoctoral research associate, physics. Manning, Amack and Hehnly are all members of the��, an interdisciplinary team of faculty scholars that research complex biological systems and develop and design smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation.

While past research has centered on the potential biochemical sources of birth defects, Manning says their research looks to pinpoint mechanical forces that could be causing defects during the early stages of embryo development.

“Our goal is to locate new targets for therapy,” says Manning. “Right now, it’s hard to know which drugs to use because researchers don’t know what’s causing the problem, and if you don’t know the cause then you don’t know how to fix it. If we can identify some mechanical mechanisms at play, in addition to the standard biochemical mechanisms, that could lead us to a whole new way of treating congenital heart defects.”

Panels C shows the same embryo in Panel A at a later stage, illustrating normal embryonic development, and Panel D shows the embryo in B at a later stage, highlighting a change to tail shape caused by the laser, but otherwise fairly normal development.

To understand what is happening, you must first go back to the very early stages of an organism’s development. Embryos start out as a simple pair of cells. As they grow, their cells multiply and start to take on specific functions. In order to make sure internal organs are positioned correctly, there is one organ responsible for what is known as left-right (LR) patterning in all vertebrates including fish, mice and humans. This organ ensures, for example, that the heart is correctly positioned on the left side of the body and the liver on the right. This is known as LR asymmetry.

The researchers have focused their studies on the zebrafish, which is a transparent vertebrate, making it ideal to study under a microscope. The specific organ responsible for LR patterning in the zebrafish is the Kupffer’s vesicle (KV), and microscope images from the Amack laboratory demonstrate that the organ moves through the body of the fish as it develops.

The team believes the mechanical forces of that organ moving through the tissue could change cell shapes and drive LR asymmetry in zebrafish embryos. Therefore, defects in this mechanical force generation process could prevent organs such as the heart from developing properly in some cases.

In Manning’s lab, she and Sanematsu have been developing computational models to explore what is happening from a mechanical standpoint during embryonic development. They are producing three-dimensional models of whole tissues to simulate the mechanical forces and determine how motions of the KV could generate shape change.

Paula Sanematsu, a physics postdoctoral research associate in Lisa Manning’s lab, runs computer-modeled simulations to determine what is happening from a mechanical standpoint during embryonic development. [Please note, this image was taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and does not reflect current public health guidelines.]

For Sanematsu, this work utilizes the skills she developed in scientific computing during her graduate school work and postdoctoral appointment at Louisiana State University. There, she developed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to describe nanoparticle transport in porous media, which is important in environmental problems like groundwater contamination. She shifted from fluid dynamics to soft matter when she joined Manning’s lab, but says those areas of research have surprising similarities.“I now work on models to study how cells and tissues behave during embryonic development,” she says. “These models are generally not used, if ever, in CFD, but there is actually a good blend of my previous experience because I am using a lot of the CFD tools to analyze how tissues can behave similarly to a fluid.”The team is now confirming their computer-modeled calculations using physical experiments to determine the effects of mechanical forces on an organism’s development.

Through advanced scientific techniques including laser ablation and optogenetics, they will analyze how cells react to various mechanical forces. Using laser ablation, the team will cut interfaces between cells and study the resulting movement, in order to alter and measure forces between cells in the tissue. Using optogenetics, they will shine light on cells to drive pre-programmed changes to individual cell mechanics. In both cases, they will observe how these localized mechanical changes alter organ formation and LR asymmetry in embryos.

This cutting-edge research identifies a whole new paradigm to explore in humans, says Manning. While it might not yield a specific drug target yet, it gives the scientific community a new set of ideas of what could be targets.

“The long-term goal here is helping with diagnostics and prevention,” says Manning. “There is very little you can do for congenital left-right patterning problems and our new ideas will hopefully drive new methodologies for how to test for and eventually treat them earlier.”

$1.5 Million NIH Grant Funds ALS-Linked Research

Dan Bernardi — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 18:04:43 +0000

The human body is made up of trillions of cells. Within each cell are proteins which help to maintain the structure, function and regulation of the body’s tissues and organs. When cells are under stress, as in response to heat or toxins, certain proteins within the cell condense into liquid-like droplets called condensates. These droplets can be thought of as a form of quality control allowing the cell to minimize the effects of the stress condition.

Carlos Castañeda (Please note, this image was taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and does not reflect current public health guidelines.)

Cases of abnormal condensate formation or persistence have recently been linked to neurodegenerative diseases like ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and cancer. Thanks to a , Carlos Castañeda, assistant professor of biology and chemistry, and his team will investigate the regulation and dysregulation of condensates using biophysical and cell biology approaches. This research may lead to determining what causes diseases like ALS.

To function properly, cells depend on proteins to do their jobs. When a protein mutates, it can cause adverse medical conditions. The protein Castañeda and his team are studying is called Ubiquilin-2 (UBQLN2), which is part of many protein quality control pathways in the cell. Improper functioning of UBQLN2 can result in protein clumping or aggregation, which can potentially cause cells in the nervous system to die. These abnormal protein aggregates are markers for neurological diseases like ALS.

Mutations in UBQLN2 are known to be linked to ALS. Castañeda and his team, including Heidi Hehnly, assistant professor of biology, are hoping to learn how and if these ALS-linked mutations disrupt assembly and disassembly of UBQLN2-containing condensates in cells, as well as what regulates the liquidity of UBQLN2 condensates. By understanding the molecular mechanisms behind UBQLN2 condensates, the team could discover more about what leads to diseases like ALS— and potential ways to cure them.

The grant will also allow the team to determine how UBQLN2’s interactions with other proteins involved in protein quality control influence how UBQLN2 condensates form and dissolve. The team recently discovered that ubiquitin, a similar-sounding but different protein, is important for dissolving UBQLN2 condensates. Specifically, the team suspects that ubiquitin helps UBQLN2 extract and shuttle ubiquitinated proteins out of condensates and transport them elsewhere in the cell to be broken down. This may uncover a new ability for UBQLN2 to selectively extract disease-associated irregular or dysfunctional proteins from condensates.

Castañeda’s team will test this hypothesis by reconstituting the extraction process in test tubes and by developing live-imaging methods to monitor it in cells. In any case, these experiments could uncover disease mechanisms associated with ALS and other neurodegenerative disorders, while also providing a therapeutic avenue to target specific proteins found in condensates for degradation.

“We’re at the forefront of this field, as we’re looking at a unique system whose condensates are modulated by ubiquitin, a tag that targets proteins for myriad pathways including protein degradation, cell cycle control and DNA repair,” says Castañeda. “Studying how UBQLN2 condensates assemble and disassemble is likely to be applicable to how many other condensate systems in the cell work.”

Additional collaborators on the grant include Beverly Petterson Bishop Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of biology Sandra Hewett and Tanja Mittag, associate professor of structural biology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, investing more than $32 billion a year to enhance life, and reduce illness and disability. NIH funded research has led to breakthroughs and new treatments, helping people live longer, healthier lives, and building the research foundation that drives discovery.

BioInspired Institute Awards First Six Seed Grants

Ellen de Graffenreid — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 15:28:40 +0000

Syracuse University’s BioInspired Institute announced today that it has awarded six seed grants to 12 faculty members to advance interdisciplinary, collaborative research in materials and living systems.�� Seed grants provide funding for innovative ideas, producing data that can be used in future funding applications to prove that a new concept or approach is promising and attract additional research funds from outside the University.

“We designed the program to advance the mission of the BioInspired Institute: promoting world-class research,” says BioInspired Institute Director M. Lisa Manning. “Our goal is to jump-start exciting ideas that result from faculty collaborating across disciplines.”

One of 10 cross-disciplinary research clusters identified through a faculty-led proposal development process, BioInspired is supported by Invest Syracuse. The institute includes faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering and Computer Science with collaborators from SUNY Upstate and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Manning notes that the application was intentionally designed to be less time-consuming for this inaugural year, recognizing the challenges that many faculty face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.�� The goal is to fast-track promising research ideas, funding proof of concept or preliminary studies. Data generated through these studies enables faculty to submit strong grant proposals to funding organizations like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

“The proposals we received are really exciting. Each has the potential to be leveraged into high-impact research programs,” says Jay Henderson, associate director of BioInspired.

The awards of approximately $30,000 each will go to six projects:

(principal investigator, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, SUNY Upstate) and (co-principal investigator): Investigating the effects of localized extracellular matrix stiffening on human trabecular meshwork biopolymer hydrogels.
(principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): Designer microgels for generation of synthetic blastocyst mimics.
(principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): Genetically programmable and mechanically adaptive engineered living materials.
(principal investigator), (co-principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): Deciphering the role of vimentin-centrosome interactions in cell function.
(principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): An Interactive Virtual Reality System for Microfluidics and Beyond.
(principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): Strong creases, active folds: development of active matter for soft robotics.

“These projects, while early stage, all have exciting potential for important applications like fighting infectious disease, creating innovative biomaterials for medical use, creating more realistic systems for testing drug toxicity in the lab and expanding the frontier of robotics technology,” says Ramesh Raina, interim vice president for research. “We know that seed grants are an effective mechanism for building research programs that attract outside funding for innovative ideas. This program is just one way that the BioInspired Institute is doing exactly what we hoped by bringing together faculty from different disciplines and our partner institutions to spark innovative approaches to materials and living systems.”

Engineering and Chemistry Professors Receive Powe Award to Enrich Research, Growth

Dan Bernardi — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 15:54:14 +0000

Mechanical and aerospace engineering Professor Yeqing Wang from the College of Engineering and Computer Science and chemistry Professor Davoud Mozhdehi from the College of Arts and Sciences were selected as recipients of competitive 2020-2021 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). The Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards program provides funds to enrich the research and professional growth of young faculty.

The award will help fund Wang’s research into making the next generation of composite materials more lightning resistant.

Both the power produced by lightning strikes and the damage they can cause are significant. On average, planes are hit by lightning once a year and damage from lightning strikes accounts for more than 23% of insurance claims filed by wind farms in the United States. Repairing damaged aircraft and turbine blades can be costly and often requires them to be taken out of service for a long period of time.

Yeqing Wang

The aerospace and wind energy industries rely on carbon/glass fiber reinforced polymer matrix (CFRP) composite materials for structural materials. These composite materials can have high strength to weight ratios and excellent corrosion and fatigue resistance, but their low electrical conductivity creates a difficult environment for electricity to be dissipated safely.

When a lightning bolt strikes composite material, the temperature in the material rises rapidly. That can eventually lead to resin vaporization, delamination, matrix cracking, fiber breakage and a substantial loss of strength, stiffness and structural service life.

“These components do not work well with electricity,” said mechanical and aerospace engineering Professor Yeqing Wang. “Lightning can produce electrical, thermal, magnetic, and mechanical effects on an aircraft.”

Aerospace companies currently use metal mesh wrapped around the carbon fiber composite to conduct electricity away. That mesh is heavy and adds to fuel consumption.�� A lightweight coating or a new composite that replaces heavy metal mesh could significantly reduce fuel costs and the cost of repairing bonding between mesh and aircraft.

“With the understanding we gain through our study, we hope to be able to tell manufacturers how to better protect wind turbines and aircraft,” said Wang. “We will be doing computational work and testing to determine failures in composite materials.”

To simulate the effects of a lightning strike on test materials, Wang will be working with the Mississippi State High Voltage Lab and Oak Ridge National Lab.

“We want to observe damage and understand what energy is consumed by fiber breakage or other damage modes,” said Wang. “It is a lot of physics and mechanics inside. We are trying to solve this puzzle.”

Davoud Mozhdehi

Mozhdehi is investigating a nanoparticle that could “trick” its way into the brain, resulting in a novel method of drug delivery.

As the guardian of the brain, the blood-brain barrier (BBB) denies entry to infection-causing toxins and pathogens, while at the same time granting access to healthy nutrients. The flip side of this protection is that the BBB can do its job too well – like when it blocks life-saving cancer drugs. The inability of therapeutics to get past the BBB is why brain cancer is often treated with invasive surgery instead of medicine, but Syracuse University researchers are working to change that.

Mozhdehi and his collaborator Shikha Nangia, associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, are working with the protein claudin-5, which acts as the gatekeeper in the BBB. Nangia has identified sections of that protein that are responsible for maintaining its barrier properties. By attaching fragments of claudin-5 to the surface of a computer-designed nanoparticle, Mozhdehi and Ph.D. student Md. Shahadat Hossain hope to create a particle that could carry a drug into and through the blood-brain barrier, like a Trojan Horse. The nanoparticle is in a sense disguising itself with claudin-5 fragments in order to fit in with the rest of the barrier proteins.

“When the nanoparticle, attached to a drug, gets to the BBB, it can mix undetected with the barrier,” said Mozhdehi. “That gives it a ‘pass’ to deliver the drug into the brain.”

Both Mozhdehi and Nangia are members of the and the . These interdisciplinary faculty working groups develop and design programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation. Their applied research on this project aligns with each group’s mission to promote collaboration on the design of substances to treat the human body.

In the coming months, Mozhdehi and Hossain will produce the nanoparticle and have it tested at in Tennessee. Before the pandemic, Hossain had planned to travel to Oak Ridge and work with Dr. Shuo Qian, staff scientist at ORNL, to evaluate the substance’s stability using the lab’s powerful X-ray machine. Instead, collaborators at the lab will run the experiment and send back the results. Mozhdehi and Hossain will then analyze the data and determine the feasibility of designing a nanoparticle for the next stage of experimental studies.

Mozhdehi’s grant was funded by the ORAU and is being matched by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of Research.

The process for internal applications for the 2021-2022 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards is now open. Full-time assistant professors within two years of their initial tenure track appointment may apply. See more details for the internal competition on the .

Ph.D. Candidate’s Work in the Patteson Lab Requires Tools from Multiple Disciplines

Brandon Dyer — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 23:09:49 +0000

Maxx Swoger

After completing a master’s degree from the University of Akron in physics, Ph.D. candidate Maxx Swoger attended a seminar hosted by Alison Patteson, assistant professor of physics at Syracuse University. “Originally and very broadly, I wanted to study soft matter physics or biophysics. And to be perfectly honest with you, I think this is one of the best places in the country to do that,” says Swoger. “The collaboration both within the physics department and the University allows students to approach the systems we’re studying with a variety of techniques. This is something I really liked about Syracuse when deciding which school to attend for my Ph.D.”

Patteson’s lab is affiliated with the University’s BioInspired Institute, which supports interdisciplinary study related to smart materials that can be used in medicine and other applications. Swoger had previously worked in an adjacent field, primarily on theory, so he was not accustomed to lab work. “I thought the work Professor Patteson was doing was really cool so I approached her,” says Swoger.

As a graduate assistant in the Patteson Lab, Swoger is involved in research centering on how cells interact with their environment and how physical forces shape life. Understanding the relationship of cells to their surroundings can help describe how cells are expected to move through the body. Swoger says scholarship in this area has mainly focused on surfaces that are strictly elastic, that work like springs.

“But in reality, the vast majority of your tissue is something called viscoelastic, which acts more like Silly Putty,” says Swoger. Examples include bodily structures like cartilage, ligaments, tendons and arteries.

Using an epifluorescence microscope and the confocal microscope at the next door Hehnly Biology Lab to make additional observations, Swoger says researchers look for proteins that are present when the cell interacts with its environment.

An example is the protein called vimentin, which is observed by adding a fluorescent marker that adheres to it. Researchers then shine a specific wavelength of light on the cell with the fluorescent marker.

“The protein will glow, so it allows us to very selectively image just the protein we want,” Swoger says. On elastic substrates, cells without the protein vimentin look basically identical. However, researchers have observed cells behaving differently on viscoelastic substrates. “Cells without vimentin on viscoelastic substrates cannot spread or attach strongly at all. It’s a stark difference,” says Swoger.

“Vimentin is part of the cell cytoskeleton, so you could consider it skeleton of the cell,” says Swoger. “What’s so interesting about it is that, when cells are moving, expression of this protein increases.” By forcing a cell into a two-micron wide space, researchers have observed vimentin acting like a seatbelt of sorts for the cell’s nucleus, surrounding it and protecting the enclosed genetic material as it passes through the narrow passage.

Swoger specializes in experiments with animal cells. His experiments include cultivating cells on substates where he can control mechanical properties like how rigid a substate is or whether it is elastic or viscoelastic. Swoger measures this by observing how vimentin is organized in the cell.

Swoger gauges interactions of the cell and substrate and evaluates proteins in locations where cells grab on to their underlying substrate, known as focal adhesions. “You can make different substrates for these cells to sit on that have varying stiffnesses, spread all across a physiologically relevant range, as the human body is stiffer or more pliable in different places,” he says.

This research has implications for all types of medical applications. “Say you have a disease or a cancer that up-regulates or down-regulates vimentin, it’s going to affect how your cells are able to move.” This can be important in predicting how healing might be affected.

Swoger says observations like this are an example of a shift in biophysics, physics and biology. “For a long time, cells were assumed to be acting based on chemical signals from their environment. Biophysicists challenged that notion by demonstrating that cells also have some physical interaction with the environment,” says Swoger. “This is the idea behind mechanosensing, the mechanism through which cells can feel their mechanical environment.”

Swoger says he’s excited to continue to do research that draw him into areas outside of physics.

NSF Equipment Grants to Fund Acquisition of Two Chromatography-Mass Spectrometers

Dan Bernardi — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 19:17:31 +0000

The familiar saying goes, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” But for scientists, understanding those smaller parts is critical to scientific discovery.

A method known as chromatography-mass spectrometry lets researchers analyze and study the composition of a larger compound by separating out its parts. One common application is quality control in the food industry, where researchers separate and analyze additives, vitamins, preservatives and proteins.

In the College of Arts and Sciences, two new chromatography-mass spectrometers will also be used to address two separate yet important questions:

How do regional patterns of rainfall and temperature respond to global climate change?
How can scientists design viable proteins to improve drug delivery and human tissue engineering?

The acquisition of each spectrometer was made possible thanks to grants from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program. One of the apparatuses has been awarded to the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES).

Thanks to a proposal led by faculty from the College of Engineering and Computer Science, including Assistant Professor Teng Zeng, Professor Jianshun Zhang and University Professor of Environmental Systems and Distinguished Professor Charles Driscoll, A&S chemists Davoud Mozhdehi and Rachel Steinhardt, both assistant professors, will also have access to the second apparatus which will be installed in Link Hall.

Both new devices will allow scientists to explore new areas of research never before possible within their laboratories.

A Milestone Achievement

According to Alan Middleton, associate dean of research and scholarship in A&S, the two highly competitive MRI grants awarded to the University in the same year is a milestone achievement.

Tripti Bhattacharya and Christopher Junium

“We are excited by the success of our faculty in recruiting the funding for these new instruments for analysis,” says Middleton. “Mass spectrometers are central to work across the sciences and engineering and they are in high demand by our researchers. Our scientists and students will put these to work right away for research and training, while strengthening interdisciplinary connections between departments and colleges.”

The Proof is in the Sediment

One tool that scientists can use to reconstruct Earth’s ancient climates is the analysis of lipids, which are organic molecules found in living things. Lipids from ancient sediment contain varying amounts of hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen. By determining the isotopic ratio and atomic weight of these elements, researchers can identify levels of rainfall during a particular period of the past. To perform this analysis in a range of organic materials from waxes to amino acids, EES researchers will use the new gas chromatograph coupled to an isotope-ratio mass spectrometer (GC-IRMS).

The GC-IRMS system, acquired through a ��to EES Thonis Family Assistant Professor Tripti Bhattacharya and EES Associate Professor Christopher Junium, will allow researchers to determine the atomic weight and isotopic composition of hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen.

How it Works

The process begins by removing lipids from an organic material using what Bhattacharya refers to as an “espresso machine” for dirt. Researchers then inject the lipids at high temperatures into an oven and separate them out by their mass using a gas chromatograph. The lipids are passed to a reactor that converts them into a gas and the isotope-ratio mass spectrometer separates out the isotopes according to their mass.

Different isotopic ratios can tell researchers information about aspects of past environmental conditions. For instance, carbon isotopic ratios in ancient lipid compounds can illustrate ancient shifts in the extent of forest compared to grassland, and hydrogen isotopes can reveal how arid or wet these ancient climates were.

“I’m particularly excited about this because my lab measures ancient plant lipids. Their hydrogen isotopic ratio can tell us about past aridity, because the hydrogen in these plant lipids ultimately comes from environmental water like rainfall,” says Bhattacharya. “I’ve used similar analyses in the past to quantify changes in monsoon rainfall over long timescales from thousands to millions of years in the past. Having an instrument in-house will increase our research productivity and provide really unique training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students.”

For Junium, the new instrumentation will allow him and his students to perform nitrogen isotope analyses on amino acids from modern and ancient biomaterials ranging from fossil clams to modern marine mammals.

“These types of analyses will help us understand how food energy is transferred from one organism to another,” says Junium. “We will explore how a community of modern or fossil organisms like whales or clams acquired their food, and diagnose whether organisms shift their feeding habits in response to environmental changes.”

The device will be housed on the third floor of the Heroy Geology Laboratory in Bhattacharya’s and Junium’s shared lab facilities.

More Potent Proteins

To maintain healthy tissue, the human body depends on a protein called collagen. If just one or two oxygen or hydrogen atoms are missing from that protein, the collagen can weaken and fall apart. The resulting effects are fatigue, muscle weakness, fever, body aches and joint pain.

Davoud Mozhdehi and Rachel Steinhart

A&S chemists are working to create a new type of modified protein that could lead to stronger tissue, helping to build up muscle and prevent the breakup of collagen. But to produce a viable protein-based material, researchers must ensure they have the correct number of atoms in the protein for it to function properly. Thanks to the new liquid chromatograph high resolution mass spectrometer, acquired through an , researchers can confirm whether or not they have added or subtracted the correct atoms as they design new complex proteins.

“These modifications are important because despite their small size, they can significantly change the properties of protein materials,” says Davoud Mozhdehi, assistant professor of chemistry. “Before this device, we did not have the ability to check and find these modifications. This instrument has a much higher resolution so we can now locate small changes with ease, which will help us develop these new proteins quickly.”

He says this device will play an immediate role in the department’s efforts to produce protein-based materials for tissue engineering and create new renewable materials like eco-friendly and biodegradable fabric.

The MRI Program not only increases access to scientific and engineering instrumentation for research, but also enhances research training for students by making these devices available to college campuses. Each new device will also be utilized during summer internship opportunities for underserved K-12 and community college students, providing direct exposure to future career pathways in STEM fields.

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Member’s Interdisciplinary Research Selected for Grant

Brandon Dyer — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 19:13:43 +0000

Assistant Professor of Physics Alison Patteson’s research on the concept of “emergence” in living systems was selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to receive an Early-Concept Grant For Exploratory Research (EAGER) award on Sept. 12. The NSF selected to be one of 33 funded from a pool of 800 entries. According to the NSF website, Patteson’s research was selected chiefly for its potential “to address grand challenges in fundamental research or in STEM education.”

“Emergence is a very broad term that can be applied to many complex systems where they have many interacting parts, but yet a collective behavior appears,” says Patteson. “Despite the fact they are very complicated kind of networks, these interactions seem to be going on. The idea of emergence is an active area for the physics department here at Syracuse.”

Patteson’s research includes observing the bacteria Myxococcus xanthus exhibiting emergent behavior. Investigating living systems has led to interdisciplinary collaboration with the biology department. “We collaborate closely with biology professor Roy Welch on this project,” says Patteson. Welch and Patteson began collaborating shortly after she arrived in Central New York two years ago. “We were both interested in collective behavior and bacteria systems. I have physics approaches and he has biology approaches, but I think actually some of the questions we’re trying to answer are the same.” Welch helped review early drafts of the proposal submission and has an array of 3D-printed video microscopes that will allow researchers to observe and document collective behavior like swarming and predation.

Undergraduate and graduate students also have an opportunity to contribute to Patteson’s research. In addition to possibly crowdsourcing some aspects of data collection like having students review video, students are also helping speed the processing of data by writing code. Undergraduate students are aiming to automate observations by developing algorithms that will help recognize emergent behavior.

“Syracuse University is a place that’s really strong in this area. It is not surprising that I found people to work with,” says Patteson. “One of the reasons I was really attracted to Syracuse is because it is very supportive of interdisciplinary research.”

Chemist Develops Potential Drug to Treat Type 2 Diabetes Without Harsh Side Effects

Dan Bernardi — Sun, 12 Jul 2020 19:35:20 +0000

Robert P. Doyle

, the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor in the in the College of Arts and Sciences and adjunct associate professor of medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University, has developed a new drug lead to treat type 2 diabetes in millions of patients who are seeking to better control their blood sugar without the common side effects of nausea, vomiting and, in select cases, undesired weight loss. His research article, “,” has been published in the prestigious journal Cell Reports.

A common group of drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes are glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) agonists. While they do lower blood sugar levels in diabetic patients, their side effects include nausea, vomiting and weight loss.

Through a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Doyle and his team found a way to combine two molecules into a new substance that so far seems to lower blood sugar without those undesired side effects.

In technical terms, the team developed a new area of bioconjugation—a chemical technique used to couple two molecules. By binding together exendin-4 (Ex4), an FDA-approved GLP-1R agonist, to dicyanocobinamide (Cbi), which is a small piece of the complex vitamin B12 molecule, they produced Cbi-Ex4 in a technique they call “corrination.”

Data collected from testing Cbi-Ex4 in the musk shrew (Suncus murinus), the mammal used in this study due to its ability to vomit (rodents and many mammals lack that ability), revealed beneficial effects as evidenced by improved blood sugar levels during glucose tolerance tests and a profound reduction in vomiting compared to Ex4. Importantly, no weight loss was noted, again in stark contrast to the currently approved GLP-1R agonist, making this new drug ideal for patients who require glucoregulation without affecting their body mass index (BMI) levels. This drug could therefore benefit diabetes patients who also live with cystic fibrosis, COPD, sarcopenia, cancer or HIV, where weight-loss is counter-indicated.

The next step in the development of this groundbreaking drug is to move it through the pre-clinical phase into phase I human studies. Doyle and his team have submitted a new grant proposal to the NIH to fund this effort.

Doyle’s research was conducted in collaboration with the labs of Matt Hayes, professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, and Bart C. De Jonghe, professor in the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences, University of Pennsylvania.

BioInspired — �����鶹��Ʒ

Research Distinction Awards Presented at BioInspired Symposium

The Building Blocks of Future Smart Materials

Bio Artist Eduardo Kac to Present Wali Lecture at BioInspired Institute Symposium Oct. 24

‘Bio Art’ Developer

BioInspired Focus

BioInspired Wins NSF Grant to Develop Graduate Training Program in Emergent Intelligence

Interim Provost Lois Agnew Adds Julie Hasenwinkel, Elisa Dekaney to Leadership Team

Julie Hasenwinkel

Elisa Dekaney

Wasserstrom Prize for Graduate Teaching Presented to Physics Professor Christian Santangelo

Undergraduate Spearheads Study Using Physics to Understand How Cells Self-Sort

Aerodynamics of Avian Flight: ECS Professor Studying Impact of Strong Wind Gusts

Record Five Syracuse University Students Selected for Prestigious 2024 Goldwater Scholarship

ECS Professor’s Nature-Inspired Research on Banned Species

BioInspired Adds Research Subgroup Blending Arts, Sciences, Humanities

‘There is a Place for You Here’: Recruiting Local High School Students for Physics Lab Internships

Working With Biofilms

A Published Scientist

Opening Doors

Rachel Steinhardt Awarded NSF Grant to Study Brain Chemistry

American Physical Society Honors Professor Alison Patteson

A Year of Achievements

About the Award

Physics Professor Honored by the American Physical Society

The BioInspired Institute’s Growth Helps Fuel Student and Faculty Research (Podcast)

Satisfy Your Research Curiosity at BioInspired Institute Symposium Oct. 19 and 20

Sea Urchins Are Struggling to ‘Get a Grip’ as Climate Change Alters Ecosystems

Students Will Present Their Summer Research Wednesday and Thursday

Student Researchers

Other Presentations

James Henderson Named Director, Heidi Hehnly Named Associate Director of BioInspired Institute

New Initiatives, New Spaces

Key Achievements

BioInspired Institute Awards 2 Cross-Institutional Project Grants

Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Zhao Qin Recognized as International Association of Advanced Materials Fellow

Engineered Magic: Wooden Seed Carriers Mimic the Behavior of Self-Burying Seeds

Story by Byron Spice and Alex Dunbar

Physics Department’s Alison Patteson Named Cottrell Scholar

Pathways to Science Careers

Advancing Teaching��and Research

Biofilm, Cell Activity

Crown Honors Professors Hehnly, Nisenbaum Recognized

BioInspired Institute Showcased in The Washington Post

Getting to the ‘Point’: Powerful Computing Helps Identify Potential New Treatments for Coronaviruses

Story by John H. Tibbetts��

Biology Professor Investigates Polar Bear Paw Design Principles

Nature-Inspired Designs Could Offer Solutions for Global Challenges

Researcher Awarded NSF Future Manufacturing Seed Grant for Scale-Up Manufacturing of Therapeutic Cell Products

Partnering With RIT

Courses and Internships

BioInspired Institute Research Labs Spur Graduate Student Projects

BioInspired Institute’s First Symposium Provides Continuing Inspiration for Research Cluster Initiative

Setting A ‘High Bar’

Making Connections

Remarkable Energy

Mihovilovic Skanata Awarded McKnight Neuroscience Grant for Larval Fruit Fly Brain Research

Manipulating Minds

Movement Decisions

BioInspired Institute Hosts Inaugural Research Symposium Oct. 7

Showcasing Hard Work

Big Gathering, Big Picture

Professor Zhao Qin Receives NSF CAREER Award to Support Mycelium Research

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Professor’s Research Team Receives Multiple Awards at Society for Biomaterials Conference

Viewing a Microcosm Through a Physics Lens

Tiny creatures, big surprises

Looking ahead

(Bio)Sensing Protein Interactions

How It Works

A Tool for Detection

Dacheng Ren Elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows

Women in Science Day Profile: Biomaterials Engineer Developing Smart Materials of the Future

BioInspired and Ichor Therapeutics Partner for Project Management Training

Physicist and Chemist in College of Arts and Sciences Awarded NIH MIRA Grants

A&S Physicists Develop One of the First Models Capturing Dynamics of Confined Cell Movement

BioInspired Institute Partners With Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Professors Use Machine Learning to Guide the Design of Stable Nanoparticles

Professor Develops Model to Shape the Future of Pasta and Sustainability

Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Awarded Grant for Catheter Research Project

Bioengineering Ph.D. Student Receives National Recognition for Breakthrough Molecular Computational Tool

BioInspired — ��鶹��Ʒ