Zia wins PECASE award

Rashid Zia, assistant professor of engineering, has been named one of this year’s winners of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. The White House named the latest group of winners this week.

The PECASE award recognizes outstanding scientists and engineers who, early in their careers, show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge. It is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. In addition to the recognition, Zia is expected to receive $200,000 annually over five years to support his research.

More of the Brown press release here:
http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2009/07/pecase

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Breuer collaborates on bat research

An excerpt from a recent Forbes article:
Researchers at Brown University are three years into another Air Force grant, this a five-year, $6 million grant shared among five other universities, to understand perhaps the most impressive fliers of all--bats.

Unlike insects and birds, bats have long thin fingers that reach through their wings, and their wings are made out of an extraordinarily stretchy membrane. This allows them to twist and shape their wings in ways that other creatures can't, and so maneuver quickly and accurately through tight spaces like caves. They can take off almost vertically from the ground and they can take off hanging upside down.

"Nature does many, many things we don't know how to do in engineering," laments Kenneth Breuer, an engineering professor at Brown and the principal investigator on the Air Force grant.

Breuer and his Brown colleague Sharon Swartz, an evolutionary biologist, put bats in wind tunnels and study how they move their wings during takeoff, flight and landing. Using lasers that illuminate tiny particles in the air flow created by the bats' wings, the researchers study the turbulence created.

Bat research highlighted in Forbes on June 26, 2009.

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Liu wins Acta Biomaterialia Graduate Student Award

Huinan Liu (Brown BME Graduate) was just selected as the Acta Biomaterialia Graduate Student Award winner for her paper:

"An in vitro evaluation of the Ca/P ratio for the cytocompatibility of nano-to-micron particulate calcium phosphates for bone regeneration”, Acta Biomaterialia 2008; 4:1472-1479.

Acta Biomaterialia currently has the 2nd highest journal impact factor in the Materials Science, Biomaterials category.

The award letter reads:
"The field of nominees was very impressive, and the task of selecting a winner was challenging. Not only did your paper demonstrate exceptional value to the biomaterials community, which was also evidenced by its download ranking, but your personal credentials and recommendations were also exemplary. We will present this award at the 2009 Materials Science & Technology Meeting in Pittsburgh in October."

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Superfund renewed to create a safer and healthier RI

Brown's Superfund Research Program (SRP) brings together researchers from engineering, biology and medicine, geological sciences, and sociology to investigate human health risks of environmental contamination, and to design new technologies to mitigate those risks. The grant amount is $15.4 million over a period of five years (April 2009-March 2014). This new award serves as a renewal to our original grant, which began in 2005 and expired in April 2009.

The vision of the grant is to create a safer and healthier Rhode Island through basic and applied research, education, training, and community outreach related to health effects and remediation of chemical contamination. We have partnerships with the Rhode Island Department of Health, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, and many local community groups.

Here is the SRP website: http://brown.edu/Research/SRP/

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Nanoparticles eliminate bacterial infection on prosthetic

Infected implants now have a foe. Brown University researchers have created a nanoparticle that can penetrate a bacterial-produced film on prosthetics and kill the bacteria. The finding, published in the International Journal of Nanomedicine, is the first time that iron-oxide nanoparticles have been shown to eliminate a bacterial infection on an implanted prosthetic device.

Press release here: http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2009/06/biotechnology

Resulted in July 9th Providence Journal story: http://www.projo.com/education/content/BROWN_CANNONBALLS_07-09-09_5EEVHR2_v9.3015298.html
Nano “cannonballs” bash infected implants
Patients suffering from infected prostheses may now have an ally in tiny “cannonballs.” The nanoparticles created by graduate student Erik Taylor and engineering associate professor Thomas Webster have been shown in lab tests to kill bacteria that congregate on implants.

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Hydrodynamics of Microorganisms

Professor Powers' article, Hydrodynamics of Swimming Mircoorganisms, was accepted this week in Reports on Progress in Physics.
Preview the article here: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/652169/reviseLaugaPowersv3.pdf
Abstract.
Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection, and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small scales relevant to cell swimming, tens of microns and below. At this scale, inertia is unimportant and the Reynolds number is small. Our emphasis is on the simple physical picture and fundamental flow physics phenomena in this regime. We first give a brief overview of the mechanisms for swimming motility, and of the basic properties of flows at low Reynolds number, paying special attention to aspects most relevant for swimming, such as resistance matrices for solid bodies, flow singularities, and kinematic requirements for net translation. Then we review classical theoretical work on cell motility, in particular early calculations of swimming kinematics with prescribed stroke and the application of resistive-force theory and slender-body theory to flagellar locomotion. After examining the physical means by which flagella are actuated, we outline areas of active research, including hydrodynamic interactions, biological locomotion in complex fluids, the design of small-scale artificial swimmers, and the optimization of locomotion strategies.

In addition, some of his recent work was highlighted on the NSF news page:
Scientists studying how marine bacteria move have discovered that a sharp variation in water current segregates right-handed bacteria from their left-handed brethren, impelling the microbes in opposite directions. This finding and the possibility of quickly and cheaply implementing the segregation of two-handed objects in the laboratory could have a big impact on industries like the pharmaceutical industry, for which the separation of right-handed from left-handed molecules can be crucial to drug safety.
More here: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114587&org=NSF&from=news

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RI Woman of the Year

The Rhode Island Commission on Women (RICW) is pleased to announce the 2009 Women of the Year, Lynn Ewart-Paine, ’85 ’86 Sc.M. ’90 Ph.D., Science and Technology. This award recognizes influential women in Rhode Island who demonstrate a history of individual achievement, or who have made lasting and positive contributions in the community to help elevate the presence of women and improve the quality of life for women in the state.

Created in 1989, the Women of the Year Award celebrates the work of pioneering Rhode Island women who are influential in areas such as the arts, business, economic development, employment, education, health, legal rights and politics. These women have a positive impact on the lives of women and/or girls in our state through their work as role models and mentors.

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