Sen. Reed, federal and state officials tour Brown’s Superfund lab

Sen. Jack Reed, accompanied by the New England regional director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the directors of the state’s environmental and health departments, visited Brown University’s Superfund Research Program Monday, April 9, 2012. The Brown program is one of 14 research groups funded by the National Institutes of Health.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the New England regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the directors of the state departments of Environmental Management and Health, visited Brown University’s Superfund Research Program Monday, April 9. 2012. The Brown lab is one of 14 research groups funded by the National Institutes of Health to assess and remediate Superfund sites nationwide.

Brown’s Superfund research group has been in operation since 2005. The program has brought in some $43 million in funding to Rhode Island since then, creating or supporting 45 jobs in the Ocean State. The group is working on the Centredale Manor Superfund site in Providence, the Gorham Manufacturing site in Providence, and the well-publicized soil contamination affecting residential properties in the Bay Street neighborhood in Tiverton. In these cases, scientists and students have tracked the flow of hazardous gases from contaminated sites, identified and tested toxic chemicals, worked with community and neighborhood associations and state and federal agencies to clean up contaminated areas, and offered insights into how chemicals can alter human health and reproduction.

“Rhode Island is a small, densely populated state with a proud industrial heritage, yet burdened by a toxic legacy,” said Kim Boekelheide, professor of medical science and a member of Brown’s Superfund research group. “Brown’s Superfund Research Program is a center of technical excellence, where we focus on new scientific approaches to clean up our post-industrial legacy of contaminated sites here in the Ocean State and throughout the nation.”

Reed toured the Brown group’s facility in the Laboratories for Molecular Medicine, 70 Ship St. in Providence, at 12:30 p.m. He was accompanied by Gwen Collman, director of extramural research and training, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the program’s primary funder; Curt Spalding, New England administrator for the EPA; Janet Coit, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management director; and Michael Fine, Rhode Island Department of Health director. Brown Provost Mark Schlissel also toured the facility.

The agenda for the visit is available online.

“Putting people to work to reduce the negative impacts of abandoned hazardous waste sites is a smart investment to protect public health, the environment, and our economy,” said Reed. “I am pleased that Brown’s federally funded Superfund Research Program is working through targeted research and community outreach to address health concerns and design novel techniques to reduce toxic chemicals at Superfund sites in Rhode Island.”

In addition to working on contaminated sites in Rhode Island, the Brown Superfund Research Program connects to Superfund sites nationwide, primarily through research. Specifically, the group has:

• Devised a computational model with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management to track the flow of contaminant vapors from groundwater and soil into homes and businesses. The model has been tested at the Gorham site in Rhode Island and is currently being tested at a hazardous waste site in Somerville, Mass.
• Investigated the potential environmental hazards from consumer products using nanomaterials (dimensions one-billionth of a meter, or 1/50,000th the width of a human hair). Current projects are looking at the release of nanosilver into sewer systems, how nanomaterials break down in landfills and how they infiltrate human lungs.
• Studied the effects of chemicals on human sperm and human female reproduction, especially pregnant women and chemically induced premature births.

Superfund-sized clean-up
Postdoctoral Researcher Pengpeng Grimshaw takes samples
from a Rhode Island riverbank to assess possible contaminant
levels and study novel cleanup processes that have been
developed in a Superfund lab at Brown.

The Brown Superfund Program has created innovative ways to connect with local communities and develop the next generation of environmental leaders. The centerpiece of this effort is the Community Environmental College, an eight-week summer leadership program for inner-city youth. Last year, nearly 50 urban high-school students, primarily in Providence and Pawtucket, engaged in various activities to raise community awareness of the environment, ranging from enlisting Latino restaurants to supply used vegetable oil for biodiesel fuel, recycling mattresses, and encouraging convenience stores to stock healthier food. Brown students work with youth and community groups on myriad projects, including a year-round after-school program called ECO Youth, weatherizing homes and the “Hospitals for a Healthy Environment in Rhode Island” programs, which promotes cost-effective, healthy, and sustainable health-care institutions.

“Through our Community Engagement Core, we help local groups clean up contaminated land and work with legislators and regulators to strengthen state policies on brownfields, school siting, and various environmental justice issues,” said Phil Brown, professor of sociology at Brown and a researcher with the Superfund Research Program. “I am excited about our engagement with so many high school students in the Community Environmental College, as they learn so much and apply themselves to the Healthy Corner Store Initiative, weatherization, green transportation, and other critical concerns.”

The Brown Superfund Research Program is up for renewed funding in 2014. The renewal comes amid a competitive landscape; a decade ago, the federal Superfund Research Program supported 21 such programs nationwide.

“Continued funding will allow us to improve the prediction of the health risks associated with complex chemical exposures and devise new remediation strategies for contaminated sites,” Boekelheide said.

- by Richard Lewis

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Brown’s Barrett Hazeltine Named one of America’s “Best 300 Professors” by The Princeton Review

Legendary engineering professor Barrett Hazeltine has been recognized by The Princeton Review as one America’s top undergraduate professors in its latest guidebook, The Best 300 Professors. The book profiles professors in 60 fields based on surveys by The Princeton Review and ratings on RateMyProfessors.com, the highest trafficked college professor ratings site in the country.

Data from RateMyProfessors.com identified more than 42,000 professors, and was culled down to a base list of 1,000 professors. After obtaining further input from university administrators and students, along with The Princeton Review’s surveys of the professors under consideration, the editors of The Princeton Review made the final choices of the professors.

Professor Hazeltine has taught engineering, management, and technology courses at Brown for more than 50 years, and currently teaches Management of Industrial and Non-Profit Organizations, Managerial Decision Making, and Appropriate Technology. He received awards for teaching from thirteen senior classes at Brown, 1972 to 1984, and 1990. In 1985, the award was named after him.

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Simple method could aid in medical imaging, chemotherapy

Researchers, led by Robert Hurt, professor of engineering, have found that a simple technique can swathe nanoparticles with a blanket of graphene, which could carry medical imaging contrast agents, allowing the nanoparticles to enhance imaging signals while shielding tissue from their potential toxic effects. They could also deliver chemotherapy drugs to tumors.

Full report online: cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/04/Graphene-Envelops-Nanoparticles.html

Full paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/nl2045952

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Andrew Peterson named Young Investigator

Andrew Peterson, assistant professor of engineering, has won a Young Investigator Award from the U.S. Navy. Peterson, one of only 26 young faculty nationwide to be selected, was recognized for scientific pursuits that show exceptional promise for the Navy and Marine Corps. The award is intended to promote the researcher’s professional development; Peterson will receive three years’ funding for research that could advance naval technology, the Navy announced Tuesday, March 27.

Peterson joined the Brown faculty in January. His primary research is devoted to figuring out how to produce carbon-based fuels from renewable sources. A key to such a breakthrough lies in overcoming the steep energy threshold needed to split carbon dioxide molecules into hydrocarbons. Peterson’s approach is to rely on quantum mechanics calculations to design catalysts to make those reactions more efficient and less costly.

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Brown to host advanced materials conference

Brown University has organized a conference to explore the frontier of advanced materials. The all-day gathering on Thursday, March 29, 2012, features talks and discussions by leading innovators and scientists in industry, academia, and the federal government. The meeting stems from a call by President Obama for American companies to develop advanced materials at twice the speed as currently possible and at a fraction of the cost.

Cyrus Wadia
“The federal government cannot by itself ensure that America remains the leader in this important sector.” PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Last June, President Obama announced the Materials Genome Initiative, an ambitious effort to assist American companies to develop advanced materials at twice the speed as currently possible and at a fraction of the cost. The proposal stems in part from the startling losses in employment and technology that have beset the U.S. manufacturing sector and is intended to reposition America as a leader in producing advanced materials from safer, lighter vehicles to solar cells as cheap as paint. In a new funding request for next fiscal year, Obama seeks more than $100 million to continue the initiative.

Hoping to capitalize on the momentum, Brown University has organized a conference on March 29, 2012, to explore synergies and research opportunities in advanced materials. The all-day gathering features talks and discussions by leading innovators and scientists in industry, academia, and the federal government.

The meeting takes place on the Brown campus at the Salomon Center for Teaching, on the College Green. An agenda, list of speakers and other information is available online.

Cyrus Wadia, assistant director for clean energy and materials research and development in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will give the plenary address. He will talk about how advanced materials are essential to economic security and human well-being.

“The Materials Genome Initiative will speed the discovery and development of many of those materials, and I will explain why the federal government cannot by itself ensure that America remains the leader in this important sector and why success will depend on a wide range of stakeholders and efforts, including regional efforts like those at Brown University,” Wadia said.

Other speakers and panelists will explore:

• new materials for automobiles, aerospace, energy conversion/storage, microelectronics and medical devices;
• emergent computational and experimental approaches;
• strategies for sharing, storing, and searching materials data;
• best practices for industry/university/government collaborations.

“Brown’s hosting of this meeting highlights the important role that the University can play in building strong research initiatives in this area,” said Clyde Briant, vice president for research. “The focus on the Materials Genome Initiative is an area where Brown already has great research strengths and one that should help us build partnerships with many other industries and universities.”

“Brown engineering’s unique interdisciplinary culture is ideally suited for producing new breakthroughs in advanced materials,” said Lawrence Larson, dean of engineering. “These breakthroughs often occur at the boundaries between traditional disciplines, like materials science, mechanical engineering, or electrical engineering. We look forward to developing exciting new collaboration opportunities that will result from this conference.”

The Materials Genome Initiative is connected to a larger call announced by Obama last summer to enlist industry, universities, and the federal government to invest in emerging technologies that will create manufacturing jobs and enhance U.S. competitiveness. Earlier this month, the president also asked for $1 billion to create a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, to fund up to 15 regional hubs of manufacturing excellence.

“I’m calling for all of us to come together — private sector industry, universities, and the government — to spark a renaissance in American manufacturing and help our manufacturers develop the cutting-edge tools they need to compete with anyone in the world,” Obama said in a speech last summer. “With these key investments, we can ensure that the United States remains a nation that invents it here and manufactures it here and creates high-quality, good-paying jobs for American workers.”

The Materials Genome Initiative would direct funding to the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The initiative will fund computational tools, software, new methods for material characterization, and the development of open standards and databases that will make the process of discovery and development of advanced materials faster, less expensive, and more predictable.

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President-Elect Paxson Visits School of Engineering

On Tuesday, March 20, Dean Larry Larson had the pleasure of leading President-Elect Christina Paxson on a tour of Barus and Holley, Prince Lab, and the Giancarlo Labs. This was the President-Elect’s first extended visit to campus since her selection as the University’s 19^th President on March 2. During the visit, Paxson also met with senior administrators and faculty members and toured the libraries.

During her tour of the School of Engineering, President-Elect Paxson had the opportunity to meet many professors, graduate and undergraduate students, and staff, and see demonstrations of some of the research that is being conducted at the School.

Outstanding faculty members Arto Nurmikko, Gabriel Taubin, Ben Kimia, Rashid Zia, Chris Bull, Kenny Breuer, and Nitin Padture explained some of their ongoing research projects to the President-Elect.

She also had the opportunity to sit in on Professor Allan Bower’s freshman EN0040 class, where she was able to see student presentations.

“Having the opportunity to present our project to President-Elect Paxson was wonderful, not only because she had a very friendly and amiable demeanor, but also because she showed evident appreciation for our ideas,” said Emily Toomey ’15.

“Although the project at first seems like it has a simple objective, it required a great deal of collaboration, creativity, and application of engineering principles to create a successful result. By asking questions about our thought processes and how the MATLAB functions worked, President-Elect Paxson displayed a genuine interest in our efforts that made the project even more worthwhile,” added Toomey.

“What I enjoyed most about President-Elect Paxson's visit was the genuine interest that she showed in understanding our project,” said Maggie Coats-Thomas ’15. “The questions that she asked made it clear that she understood what was going on and appreciated our efforts, which I thought was very rewarding. She was very friendly and I am so pleased I got the opportunity to interact with her so soon after she was elected.”

The tour also provided the new President-Elect with the opportunity to see some of the space and facility constraints and challenges that currently exist in Barus & Holley. In an interview with the Brown Daily Herald, Paxson said of engineering, “it is clear that they’ve had a lot of growth, but they’re very tight on space.”

Overall, the tour was a great success in showcasing both the exciting work that is happening in the School of Engineering, and the need for expansion and growth.

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‘Bed-of-nails’ breast implant deters cancer cells

Researchers at Brown University have created an implant that appears to deter breast cancer cell regrowth. Made from a common federally approved polymer, the implant is the first to be modified at the nanoscale in a way that causes a reduction in the blood-vessel architecture that breast cancer tumors depend upon, while also attracting healthy breast cells. Results are published in Nanotechnology.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — One in eight women in the United States will develop breast cancer. Of those, many will undergo surgery to remove the tumor and will require some kind of breast reconstruction afterward, often involving implants. Cancer is an elusive target, though, and malignant cells return for as many as one-fifth of women originally diagnosed, according to the American Cancer Society.

A selectively inhospitable surface
A bumpy “bed of nails” surface does not allow cancerous
cells to gather the nutrients they need to thrive — possibly
because cancerous cells are stiffer and less flexible than
normal cells, which can manage the bumps and thrive.
Credit: Webster Lab/Brown University

Would it be possible to engineer implant materials that might drive down that rate of relapse? Brown University biomedical scientists report some promising advances. The team has created an implant with a “bed-of-nails” surface at the nanoscale (dimensions one-billionth of a meter, or 1/50,000th the width of a human hair) that deters cancer cells from dwelling and thriving. Made out of a common federally approved polymer, the implant is the first of its kind, based on a review of the literature, with modifications at the nanoscale that cause a reduction in the blood-vessel architecture on which breast cancer tumors depend — while also attracting healthy breast cells.

“We’ve created an (implant) surface with features that can at least decrease (cancerous) cell functions without having to use chemotherapeutics, radiation, or other processes to kill cancer cells,” said Thomas Webster, associate professor of engineering and the corresponding author on the paper in Nanotechnology. “It’s a surface that’s hospitable to healthy breast cells and less so for cancerous breast cells.”

Webster and his lab have been modifying various implant surfaces to promote the regeneration of bone, cartilage, skin, and other cells. In this work, he and Lijuan Zhang, a fourth-year graduate student in chemistry, sought to reshape an implant that could be used in breast reconstruction surgery that would not only attract healthy cells but also repel any lingering breast-cancer cells. The duo created a cast on a glass plate using 23-nanometer-diameter polystyrene beads and polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA), a biodegradable polymer approved by the FDA and used widely in clinical settings, such as stitches. The result: An implant whose surface was covered with adjoining, 23-nanometer-high pimples. The pair also created PLGA implant surfaces with 300-nanometer and 400-nanometer peaks for comparison.

In lab tests after one day, the 23-nanometer-peak surfaces showed a 15-percent decrease in the production of a protein (VEGF) upon which endothelial breast-cancer cells depend, compared to an implant surface with no surface modification. The 23-nanometer surface showed greater reduction in VEGF concentration when compared to the 300-nanometer and 400-nanometer-modified implants as well.

It’s unclear why the 23-nanoneter surface appears to work best at deterring breast-cancer cells. Webster thinks it may have to do something with the stiffness of malignant breast cells. When they come into contact with the bumpy surface, they are unable to fully wrap themselves around the rounded contours, depriving them of the ability to ingest the life-sustaining nutrients that permeate the surface.

“This is like a bed-of-nails surface to them,” Webster said.

“I would guess that surface peaks less than 23 nanometers would be even better,” Webster added, although polystyrene beads with such dimensions don’t yet exist. “The more you can push up that cancerous cell, the more you keep it from interacting with the surface.”

The pair also found that the 23-nanometer semispherical surface yielded 15 percent more healthy endothelial breast cells compared to normal surface after one day of lab tests.

Webster and Zhang next plan to investigate why the nanomodified surfaces deter malignant breast cells, to create surface features that yield greater results, and to determine whether other materials can be used.

The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Research Resources and the Hermann Foundation funded the research. Michael Platek at the University of Rhode Island helped with the electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis.

- by Richard Lewis

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