Materials Research and Life Sciences Meet at CrossOver Conference
Materials scientists are looking deep into the tiniest cells to understand how nature has created living molecular machines. Physicians are looking for new materials to help them peer into the hidden places of the body, to deliver drugs, and to regenerate bone and tissue. Chemists, biologists, and physicists ponder the underlying properties at the borderline of organic and inorganic materials. "The greatest advances will come at the boundaries of these fields," Penn State President Graham Spanier predicted in his opening remarks at Crossover 2005, a meeting of Penn State scientists from each of these disciplines, held at the University Park campus in October.
CrossOver 2005 poster display
Along with representatives of more than 40 companies, including some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers, plus officials from the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation, Penn State scientists were invited to hear and see their colleagues’ latest research on biosensors, cancer, neuroscience, and regenerative medicine.
Penn State is the nation’s leading materials research university, both in R&D expenditures and number of highly cited researchers. This area of strength, focused in the Materials Research Institute, complements the nationally known Hershey Medical Center and Penn State College of Medicine, and the new Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, an organization representing faculty from seven colleges within the University that are involved in the life sciences.
To promote the collaboration between materials research and life sciences, Penn State is embarking on the largest project in its history, a $120 million to be located adjacent to the current Life Sciences building at the center of the University Park campus. A new materials research building connected to a second life sciences building will provide faculty with a physical as well as an intellectual interface, says Carlo Pantano, director of the Materials Research Institute. The materials and life sciences buildings will provide a locus for collaboration in the emerging field of bionanomaterials small machines and man-made materials, often based on biological processes, used for biosensing, diagnosis, and repair of the body.
Postdoctoral scholar Richard Eitel talks about this lab-on-a-chip poster.
"These are very exciting areas here at Penn State," President Spanier told the Crossover audience. "We want to keep the walls low here and open the doors of collaboration."
"The hope of this gathering," said Channa Reddy, director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, "is that researchers will find a way to strengthen the interface between materials and medicine, and between the researchers at University Park and the Hershey campus."
J&J provides corporate funding
Thirty-two talks and 70 poster presentations conveyed the breadth of research being conducted across the Penn State campuses in areas ranging from Down syndrome to the use of moth antennae in biosensors for detection of chemical weapons and land mines. The interest of industry in Penn State research was made clear by guest speaker Donald Bone, director of the Corporate Science and Technology Office of Johnson & Johnson, a $54 billion corporation that expects to grow into a $100 billion corporation in the next few years by developing breakthroughs in biomaterials and bionanotechnology made at Penn State and other major research universities. This year Johnson & Johnson’s $200,000 gift was matched by the Huck Institute and MRI to fund seven winning research proposals. The two institutes then added another $100,000 to fund some of the interesting proposals that were near winners. "Johnson & Johnson wants to invest in exciting R&D by individuals and programs," Dr. Bone said. "The whole Penn State operation is run as smoothly and as well as any in the country. We like to work with universities that make it easy for us to work with them."
Patent winners recognized
Penn State ranks third nationally in industry funded research, says Eva Pell, Penn State vice president for research and dean of the graduate school. "We do more work with industry than almost any university in the country." Making a pitch for the importance of technology transfer from university lab to start-up companies and to industry, Dr. Pell cited a key reason for university involvement in patenting and licensing is to aid in the economic development of the region, the Commonwealth, and the nation. Secondly, tech transfer provides another method of funding scientific research. Of least importance is the potential for making money, she said.
Penn State faculty and researchers were granted 46 patents in 2004.
In a brief ceremony honoring the more than 100 faculty and students whose names appear on the 46 patents issued to Penn State in 2004, Dr. Pell presented the inventors with wood plaques engraved with a copy of the first page of their patent. Distinguished guests included Dr. Kathie L. Olsen, Deputy Director of the National Science Foundation, and J. Lloyd and Dorothy Huck, Penn State alumni and generous benefactors.
Crossover 2005 was sponsored by Life Sciences Greenhouse of Central Pennsylvania, Lampire Biological Laboratories, Materials Research Institute, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, and Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, College of Medicine.
