Millennium Café

Rachel Brennan | Environmental Engineering

Environmental urgency, growing political support, and public resolve are driving the demand for strategies to reverse global warming. The forthcoming Center for Climate Solutions and Sustainability Assessment provides a portfolio of engineering guidance, assessment, and professional education services to enable industry, community, and government clients to reduce their carbon footprint, improve their financial stability, and increase their workforce capacity to help solve complex sustainability challenges today. 

Stephen Chmely | Agricultural & Biological Engineering

Plants developed a remarkable hierarchical woody structure some 400 million years ago that allows them to grow towards the sun, conduct moisture and nutrients, and resist attack from harmful organisms. My group takes inspiration from these structures to create new materials by 3D printing from plant-derived polymers. I will discuss our efforts to create and characterize new materials from renewable resources and I will speculate on how these new materials could be deployed to reverse anthropogenic climate change.

AFM applications in the life sciences have increased exponentially in recent years and include the ability to perform live-cell mechanical property mapping, high resolution molecular and cellular imaging, and fast scanning of dynamic biological processes. The MCL has two “Bio” optimized AFM instruments and we will highlight two recent projects (Anthropology & Chemical Engineering) that leveraged the ability to perform both fluorescence microscopy and nanoscale imaging.

The Nucleocapsid (N) protein of SARS-CoV-2 is the key analyte in rapid antigen tests. Our team recently determined the first 3D structure of the N protein (48 kDa) using cryo-EM. Molecular modeling suggests high similarity in conserved regions of the N protein across all variants of concern — ensuring the effectiveness of lateral-flow tests. Overall, these structural tools can guide the design of new immune therapies as we plan for future variants and pandemics. 

Electrochemistry provides a means for driving chemical transformations directly with electricity. The development of electrochemical processes for chemical and fuel production has become attractive in recent years due to the falling cost of renewable energy generation and the increasingly apparent environmental impact of conventional technologies. However, success in this endeavor relies on a concerted and collaborative effort between scientists with seeming disparate fields of expertise. This presentation will provide an overview of such devices, the contemporary challenges of chemical and fuel production via electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction, and the planned research activities of the Clark Electrocatalysis Laboratory.

Established in 2020, the Center for Biodevices aims to bridge foundational science and clinical applications of biodevices, while enabling success of faculty, clinicians and students across multiple disciplines. The Center’s purpose is to initiate and support leading-edge research in biodevices by facilitating impactful collaborations across the University.  This presentation will describe the Center’s approach toward fostering multidisciplinary research collaborations.