| Debra T. Auguste
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, Harvard University
Auguste
received her S.B. (1999) in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her Ph.D. (2005) in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. Prior to her arrival at Harvard she was a Postdoctoral Associate in the lab of Dr. Robert Langer at MIT. Auguste's lab examines the differentiation of stem cells to learn how they respond to chemical and environmental cues to become dedicated cells; the ultimate goal is to repair organs with viable tissues that mimic healthy ones. Her lab also exploits cell-material interactions by developing biodegradable, polymeric drug delivery vehicles for cancer and gene therapy. Auguste relies on a multidisciplinary approach for her research, combining cellular and molecular biology, polymer chemistry, and molecular modeling.
Fawwaz Habbal
Associate Dean for Research Planning, Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Habbal's research interests focus on superconductivity, magnetic materials, and nano-composites. Dr. Habbal has also done research in the area of digital imaging and CMOS sensors. He received his Ph.D. in Experimental Physics, and before joining Harvard in 2001, he was Vice President, Senior Research and Engineering Fellow at Polaroid Corporation. At Polaroid he was responsible for product delivery of many advanced products including magnetic storage, medical imaging, graphic arts, digital imaging, and consumer film and hardware.
Paula T. Hammond
Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Mark Hyman, Jr., Career Development Chair, MIT
Paual T. Hammond
earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1993 from MIT; a M.S. degree from Georgia Tech in 1988; and a S.B. in Chemical Engineering from MIT in 1984. Hammond's research and educational program emphasizes the use of molecular aspects in the study and development of new materials and processes. Its basis is the molecular design and synthesis of self-assembling polymeric systems, and the understanding and use of secondary interactions to guide their assembly at surfaces as well as in the bulk state.
There are two primary areas of research in the group. The first area involves the use of polymer-surface interactions as a guide to the assembly of single and multicomponent micron and submicron scale structures on a broad range of surfaces as a means of microfabrication. The group has developed a new approach to patterning polymer thin films on a micron length scale using nonlithographic techniques that involve the manipulation of surface functionality and polymer adsorption technique. The basis of this approach is the use of secondary, or non-specific interactions, in combination with steric repulsion and electrostatic interactions, to chemically direct the deposition of molecules and larger scale materials systems onto chemically patterned surfaces. Applications range from electro-optical devices to biologically active functional surfaces and sensors.
The second area approaches nanoscale self-assembly through the design of functionalized block copolymers. Block copolymers, which consist of two or more covalently bound polymer segments of different chemical composition, are known for their ability to microphase separate and organize into mesophase structures on nanometer length scales in the bulk state, and at surfaces and interfaces, based on chemical differences between blocks. The group has focused investigations on the role of molecular architecture on the nanoscale ordering of block copolymer morphology, particularly for copolymer systems with asymmetric (irregular or nonlinear) blocks. Systems of interest include liquid crystalline block copolymers for electro-mechanical and electro-optical applications, and dendritic-linear block copolymers as nano-encapsulants or hosts for delivery and membrane applications. In general, concepts of thermodynamics and self-assembly are used in my group to create or control order on the nanometer to micron scale.
Donald E. Ingber
Professor of Pathology; Senior Staff member in the Vascular Biology Program, Departments of Surgery and Pathology at Children's Hospital in Boston; Associated member of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Dana Farber-Harvard Cancer Center, Harvard Materials Research Science & Engineering Center, and MIT Center for Bioengineering.Harvard Medical School Donald E. Ingber, holds B.A., M.A., M. Phil., M.D., and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University and is currently at Harvard Medical School. Ingber's research focuses on how vascular cells and tissues structure themselves so that they can change shape, move and grow. He pioneered the concept that living cells mechanically structure themselves using an architectural system first described by Buckminster Fuller, known as tensegrity. Over the past twenty years, he has pioneered the combined use of techniques from various fields, including molecular cell biology, engineering, chemistry, and computer science, to approach questions relating to how mechanical forces transmitted over extracellular matrix attachment scaffolds influence cell form and function and thereby, control tissue development. His work led to the discovery that transmembrane adhesion receptors, known as "integrins", mediate angiogenesis as well as cellular mechanotransduction (the cellular response to force).
Ingber also discovered TNP-470, the first angiogenesis inhibitor to enter clinical trials for the treatment of human cancer. He has written over 195 scientific papers, is the recipient of many honors, and sits on many national committees including the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council/National Academies of Sciences & Engineering, and the NIH-NSF Steering Committee on NanoBioTechnology. He is also an inventor on 18 patents which cover technologies ranging from new cancer drugs and drug-screening assays to medical devices, micromanufacturing techniques, and computer software. In addition, he assisted in the founding of two start-up companies focused on tissue engineering and medical devices, and is currently an active consultant to the biotechnology and investment communities. Ingber's most recent honor was his inclusion in Esquire magazine's Best & Brightest issue in December 2002.
Karen McNally-Heintzelman
Project Manager of Product Development, WMR Biomedical, Inc.
Karen McNally-Heintzelman is a physical scientist with a background in applied physics, optics, and materials. She was born in Sydney, Australia and moved to the United States in 1998. She completed her Ph.D. in Physics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, earning the University Medal for her doctoral Thesis, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at The University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Prior to joining WMR Biomedical in 2005, McNally-Heintzelman spent four years working as an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Biology and Biomedical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. During that time, McNally-Heintzelman and her collaborators founded Advent Surgical Innovations, LLC, which specialized in the development of surgical adhesive products and surgical instrumentation. During the past 12 years McNally-Heintzelman's research has focused on the development of a range of materials, including light-activated protein and polymer-based adhesives, which function as tissue closure devices. Investigations have focused on the determination of optimal laser and solder parameters for tissue repair in terms of tensile strength, repair stability, temperature rise and damage, and the microscopic nature of the bonds formed. In addition, McNally-Heintzelman developed and implemented a dynamic mathematical model describing the optical-thermal response of laser-irradiated tissue using the popular electrical circuit simulator SPICE. The model incorporates the temperature-dependent optical and thermal parameters of the solder and tissue, as well as the time-domain behavior of a scanning laser beam. Numerical results have been compared with experimental results obtained from in vivo animal studies in the clinical areas of neurology, urology, cardiology, ophthalmology and dermatology, to investigate the influence of variations in the laser and solder parameters and to increase the understanding of the mechanisms of laser tissue soldering.
L. Mahadevan
Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, Harvard University
L. Mahadevan studied engineering at the Indian
Institute of Technology-Chennai before turning to applied mathematics
and mechanics at Stanford University, where he obtained his PhD. Prior
to joining Harvard University in the fall of 2003, he was the inaugural
holder of the Schlumberger Chair in Complex Physical Systems in the
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge
University, and simultaneously a Professorial Fellow at Trinity
College. He has taught and held visiting positions around the world
including stints at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ecole
Normale Superieure, Paris and the University of Chile, Santiago, and is
currently the Schlumberger Visiting Professor of Mathematics at Oxford
University (2004-07).
His work centers around using mathematics to understand the nonlinear and non-equilibrium mechanical behavior of living and nonliving matter, particularly at the scale of the everyday world and is thus closely tied in with experience and experiments. A particular joy is "to discover the sublime in the mundane" and uncover explanations of robust everyday phenomena that are easy to observe, often not so well understood, and are of relevance far beyond what might be first envisaged.
Mikhail Lukin
Professor of Physics, Harvard University
Mikhail Lukin's research is in the areas of quantum optics
and atomic physics. The emphasis is on studies of quantum systems
consisting of interacting photons, atoms, molecules and electrons
coupled to realistic environments. We are developing new techniques
for controlling the quantum dynamics of such systems, and studying
fundamental physical phenomena associated with them. These
techniques are used to explore new physics, as well as to facilitate
implementation of potential applications in emerging areas
such as quantum information science and in more traditional
fields such as nonlinear optics. In the course of this work
we are also exploring the emerging interfaces between quantum
optics and atomic physics on the one hand, and condensed matter
and mesoscopic physics on the other.
Charles Marcus
Professor of Physics, Harvard University
Marcus completed his Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard University. His urrent research concerns experimental investigation of mesoscopic phenomena and phase coherence and electron spin effects in semiconductor microstructures and other submicron electronic devices. This work includes device nanofabrication, low-noise electron transport measurement, and characterization of quantum coherence by observing transport effects such as localization, quantization, and conductance fluctuations. Much of this work has focused on clean, ballistic semiconductor structures, such as chaotic quantum dots, with more recent work emphasizing novel fabrication approaches and systems, effects of electron spin, measurements of electron decoherence, and potential applications of nanostructures to quantum information and quantum computing. Some recent projects in the group have investigated: Electron phase coherence in quantum dots; coulomb blockade effects other many-body effects in quantum dots; experiments in quantum chaos; adiabatic charge pumping and geometric phase effects in mesoscopics; coherence effects in carbon nanotubes; spin effects in mesoscopics; and experimental schemes for quantum computing and quantum information processing in the solid state.
David J. Mooney
Professor of Bioengineering, Harvard University
Mooney
completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. He also served as a Post-doctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School from 1992-1994. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1987. Before coming to Harvard University
as Gordon McKay Professor of Bioengineering, he spent ten years conducting research and teaching at the University of Michigan; his last appointment at Michigan in 2001 spanned two schools -- Professor in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, and Professor of Biologic & Materials Sciences in the School of Dentistry. The basic question that drives Mooney's research is: how do mammalian cells receive information from the materials in their environment. Mooney plays an active role in the major
biomedical/chemical engineering professional societies, serves as an editorial advisor to several journals and publishers, organizes and chairs leading conferences and symposia, and participates on several industry advisory boards.
Kit Parker
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, Harvard University
In 2004 Kit Parker joined the Harvard DEAS bioengineering team from Baltimore, where he was a postdoctoral fellow in Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He also spent three years as a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, where he won the Derek Bok Certificate of Distinction in Teaching in 1999.
Parker serves as the PI for the Disease Biophysics Group (DBG) at Harvard University, an interdisciplenary team of biologists, physicists, engineers and material scientists actively researching the structure/function relationship in cardiac tissue engineering. The DBG seeks to quantify cellular mechanotransduction at the single-cell and tissue level to understand the effect on cardiac electrophysiology and cardiac disease states. Leveraging advanced experimental and theoretical methodologies, the group is actively expanding research into 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional tissue engineered cardiac muscle with defined anisotropies and enhanced contractile properties.
Samuel Stupp
Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science, Chemistry and Medicine and Director, Institute for BioNantechnology in Medicine, Northwestern University
Stupp earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University and his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Stupp group is interdisciplinary in nature and organized around collaborative projects with participants from various fields of science and engineering, spanning a number of departments on Northwestern's Evanston and Chicago campuses. The group is divided into three subgroups, each focusing on distinct, but related areas:
The Biomaterials subgroup focuses on cell interactions with a variety of self-assembled structures to design functional materials for regenerative medicine. The Nanoscience, Synthesis & Devices subgroup focuses on the construction of novel self-assembling molecules and their use in a range of functional applications including optical, electronic and catalytic materials. The Materials Properties and Characterization Subgroup focuses on the development and application of novel techniques to understand, control and improve the structural properties of self-assembled materials.
David A. Tirrell
Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Chair, Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology
Research in the Tirrell group combines organic, biological, and materials chemistry to make new polymeric systems of controlled molecular and supramolecular architectures. Two kinds of systems are under active investigation: artificial proteins made by expression of artificial genes in microbial cells, and flexible polymeric nanowires and nanotubes made by a membrane templating approach. In each case, investigators are concerned not only with architectural control but also with the functional properties of the macromolecular system of interest.
Artificial proteins represent a new class of macromolecular materials that bridge the gap that has traditionally separated natural polymers from their synthetic counterparts. While synthetic polymers are interesting and enormously important, their utility derives in large part from their physical properties; chemists have yet to capture in synthetic polymers the more subtle catalytic, informational, and transduction properties of proteins and nucleic acids. The reason for this distinction may lie in the levels of architectural control to be found in each class of polymers; proteins and nucleic acids are characterized by defined lengths, sequences, and stereochemistries, while synthetic polymers are highly heterogeneous molecular mixtures. This raises interesting questions regarding the kinds of materials science that could be done if new macromolecular architectures could be created with precise control of the most important structural variables.
Microbial expressions of artificial genes provides a means of doing just that. The process begins with molecular design--the specification of a chain structure that the investigator believes will exhibit interesting (and perhaps useful) behavior. Th target structure is then encoded into an artificial gene, and the gene is expressed in an appropriate microbial host. Current targets include novel liquid crystal phases, macromolecular surface arrays, reversible hydrogels, and artificial extracellular matrices for use in tissue regeneration and repair. An important theme of all of these projects is the development of methods for efficient incorporation of new monomers (beyond the twenty "normal" amino acids) into artificial proteins in vivo.
The second program under development in the Tirrell group is directed toward fabrication of nanometer-scale wires, networks, and tubes. The approach involves patterning of fluid lipid bilayer membranes via micromanipulation, followed by photopolymerization and crosslinking of macromonomers confined by the membrane template. The method offers substantial advantages in comparison with other patterning techniques, in that it yields flexible structures that can be manipulated readily in three dimensions. Current efforts are directed toward development of new patterning chemistries and toward new methods for introduction of controlled electronic, mechanical, and transport properties.
Robert M. Westervelt
Mallinckrodt Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics and Director of the NSF-funded Nanoscale Science
and Engineering Center
Westervelt earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley and his B.S. in Physics from California Institute of Technology. His group investigates the quantum behavior of electrons inside nanoscale structures and develops tools for the manipulation of biological systems. The motion of electrons through a nanoscale system is inherently quantum mechanical. Electrons move as waves through a two-dimensional electron gas and are trapped as particles inside a quantum dot. Westervelt's group uses scanning probe microscopy at low temperatures to image the flow of electron waves (Topinka et al. 2003) and to image a quantum dot that holds just one electron (Fallahi et al. 2005). Using scanning probe microscopy, they have made an imaging interferometer for electron waves with fringes spaced by half the Fermi wavelength (LeRoy et al. 2005). Control of individual electrons provides new approaches for ultrasmall electronics, including devices for quantum information processing.
Following their original research to make an artificial molecule (Livermore et al. 1996), Westervelt's group has developed double and triple dots in which the occupation of each dot can be reduced to one electron. A triple dot can form a quantum ratchet for single electrons (Vidan et al. 2004). Custom semiconductor chips provide new opportunities for the observation and control of biological cells and systems. Westervelt's group has combined the power of an integrated circuit with the biocompatibility of a microfluidic system to make hybrid IC / Microfluidic chips. A two-dimensional array of microcoils in the IC acts as a display with magnetic pixels can be turned on, to trap and move single biological cells in the microfluidic system above (Lee et al. 2005). A chip that uses dielectrophoresis to move non-magnetic objects has also been developed (Hunt et al. 2004). Robert Westervelt is Director of the NSF-funded Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at Harvard University, which includes participants at MIT and UC Santa Barbara, and supports outreach through the Museum of Science, Boston.
George M. Whitesides
Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor
Whitesides earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology and his A.B. from Harvard University. His group's work in four areas: biochemistry, materials science, catalysis and physical organic chemistry. Each of these areas requires development of the fundamental skills of experimental chemistry - synthesis and characterization of new compounds, examination of relations between molecular structure and reactivity or physical properties - but each, in addition, develops skill in other techniques - surface spectroscopy, microbiology, electron microscopy, ellipsometry, reactor design, measurement of such physical properties.
The group is eclectic and generalist in its approach: at different times research on a particular problem may require organic synthesis, organometallic chemistry, spectroscopy, computer analysis, biochemistry, molecular biology or a wide range of other techniques. The specific foci of the research vary widely. Work in biochemistry currently centers on adhesion of mammalian cells, viruses and bacteria to surfaces, polyvalency, rational drug design, and biophysical studies centered around capillary electrophoresis and surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy. Those coworkers concerned with materials science are occupied with the fabrication of nanostructures, microfluidic systems, microelectromechanical systems, and 3-D microstructures. The synthesis and characterization of structurally well-defined organic surfaces (especially using self-assembled monolayers) and solids, and the use of these assemblies to study physical properties such as wettability and biocompatibility, are an important component of this work. This area also includes studies in physical optics and unconventional methods of lithography (soft lithography; various forms of near-field optical lithography).
Much of the work in catalysis centers on fuel cells. Problems in physical-organic chemistry address issues in self-assembly, especially using meso-scale systems (objects with dimensions from 10 µm - 10 mm, held together by capillary and/or magnetic forces). Computation and simulation is also important tools in the group. The group uses classical chemical techniques to work in areas of research that lie at the boundaries between chemistry and biology, catalysis, solid state physics, and engineering. Students who work in the group emerge as generalists, and there is a strong emphasis in learning how to carry out multidisciplinary and multiinvestigator research, and how to communicate the results of research effectively.
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