Kechun Zhang (BTI, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science) was recognized on December 11th as an Early Innovator for his work developing a scalable, biodegradable, sugar-based rubber. A potential substitute for petroleum-based products, the biosynthetic rubber could appear in a variety of products, from grocery bags to bathtub toys. The Early Innovator award recognizes nontenured faculty or researchers who are actively engaged in developing new technologies and moving them to market.
Made in Minnesota: Celebrating University Innovators
The following BTI members were also recognized for patents and/or licenses awarded over the past three years: Alptekin Aksan, Wei-Shou Hu, Alexander Khoruts, Michael Sadowsky, Friedrich Srienc, Lawrence Wackett, Ping Wang and Kechun Zhang.
Mike Smanski joins the University of Minnesota from MIT, where he developed new strategies for engineering multi-gene systems as an HHMI Fellow of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. Hired as part of the Synthetic Biology Cluster, Mike’s research focuses on natural product discovery and the precision engineering of bacterial species for biotechnological applications. Read More
A new research home in St. Paul is bringing longtime CBS faculty member Carrie Wilmot exciting new opportunities for collaboration.
For Carrie Wilmot, it’s all about the molecules.
Wilmot, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics and the newest member of the BioTechnology Institute, is a structural biologist. Her focus is on the physical structure proteins take that allows them to do their job of catalyzing life-giving chemical reactions within cells.
But she’s a structural biologist with a twist: She loves connecting her work with that of scientists in related disciplines, creating a network of knowledge that weaves together structure, function and, ultimately, application. In other words, she’ll tell you what a molecule looks like and how it does its job, then team with chemists, chemical engineers, microbiologists and others to explore not only why, but also what we might do with that knowledge to make the world a better place. Read More
Will Harcombe’s fascination with evolution and ecosystem function adds a dynamic dimension to the quest to better understand — and tap the power of — the microorganisms in our lives.
“Community” means different things to different people. To an urban planner, it’s a neighborhood bustling with people. To a landscape ecologist, it’s the collection of plants and animals that paint a riotous portrait of life on the raw canvas of a barren landscape.
To Will Harcombe, it’s a whole bunch of microbes duking it out — and occasionally teaming up — in an Erlenmeyer flask, or an intestinal tract, or a wastewater treatment plant as they work (evolutionarily speaking) to boost their survival in the moving-target milieu of other microbes working to do the same.
Harcombe, who joined the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the BioTechnology Institute through the Microbial Systems research cluster in December, studies the evolution of cooperation and competition in bacteria and other microorganisms from a molecular perspective. His goal: to understand and be able to quantitatively predict how microbial communities change over time due to the interplay of their constituents’ physiological activities. Read More
Professor Anthony Dean talks about his part-time faculty appointment in Southern China.
Tony Dean (EEB/BTI) recently accepted a part-time post at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, where he will set up a second research lab in addition to his current lab at the University of Minnesota. Here, he talks about the excitement and adventure of moving to China, along with some of the challenges he will face.
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