2014-2015 MSE Annual Report

Boston University College of Engineering Division of Materials Science & Engineering 2014-2015

CONTENTS

Highlights .................................................................................................................................. 3 At A Glance ................................................................................................................................................... 3 Highlighted Honors ..................................................................................................................................... 7 New Additions To MSE Faculty.............................................................................................................. 26 Faculty Promotions .................................................................................................................................... 26 Highlighted New Grants ...........................................................................................................................28

Faculty and Staff ................................................................................................................... 33 Faculty ........................................................................................................................................................... 33 Affiliated Faculty ........................................................................................................................................ 38 Division Administration........................................................................................................................... 44 Division Committees ................................................................................................................................ 44

GRADUATE PROGRAMS .................................................................................................. 45 Enrollment ....................................................................................................................................................45 Graduate Student Funding ...................................................................................................................... 46 Degrees Awarded ..................................................................................................................................... 46 Recruitment ................................................................................................................................................ 48 Curriculum Enhancements ..................................................................................................................... 50 Community-Building Activities .............................................................................................................. 52 Graduate Student Professional Societies ............................................................................................. 53 Graduate Student Accomplishments ...................................................................................................54 MSE Colloquium Student Hosts ............................................................................................................. 55 MSE Graduate Student Photo Contest ................................................................................................. 56

Research ................................................................................................................................. 58 Research Highlights ...................................................................................................................................58 MSE Colloquium Series……………………………………………………………………………………………………….83 Research Laboratories ..............................................................................................................................85 MSE Shared Core Research Facility .................................................................................................... 102 Visiting Committee Members ..............................................................................................................104

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HIGHLIGHTS AT A GLANCE Number of Students Enrolled

Number of Degrees Awarded

2014-2015

2014-2015

PhD: 28 MS: 16 MS With Practice: 1 MEng: 16 LEAP: 6

PhD: 2 MS: 8 MS With Practice: 1 MEng: 10

MSE RESEARCH FUNDING

MSE PUBLICATIONS

80

TotalABSTRACTS: Funding (in millions)

70

34

BOOKS: 7 Continuing Funding BOOK CHAPTERS: (in millions)

60 50

10

EXHIBITIONS: 65 New Funding (in millions) INVITED

40

LECTURES: 202

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JOURNAL ARTICLES (refereed): 149

20

PATENTS & APPLICATIONS: 10

10 0

Total Funding

2008– 2009– 2010– (in millions) 2009 2010 2011

Continuing Funding Total Funding (in millions) (in millions) New Funding Continuing (in millions) Funding (in millions)

New Funding (in millions)

PROCEEDINGS (refereed): 69 2011– 2012

2012– 2013

Total Funding (in millions)

2013– 2014

2014– 2015

REVIEWS: 2 SCHOLARLY PAPERS: 70

Continuing Funding (in millions) New Funding (in millions)

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FACULTY HONORS AND AWARDS 2014-2015 Rama Bansil • Hind Rattan Award, India. The Hind Rattan (English translation "Jewel of India") is one of the highest Indian awards granted annually to distinguished, non-resident Indian citizens (NRIs) by the NRI Welfare Society of India, a non-government organization endorsed by the Indian Government Soumendra Basu • Silver Medalist at the 2014 TECO Green Tech International Contest in Taiwan Enrico Bellotti • Gerondelis Foundation Award to A. Kyrtsos (PhD student) Thomas Bifano • Speaker, College of Engineering 50th Anniversary Celebration, September 18-19, 2014 • Kern Fellow, BU College of Engineering James C. Bird • ONR Summer Faculty Fellow, Naval Underwater Warfare Center, Newport, RI David Campbell • Distinguished Visting Professor, International Institute of Physics, University of Rio Grande do Notre, Natal, Brazil • Gauss Professor, Akademie der Wissenschaften, Göttingen James Collins • HFSP Nakasone Award, Human Frontier Science Program, 2015 • Distinguished Alumni Award, Boston IDEAS, 2014 • World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds, Thomson Reuters, 2014 • Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers: Biology & Biochemistry, 2014 • Distinguished Member, National Society of Collegiate Scholars, 2014 Bennett Goldberg • Optical Society of America, Visiting Scholar Lecture, University of Wisconsin Jillian Goldfarb • Boston University Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Grant. Awarded CEIT grant to purchase equipment for EK335 course re-design • 1st Prize, Materials Research Society University Chapter’s “Sustainability @ My School” Contest. Coadvised student poster at MRS Society meeting Maxim Frank-Kamenetskii • Mendel Medal of Merit in Biological Sciences by Czech Academy of Sciences Douglas Holmes • National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER), 2015 Jonathan Klamkin • Elevated to Senior Member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) • Recipient of NASA Early Career Faculty (ECF) Space Technology Research Grant; One of only seven nationwide to receive this award Xi Lin •

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Wallace H. Coulter Translational Partnership Award

Malay K. Mazumder • Elected Life Fellow, IEEE J. Gregory McDaniel • Best Paper Award to Andrew Wixom, PhD student, won second place in the The Best Paper Awards for Students and Young Presenters for SAVTC at the 167th ASA Meeting in Providence Elise Morgan • 2014 Faculty Service Award, College of Engineering, Boston University • Named one of INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine’s 100 Inspiring Women in STEM • Elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows Theodore Moustakas • Named Distinguished Professor of Photonics and Optoelectronics, Boston University • Elected Life Fellow IEEE Uday Pal • Silver Medal at the 2014 TECO Green Tech International Contest in Taiwan • 2015 James Douglas Gold Medal Award, The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) Harold Park • Elected to USACM Executive Council Siddharth Ramachandran • IEEE Photonics Society, Distinguished Lecturer Emily Ryan • Appointed Hariri Junior Faculty Fellow, Boston University Michelle Sander • Dean's Catalyst Award, BU College of Engineering , 2014 • Lutchen Fellowship for undergraduate student in my lab. James Bezuk received a Lutchen Fellowship for summer research 2014 on Thulium laser development Anders Sandvik • Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics Fellowship, along with a research grant of $150,000, awarded by the Simons Foundation for sabbatical research.

Vinod Sarin • Elected to Elsevier Materials Board • European Master Programme: Invited as a visiting professor to teach a two week seminar on TBC/EBC coatings Aaron Schmidt • Recipient of a Material Science and Engineering Innovation Grant to develop a microscopy technique to study adhesion energy between solids and soft materials such as polymers and biological tissues

Sahar Sharifzadeh • Awarded 1 million hours at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) for my proposed research project, "Computational Modeling of Excited-State Processes in Organic Photovoltaic Materials"

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Michael Smith • Award for Teaching Excellence, Boston University Biomedical Engineering Department, 2014 H. Eugene Stanley • Ranked #1 among all physicists worldwide in “Hirsch Index” [J. E. Hirsch, PNAS 102, 16569 (2005)]: H = 123, Total citations: 76,249 [67,238 to articles and 9011 to books] • Lorentz Professor, University of Leiden Selim Ünlü • Inaugural Term Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Boston University Joyce Wong • Inaugural Term Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Boston University • Launched ARROWS (Advance, Recruit, Retain & Organize Women in STEM) at Boston University • Chair, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering's College of Fellows Subcommittee (AIMBE COF) • Kern Faculty Fellow, College of Engineering, Boston University • BU College of Engineering Faculty Service Award, 2015 Muhammad Zaman • Recipient of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Professorship • Elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows • Saving Lives at Birth Transition Grant Xin Zhang • Boston University Nanoscience & Nanobiotechnology Award (with student: Erin Roberts) for our work on "Measurement of Cardiac Side Population Cellular Forces during Differentiation into Cardiomyocytes Using Micropillar Arrays" • Appointed Director of NSF REU in Integrated Nanomanufacturing, Boston University: Awarded an NSF Award for Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU Site: $360,757.00 for 3 years) • Elected Fellow to American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)

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HIGHLIGHTED HONORS MUHAMMAD ZAMAN AND DAVID MARCHANT NAMED BU’S FIRST HOWARD HUGHES PROFESSORS July 1st, 2014

MILLION-DOLLAR GRANTS WILL ALLOW THEM TO INTEGRATE RESEARCH WITH UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION Excerpted from an article by Rich Barlow, BU Today Two professional concerns keep David Marchant up at night. One is a possible million-person shortfall in American STEM scientists (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in the coming decade. The other is inadequate science literacy and support among the public.

To stem the STEM decline, Marchant, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of earth & environment, plans to show some first-year students what it means to be really, really cold.

Taking 15 to 20 first-years from three BU schools—CAS, the College of Communication, and the School of Education—Marchant will turn them loose for a year and a half of research in the CAS Experimental Permafrost Laboratory, which replicates Antarctic temperatures. The students will study geological phenomena and climate change and also will develop media about their work, which may include blogs, documentaries, or popular articles—“products that are both interesting and understandable to the general public,” says Marchant. They’ll also team with local middle school teachers to make lesson plans of their research results for area schools.

As a culminating payoff, the BU students will participate in Marchant’s National Science Foundation–supported Antarctic fieldwork—possibly on site, otherwise through virtual work in a digital image lab—and attend seminars with renowned scientists, which could lead to the students’ getting summer internships with the scientists.

If forging future scientists and teaching them to teach nonscientists sounds ambitious, Marchant now has the resources to realize his project. He and Associate Professor Muhammad Zaman, (BME, MSE), are BU’s first-ever recipients of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Professorships, awarded to researchers with innovative techniques for undergraduate science education. A professorship confers a five-year, $1 million grant.

The announcement was made yesterday by the HHMI.

Muhammad Zaman will teach students about challenges to global health as a Howard Hughes Professor. Photo by Cydney Scott Zaman will use his professorship to design ways of incorporating global health issues, including, he says, “engineering challenges for resource-limited settings,” into the curriculum. “The goal is to provide students with the context and appreciation of global health challenges, while focusing on rigor and intellectual depth.”

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He and his students have worked on various technologies to improve developing world medical care, including a detector for counterfeit and defective drugs flooding poorer countries.

The Maryland-based HHMI promotes biomedical research and science education. Besides awarding professorships, it also names HHMI investigators, an honor awarded in 2008 to ENG’s James Collins, (a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor). In awarding its 2014 professorships, the HHMI whittled down a field of 173 applicants to 15.

“HHMI is committed to the highest level of scholarship and innovation, and this is a great honor for me,” Zaman says, as well as for his department, ENG, and BU.

KLAMKIN RECEIVES NASA EARLY CAREER FACULTY AWARD July 23rd, 2014

RECOGNIZED FOR EFFORTS TO IMPROVE DEEP SPACE COMMUNICATION

By Gabriella McNevin

Assistant Professor Jonathan Klamkin (ECE, MSE) at a photonic integration the training workshop at the Boston University Photonics Center.

Assistant Professor Jonathan Klamkin (ECE, MSE) is one of seven university researchers nationwide to receive the 2014 NASA Early Career Faculty Award. The award honors early career faculty focused on space technology, which address critical needs in the US space program.

Klamkin caught NASA’s attention with a proposal to develop integrated laser transmitter technology for deep space communications, as the space agency had recently completed a mission, the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, which demonstrated high-rate laser communication between Earth and the Moon. As NASA prepares future missions to Mars, the award provides Klamkin with a grant of up to $600,000 over three years to further develop the technology to allow for deep space communication.

High-rate space communication is made possible laser communication transmitters, which send data to Earth through space similar to how ground-based lasers send data over fiber-optic cables for the Internet.

With funding from the NASA grant and partnerships with MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Klamkin aims to apply photonic integrated circuit technology to reduce the size, weight, and power of space laser transmitters. Photonic integration brings together several photonic functions on a chip in a manner analogous to incorporating transistors on an electronic integrated circuit. Klamkin hopes that his research will inspire new design methodologies for space laser transmitter hardware.

NASA’s Early Career Faculty Award is administered by the agency’s Space Technology Research Grants Program, which seeks to accelerate the development of emerging technologies from academia that serve the needs of NASA, other government agencies and space-related industries.

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BU TEAM WINS SILVER MEDAL IN INTERNATIONAL GREEN TECH CONTEST September 10th, 2014

PROJECT ADVANCES ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY METALS PRODUCTION

By Mark Dwortzan

Xiao Han, Yihong Jiang, Yiwen Gong, Professor Soumendra Basu (ME, MSE), Adam C. Powell, IV, Professor Uday Pal (ME, MSE) and Shizhao Su in Pal’s High Temperature Materials Processing Laboratory, with a solid oxide membrane reactor used for green metals production.

A team of materials science and engineering graduate students from Professor Uday Pal’s (ME, MSE) research group won the silver medal and an $8,000 cash prize at the TECO Green Tech Contest in Taiwan for their project, “Innovative Green Technology for Cost-Effective Metals Production.” Accompanied by Pal for the final competition in late August, the BU team placed second among 19 teams representing universities from China, Japan, Russia, Singapore and the US. The purpose of the annual contest is to foster international research collaborations and technical creativity to advance technologies designed to save energy and reduce carbon emissions, from renewable energy production methods to electric vehicles. Teams were judged on creativity, technical content and feasibility, and completeness. The contest was organized by TECO Technology Foundation, Industrial Technology Research Institute and RITEK Foundation.

The BU team (PhD students Shizhao Su, Yihong Jiang and Yiwen Gong, and MEng student Xiao Han) was recognized for demonstrating and modeling solid oxide membrane (SOM) electrolysis, an inexpensive, energyefficient, environmentally friendly, one-step method that Pal has developed over the past 15 years to separate pure metals from their oxides. SOM electrolysis continuously feeds metal oxide into a molten salt bath, where electricity splits it into metal and oxygen gas in separate chambers.

Conventional metals production technologies employ a lot of carbon-based energy sources to reduce oxides, and generate significant amounts of pollutants, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. SOM electrolysis promises to substantially decrease energy consumption and eliminate carbon and other environmentally harmful emissions associated with reducing oxides to metals, all for less cost. Using this method, the students successfully produced light structural metals (aluminum and magnesium), solar-grade silicon and critical rare earth metals (dysprosium and ytterbium).

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”The students employed an innovative inert anode that for the first time enabled oxygen and metal production in separate chambers,” said Pal, who advised the team along with Professor Soumendra Basu (ME, MSE) and Adam C. Powell, IV, CTO of Infinium, a Natick-based company spun off from Pal’s lab that’s working toward scale-up of this technology. “They engineered the process and made it universally applicable for energy-intensive metals production.”

“I was thrilled when ‘Boston University’ was announced as silver medalist,” said Yihong Jiang. “It was a great experience for us to see that we can compete on an international stage with top universities.” Jiang and his teammates will use the cash prize to present and promote their work at future professional society meetings and conferences.

Green Tech Contest teams presented a diverse set of innovative ideas to reduce energy consumption and environmental impact. The contest’s gold medal went to a team from China’s Zhejiang University for its wavepropelled, ocean-monitoring vehicle. Taking bronze was a team from Tsinghua University, also based in China, for its energy-efficient technology to charge electric vehicle batteries. Other entries ranged from personal microgrid kits to a regenerative braking system for trains.

MOUSTAKAS NAMED DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF PHOTONICS AND OPTOELECTRONICS October 2nd, 2014

HOLDS ENG’S FIRST ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP

By Mark Dwortzan

Professor Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE, Physics) Boston University Provost Jean Morrison has named Professor Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE, Physics) as the inaugural Distinguished Professor of Photonics and Optoelectronics, the College of Engineering’s first fully funded, named endowed professorship. Intended to honor and support a BU faculty member with outstanding achievements in research, teaching and service in the fields of photonics and optoelectronics, the professorship will be jointly funded by the College of Engineering, the Boston University Office of the Provost, and the BU Photonics Center.

Upon Moustakas’ retirement, the professorship will be renamed as the Theodore Moustakas Professorship of Photonics and Optoelectronics. The College has begun an unprecedented international search for a senior faculty member in this area of engineering science who will be selected as the inaugural holder of the Moustakas Professorship.

“I am very pleased that Boston University named me as the inaugural Distinguished Professor of Photonics and Optoelectronics,” said Moustakas, who has developed a wide range of novel optoelectronic materials and devices ranging from diamond thin films to nitride semiconductors. “Photonics and optoelectronics form the

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backbone of today’s information technology, and the College of Engineering and the BU Photonics Center are world leaders in both domains. The establishment of this Distinguished Professorship will help the University in maintaining its leadership role in these areas.”

Since Moustakas joined BU in 1987, the primary focus of his research has been the development of nitride semiconductors for high-performance optoelectronic devices covering the spectral region from the deep ultraviolet (UV) to terahertz. Such devices include light-emitting diodes (LEDs), photo-detectors and solar cells.

He is well known for the development of the nucleation steps for the growth of blue/green LEDs, widely used in flat panel displays on smartphones and televisions as well as for general illumination. He has also developed highly efficient, deep UV LEDs, which are expected to provide environmentally friendly water and air purification as well as food sterilization and various medical applications.

Moustakas has had a significant impact on his field through 31 US patents, hundreds of invited talks, 350 journal papers, eight co-edited books and more than 11,000 citations in research literature. Selected as the 2010 Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) Innovator Award winner, he has been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Electrochemical Society, National Academy of Inventors and IEEE. Intellectual property resulting from his work has been licensed to a number of companies, including major manufacturers and users of blue LEDs and lasers. Moustakas is the co-founder of RayVio Corp., a venture-backed company that makes UV LEDs. A professor of electrical and computer engineering since 1987, professor of physics since 1991, and the current associate head of the Division of Materials Science & Engineering, Moustakas took a leading role in propelling the ECE Department’s PhD program into the nation’s top-ranked programs, putting the MSE Division on the national map and helping establish BU as a national center of photonics research. He was the 2011 College of Engineering Distinguished Scholar Lecturer and winner of Boston University’s 2013 Innovator of the Year award.

Prior to joining the BU faculty, Moustakas worked at Harvard University as a research fellow and Exxon Research Corporate Research Laboratories as a senior scientist. He received a BS in Physics from Aristotle University (Greece) and a PhD in Solid State Science and Engineering from Columbia University.

ENG SELECTS INAUGURAL TERM DISTINGUISHED PROFESSORS OF ENGINEERING October 10th, 2014

ÜNLÜ AND WONG AMONG THOSE HONORED Excerpted from an article by Mark Dwortzan

Professor Joyce Wong (BME, MSE)

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Professor Selim Unlu (ECE, BME, MSE) Five College of Engineering professors—John Baillieul (ME, SE), Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE), Christopher Chen (BME), Selim Ünlü (ECE, BME, MSE) and Joyce W ong (BME, MSE)—have been selected as the inaugural set of Term Distinguished Professors of Engineering. Each will carry the title of “Distinguished Professor of Engineering” and receive a stipend of discretionary funds throughout their term. Thereafter, the title will be retained throughout their career at Boston University.

“Each of these faculty members has had a lengthy distinguished record of impact in research and in service to the College of Engineering and their profession,” said Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen.

SELIM ÜNLÜ Ünlü’s research is concerned with the development of photonic materials, devices and systems focused on the design, processing, characterization and modeling of semiconductor optoelectronic devices, and high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy of semiconductor and biological materials.

The author of 163 peer-reviewed journal articles and an IEEE Fellow, he has served as editor-in-chief of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and as former chair of Photodetectors and Imaging, founding chair of Nanophotonics and current chair of Biophotonics technical committees for the IEEE Photonics Society. His awards include the IEEE Lasers and Electro-optics Society Distinguished Lecturer, the Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer, the Australian Research Council Nanotechnology Network Distinguished Lecturer, the Turkish Scientific Foundation Science Award, and the National Science Foundation CAREER and Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Awards.

At the College, Ünlü has served as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs and is now the Associate Dean for Research and Technology Development.

JOYCE WONG Wong’s research focuses on elucidating fundamental molecular, cellular and interfacial processes, and applying these principles to guide tissue engineering and develop in vitro engineered model systems to study disease progression.

The author of more than 80 peer- reviewed journal articles, she is a fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She is also the recipient of the Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award, the Japan-American Frontiers in Engineering Award, the Dupont Young Professor Award, the NAS Frontiers in Engineering Award and the NSF CAREER Award. She was elected and served on the board of directors of the Biomedical Engineering Society and served on the Beckman Foundation Scholars Advisory Panel. She also serves on the editorial boards of Regenerative Therapy, Biomatter and Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering.

Wong’s roles at the University includes director of the Provost’s Initiative to Advance Women in STEM, codirector of the Affinity Research Collaborative in Nanotheranostics, and former associate director for the Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology.

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PAL WINS PRESTIGIOUS METALLURGY AWARD October 24th, 2014

RECOGNIZED FOR CLEAN METALS PRODUCTION METHOD

By Mark Dwortzan The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) has named Professor Uday Pal (ME, MSE) as the winner of its 2015 James Douglas Gold Medal Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement in nonferrous metallurgy, the extraction, purification, production and utilization of metals other than iron. Pal will receive the award at an AIME meeting in early 2015.

“It is very gratifying when recognition comes from one’s peer group in the same field,” said Pal, who has authored more than 200 publications and 23 patents on high-temperature chemical and electrochemical processes, including metals extraction and refining. “This award is special and humbling, considering the list of past awardees, many of whom are regarded as pillars of our field.”

Pal is the inventor of solid oxide membrane (SOM) electrolysis, an inexpensive, energy-efficient, environmentally friendly, one-step method that he has developed over the past 15 years to separate pure metals from their oxides. SOM electrolysis continuously feeds metal oxide into a molten salt bath, where electricity splits it into metal and oxygen gas in separate chambers.

Conventional metals production technologies employ a lot of carbon-based energy sources to reduce oxides, and generate significant amounts of pollutants, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. SOM electrolysis promises to substantially decrease energy consumption and eliminate carbon and other environmentally harmful emissions associated with reducing oxides to metals, all for less cost. So far Pal has developed and applied his patented SOM electrolysis technology to produce magnesium, titanium, silicon, aluminum and other energyintensive metals from their oxides.

Infinium, a Natick-based company spun off from Pal’s lab, is now working toward scale-up of this technology.

“Uday is an outstanding practitioner of chemical metallurgy and materials science, bridging the gap between fundamental understanding and direct industrial relevance,” said Adam C. Powell, IV, CTO and co-founder of Infinium. “He has been a pioneer in the new sub-discipline of green metallurgy and materials, and has launched the careers of dozens of engineering graduate students, including my own.”

The award is named after the industrialist James Douglas, founder of Phelps Dodge Corporation and twice the president of AIME. Douglas was a mining engineer, a metallurgical engineer and inventor of metallurgical equipment.

EMILY RYAN NAMED AS ONE OF THE HARIRI INSTITUTE 2014 JUNIOR FACULTY FELLOWS November 4th, 2014 The Hariri Institute has named Emily Ryan (ME, MSE) a 2014 Hariri Institute Junior Faculty Fellow in recognition of her outstanding computational work in the area of advanced energy systems.

The Hariri Institute for Computing at Boston University is pleased to announce its fourth cohort of Junior Faculty Fellows. They are: Samuel Bazzi, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics; Ksenia Bravaya, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry; Emily Ryan, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Division of Materials Science & Engineering; Gustavo Schwenkler, Assistant Professor, Department of Finance; Cara Stepp, Assistant Professor, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and Department of Biomedical Engineering

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The Hariri Institute Junior Faculty Fellows program was established in 2011 both to recognize outstanding junior faculty at Boston University working in diverse areas of the computational sciences, as well as to provide focal points for supporting broader collaborative research in these areas at BU and beyond. Junior Fellows are selected by the Hariri Institute Executive Steering Committee based on nominations received each spring, and are appointed for a two-year term.

Commenting on this fourth cohort of Hariri Junior Fellows, Professor Azer Bestavros, Director of the Institute, noted that “a remarkable attribute of the research of this year’s cohort of junior fellows is the degree to which computational and data-centric approaches are fundamentally changing their respective fields,” adding that “this is an indication of the paradigm shift in science and engineering and a testament to the increasingly important role of the Hariri Institute in connecting like-minded researchers at BU.” Over the next several months, each of the Junior Faculty Fellows will be giving a Hariri Institute Distinguished Lecture. For more information and to receive notices about this and other Hariri Institute activities, please join the Institute mailing lists by becoming an affiliate member or by subscribing to the Hariri Institute’s mailing list for general announcements. For more information, please visit the Institute’s web site.

ENG GRAD STUDENTS WIN AWARDS AT PREMIERE MATERIALS RESEARCH CONFERENCE December 10th, 2014

By Mark Dwortzan Vying with nearly 3,000 entries in the Poster Session competition at the 2014 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting and Exhibit on December 3, a Boston University College of Engineering entry won second place honors. In addition, another ENG poster received the award for the MRS University Chapters Program’s “Sustainability @ My School” competition highlighting leading-edge sustainability research.

Shizhao Su and Yihong Jiang (both MSE, PhD’15) with their first place award in the “Sustainability @ My School” poster contest Attended by up to 6,000 materials researchers from around the world, the MRS Fall Meeting is the preeminent annual event for those in the field.

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Former LEAP student Steven Scherr’s (ME, PhD’16) second-place-winning poster, “Real-Time Digital Virus Detection for Diagnosis of Ebola Virus Disease,” describes an optical detection system he developed for realtime, highly sensitive, label-free virus detection. The system, which combines an optical interference reflectance imaging biosensor (SP-IRIS) with a microfluidics cartridge, could be used for early detection of the Ebola virus at the point of care.

Working with a sample of bovine blood serum, Scherr recently used the system to digitally detect individual 100 nanometer-diameter vesicular stomatitis viruses—safe-for-human models of Ebola—as they adhered to an antibody microarray. Completed within 10 minutes, this lab test demonstrates the potential of SP-IRIS as the core technology for field-ready, point-of-care viral diagnostic tests that’s fast, sensitive, cheap and easy to implement, and requires minimal sample preparation.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the research was collaborated amongst Scherr, who designed the microfluidics components, and ECE postdoc George Daaboul (BME, PhD’13), Professor Bennett Goldberg (Physics, ECE, BME, MSE), Professor John H. Connor (MED) and Professor Selim Ünlü (ECE, BME, MSE, Physics), who developed SP-IRIS. Shizhao Su and Yihong Jiang’s (both MSE, PhD’15) winning entry in the MRS university chapter’s “Sustainability @ My School” contest, “Carbon-free Solid Oxide Membrane (SOM) Based Electrolysis for Metals Production and Sustainable Energy Applications,” showcases SOM electrolysis, an environmentally friendly, low-cost metals production technology. Developed by Professor Uday Pal (ME, MSE) over the past 15 years, it requires far less energy than existing methods to extract pure magnesium, silicon, aluminum and other metals from their oxides. Poster co-author Abhishek Patnaik, who is also an MSE doctoral candidate, is exploring adapting SOM electrolysis for waste-to-energy conversion.

Conducted with guidance from Pal, Professor Soumendra Basu (ME, MSE) and Assistant Professor Jillian Goldfarb (ME, MSE), the research was funded by the National Science Foundation and US Department of Energy.

The Materials Research Society comprises more than 16,000 researchers from academia, industry and government in more than 80 countries, and is a recognized leader in the advancement of interdisciplinary materials research.

MSE GRADUATE STUDENT INVITED TO ARPA-E ENERGY INNOVATIONS SUMMIT January 9th, 2015

By Mark Dwortzan MSE PhD student Meliha Gozde Rainville is one of only 100 US graduate students invited to attend the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, an annual conference and technology showcase that brings together experts from different technical disciplines and professional communities to explore the nation’s energy challenges in new and innovative ways. This year’s conference will meet in Washington, DC on February 9-11.

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MSE PhD student Meliha Godze Rainville Now in its sixth year, the Summit offers a unique, three-day program of talks, seminars and networking events aimed at moving disruptive energy technologies out of the lab and into the market. Comprised of top technical, business and policy students from leading institutions who intend to work in the energy sector, the 100 invited graduate students learn about new energy initiatives, participate in a student-focused panel and breakout sessions, and network with corporate recruiters.

“Participating in the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit will give me an opportunity to access the latest improvements in energy technology, and to meet with different leaders from academia, business and government,” said Rainville. “The conference will also help me in my transition to business life, where I can combine my engineering background and passion for clean energy and sustainability.”

At Boston University, Rainville is using variety of X-ray techniques to improve our understanding of fundamental surface processes during thin film growth, an enabling technology for cheaper, faster and smaller electronic devices, including photovoltaic systems.

ARPA-E is the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, a US government agency focused on advancing research and development of advanced energy technologies.

Cheryl Stewart, MSE/SE, contributed to this article.

MSE GRADUATE STUDENT RECEIVES $5,000 GRANT FROM THE GERONDELIS FOUNDATION January 13th, 2015 Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsos, a second-year MSE PhD candidate, was selected to receive a $5,000 grant from the Gerondelis Foundation. With this grant, Kyrtsos plans to continue his computational studies of point defects in GaN research with Professor Enrico Bellotti (MSE, ECE).

Kyrtsos earned his bachelor’s degree from the National Technical University of Athens, School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Kyrtsos’s research is focused on computational studies of formation and migration energies of relevant defects for GaN and other III-nitride semiconductors including surface studies of these materials employing state of the art simulation codes.

The Gerondelis Foundation Inc. is a private foundation with offices in Lynn, Massachusetts. The organization makes grants for use by students from Greece who hold a Greek undergraduate degree and who have been

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accepted into a graduate degree or certificate-granting program at an American university or other institution of higher learning. Recommendations are received from the educational organizations describing the qualifications of the applicant and the amount of the financial aid needed. The Foundation then makes grants based upon these recommendations directly to the educational organizations along with a letter or letters listing the student or students for whom financial aid is being granted.

ZAMAN, MORGAN ELECTED AS AIBME FELLOWS February 2nd, 2015

By Mark Dwortzan The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has elected two BME faculty members— Associate Professors Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE) and Elise Morgan (ME, BME, MSE)—to the AIMBE College of Fellows. They join more than 1,500 outstanding biomedical engineers in academia, industry and government around the world who have distinguished themselves through significant contributions in research, industrial practice and/or education.

According to the AIMBE, election to the College of Fellows is reserved for the top two percent of the international medical and biological engineering community. The induction of Zaman and Morgan on March 16 at the AIMBE’s 2015 Annual Event at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., will bring the number of BME faculty elected to this prestigious body to 30, placing the department among the top two or three biomedical engineering departments nationally.

AIMBE Fellows have helped to revolutionize medicine, engineering and related fields that enhance and extend the lives of people all over the world. Boston University’s two newest members exemplify this tradition, having impacted society in myriad ways.

Associate Professor Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE)

A College of Engineering faculty member since 2009 and the College’s only Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor, Zaman heads the Cellular and Molecular Dynamics Lab, which engineers new experimental and computational technologies for major healthcare problems in both the developing and developed world, including probing the mechanisms of cancer metastasis. The lab focuses on how physical and mechanical properties of cancer cells impact their growth and movement, modeling this behavior in computer programs.

Meanwhile, Zaman is developing robust, cheap, portable and user-friendly diagnostics and analysis toolkits to address global health challenges. As director of the Laboratory for Engineering Education and Development (LEED), he works with BU students to advance technologies to detect counterfeit drugs, preserve biological reagents used in diagnostic tests and provide other in-demand healthcare solutions targeting the specific needs of resource-limited countries. He is also co-director of the Africa Biomedical Engineering Initiative, which was

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funded by UN Economic Commission for Africa to improve biomedical engineering education, innovation and practice in Africa. In 2014 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities of Global Health (CUGH), the most prestigious professional organization in the field Zaman’s achievements in cancer and global health research have earned him funding from USAID, the Saving Lives at Birth Consortium, US Pharmacopeial Convention, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and many private foundations, as well as several invitations to participate in US National Academy of Engineering research and education symposia. The 2013 recipient of the Early Career Achievement Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS)—the world’s largest international society of biomedical engineers—Zaman has served as keynote or plenary speaker at major national and international conferences and published dozens of highly-cited papers in leading biomedical journals.

Associate Professor Elise Morgan (ME, BME)

Since joining the College of Engineering faculty in 2003, Associate Professor Elise Morgan (ME, BME) has worked to advance understanding of the role of the mechanical function of tissues and organs in skeletal health, repair and development, with the ultimate goal of pinpointing causes and treatments for osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and poor bone healing.

As director of the Orthopaedic and Developmental Biomechanics Laboratory, Morgan studies the interplay among the mechanical behavior, structure and biological function of tissues. Drawing on methods from engineering mechanics, materials science, and cell and molecular biology, and combining experimentation and computational modeling, Morgan’s lab investigates how mechanical factors contribute to the development, adaptation, failure and regeneration of bone and cartilage. Current projects include the use of mechanical stimulation to promote bone regeneration, the biomechanics of spine fractures and bone healing, non-invasive diagnostics of bone healing, and inflammatory bone loss. This work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, private foundations and industry sponsors.

Morgan has received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Senior Fellows from the National Institutes of Health, a Young Investigator Research Award from the International Osteoporosis Foundation and Servier Research Group, the 2013 Kappa Delta Young Investigator Award from the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and an Early Career Research Excellence Award and Distinguished Faculty Fellow Award from the College of Engineering. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in major engineering journals and has delivered more than 40 seminars and invited talks. She is also the co-founder of a successful outreach program, Summer Pathways, which engages high school girls in a week-long sequence of activities in science, engineering and math.

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GRINSTAFF DELIVERS INAUGURAL CHARLES DELISI LECTURE April 7th, 2015

TALK EXPLORES DESIGN OF BIOMATERIALS FOR CLINICAL APPLICATIONS

By Mark Dwortzan

Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, MSE, Chemistry, MED) Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, MSE, Chemistry, MED) presented the inaugural Charles DeLisi Distinguished Lecture on April 2. The first named endowed lecture in the history of the College of Engineering, the Charles DeLisi Award and Lecture recognizes faculty members with extraordinary records of well-cited scholarship, and outstanding alumni who have invented and mentored transformative technologies that impact our quality of life.

Speaking before a packed audience of students, faculty and researchers at the Photonics Center, Grinstaff explored how over the past two decades, he, his students and collaborating researchers have translated ideas from the laboratory into highly effective new devices and materials for clinical applications.

“When I think about the problems I want to solve with my students, it’s very much about those projects that are rich in basic science and engineering, that will benefit society, and that will motivate us,” he said. He then described three such projects that have produced new biomaterials to improve diagnosis and treatment of major diseases and injuries.

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Efficiency of Grinstaff’s hydrogel wound sealant (dyed in green) in sealing a puncture on a tissue surface, preventing leakage (a).

Sealant washed off upon exposure to an amino acid solution for wound re-exposure and further treatment (b&c).

TAKING BIOMATERIALS FROM BENCH TO BEDSIDE The first project resulted in a highly absorbent, biocompatible hydrogel that not only seals wounds but (unlike sutures) can later be dissolved and gently removed, thereby minimizing pain and damage to injured tissue. The sealant is administered via double-barreled syringe, with each barrel containing a different compound. Once the two compounds are pushed out of the syringe onto a surface, they combine within seconds to form a honeycomb-like network of cross-linked chemical bonds.

The resulting hydrogel absorbs fluid on the surface, has the consistency of gelatin and sticks like an adhesive, remaining intact for several days. Adding a solution of cysteine methyl ester, a derivative of a natural amino acid, to the hydrogel causes the gel’s cross-linked bonds to break apart and the gel to dissolve within several minutes.

Grinstaff is now investigating this biomaterial as a pain-free pediatric burn dressing; his previous work on hydrogel adhesives led to clinically approved sealants for treating lacerations to the cornea, the spine and the dura (the outermost membrane covering the brain and spinal cord).

The second project took aim at lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer mortality in the US, and yielded a drug delivery device to prevent post-surgery recurrence of the disease.

The standard of care for early stage patients is to surgically remove, or resect, lung tissue tumors, but nearly 40 percent of patients receiving such treatment develop recurrent disease. Systematic injection of paclitaxel, the standard chemotherapy agent for lung cancer, delivers inadequate concentrations of the drug to diseased lung tissue and damaging toxins to healthy organs.

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Polymer film on surgical collagen scaffold. Upper panel shows a dry film; lower panel shows flexibility of a wet film. Scale bar: 5 mm. Films can be used to help prevent recurrence of lung cancer after surgical resection. (Source: Annals of Surgical Oncology) To address the problem, Grinstaff and his collaborators produced flexible, paclitaxel-loaded polymer films that allow the controlled, low-dose, targeted release of the drug over an extended period, and demonstrated their ability to prolong recurrence time after surgical resection of lung tumors in mice. Using the same polymers, they also developed a highly sensitive nanodevice to detect the presence of cancer in the lung.

The third project produced a joint lubricant that could bring longer-lasting pain relief to the more than 27 million Americans who suffer from osteoarthritis, the most common form of joint disease and a leading cause of disability in the elderly. This new synthetic polymer supplements synovial fluid, the natural lubricant in joints, and lasts about two weeks longer than the leading synovial fluid supplement. It works by reducing friction between cartilage surfaces that cushion the joint, resulting in less wear and surface-to-surface interaction.

Grinstaff and collaborators have also developed a sensitive imaging method to enhance diagnosis of osteoarthritis and enable improved care through earlier detection and more targeted treatments. Combining nanotechnology, engineering and medicine, the method exploits new, biocompatible nanoparticles and small molecules as contrast agents to image surface and interior regions of articular cartilage (the smooth, water-rich tissue that lines the ends of bones in load-bearing joints) — regions that traditional X-ray illumination cannot detect.

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Grinstaff’s osteoarthritis diagnostic method exploits tantalum oxide nanoparticles as contrast agents to image surface and interior regions of cartilage coating the joints.

All projects were funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, and other agencies. Two are now in various stages of commercialization via companies Grinstaff cofounded: HyperBranch Medical Technology, which produces biodegradable surgical sealants that are widely used by surgeons, and Acuity Bio, which is developing flexible films to prevent tumor recurrence after surgical resection.

LESSONS LEARNED Grinstaff concluded the lecture by attributing his success in translational research to his lab group and collaborators, as well as a few key practices that have kept his projects moving forward.

“I think teams are really important; if you have the right people, you can do amazing things,” he observed. “You should be quantitative, inquisitive, and ask for help. Communication is essential. And failure is acceptable, but you should do it quickly so you can redesign your experiments, have a new hypothesis and think about new design criteria.”

The Delisi Lecture continues the College’s annual Distinguished Lecture Series, initiated in 2008, which has honored several senior faculty members. The previous recipients are Professors John Baillieul, (ME,SE), Malvin Teich (ECE) (Emeritus), Irving Bigio (BME), Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE), H. Steven Colburn (BME), Thomas Bifano (ME, MSE) and Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE).

UNDERGRAD IN PROFESSOR WONG’S LAB RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS GOLDWATER SCHOLARSHIP April 15th, 2015

By Mark Dwortzan Bauer LeSavage, a biomedical engineering junior with a passion for tissue engineering, has received a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, which recognizes outstanding college students who are pursuing research careers in science, mathematics and engineering. Issued by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation to US undergraduate sophomores and juniors, the scholarship covers up to $7,500 for tuition and other educational expenses.

This year’s 260 Goldwater Scholars (68 in engineering) were selected based on academic merit from a field of 1,206 students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. LeSavage is the fourth College of Engineering student to receive the award out of 13 Boston University winners since 1989. In

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addition to his scholarship, BME junior Adrienne Lee received a 2015 Goldwater Scholarship Honorable Mention designation.

Since 2013, LeSavage has worked in Professor Joyce W ong’s (BME, MSE) lab contributing to a project that seeks to improve the quality of care for pediatric patients with congenital heart defects. These patients typically require multiple corrective surgeries because current vascular tissue patches are made of synthetic materials that do not grow with the child.

To overcome this challenge, LeSavage has developed methods of engineering sheets of cells that can be stacked to mimic the structure of native blood vessels, which have aligned structures onto which cells grow. In the lab he works with bovine smooth muscle cells, with the ultimate goal of using the patient’s own stem cells. As a Lutchen Fellow this past summer, he also characterized the engineered tissue’s mechanical and biochemical behavior in order to understand the relationship between the tissue patch structure and its properties.

“I have always been interested in tissue engineering and biomaterials, and coming to Boston University I knew I wanted to further explore the field,” said LeSavage. “This research has been the perfect opportunity to do so. I enjoy being able to work closely with a small team where I have broadened my experimental capabilities and contributed directly to the project.”

“Bauer is extremely dedicated to his research as demonstrated by his full commitment to the project,” said Professor Joyce Wong (BME, MSE), who nominated LeSavage for the award. “Combining exhaustive research and a methodical experimental approach, his contributions to the project have stood out above and beyond what is expected for an undergraduate researcher. I cannot think of anyone more deserving of this prestigious award.”

LeSavage plans to continue his tissue engineering studies through his senior year and pursue similar research in graduate school.

The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986 to honor Senator Barry Goldwater, who served his country for 56 years as a soldier and statesman, including 30 years of service in the US Senate. Through its scholarships, the Goldwater Foundation seeks to provide the nation with a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers.

ZHANG SELECTED AS ASME FELLOW April 29th, 2015

RECOGNIZED FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY MEMS RESEARCH

By Mark Dwortzan Professor Xin Zhang (ME, MSE) has been named an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Fellow, an honor bestowed on longtime members who have demonstrated significant engineering achievements.

The award recognizes Zhang’s internationally renowned research using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to address a wide range of important problems in advanced materials, biomedicine and energy.

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Professor Xin Zhang (ME, MSE) In the area of advanced materials, she has applied MEMS techniques to develop metamaterials, arrays of engineered structures that act like artificial atoms and exhibit unusual properties such as negative refractive indices and cloaking. She has focused on creating metamaterials in the terahertz range (wavelengths between optical and microwave frequencies) that may ultimately be used for imaging, chemical detection, surveillance and high-speed electronic circuits.

In biomedicine, she has developed a MEMS-based toolset to analyze cellular behavior, yielding knowledge that could improve our understanding of cardiovascular, liver and other diseases, and lead to novel therapies. And in the energy domain, she has developed micro gas chromatography and microfluidic communication systems designed to improve the efficiency and safety of oil and gas extraction.

Zhang is one of only 3,347 Fellows out of 110,835 ASME members.

“I am thrilled to see this formal recognition from ASME,” said Zhang, who joins Professor Emeritus Allan Pierce as the College of Engineering’s second ASME Fellow. “Working in the application of miniaturization technologies to broad, societally relevant problems, I am continuously pursuing new ‘tools’ with which to develop solutions.

Mechanical engineering is a terrific profession.”

A Boston University faculty member since 2002, Zhang leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers focused on fundamental and applied aspects of MEMS and nanotechnology. Her research group—the Laboratory for Microsystems Technology—seeks to understand and exploit interesting characteristics of micro/nanomaterials, micro/nanomechanics, and micro/nanomanufacturing technologies with forward-looking engineering efforts and practical applications ranging from energy to health care to homeland security.

In 2009 Zhang was named the College’s inaugural Distinguished Faculty Fellow, a five-year appointment given to tenured ENG faculty on a clear trajectory toward an exemplary career in all dimensions of science and engineering. She has received numerous awards for research excellence, including the National Science Foundation Faculty CAREER Award, and has participated in US and international National Academy of Engineering symposia. She has published 124 papers in interdisciplinary journals.

Founded in 1880 by a small group of industrialists and comprising more than 140,000 members in 151 countries, ASME is a nonprofit membership organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing, career enrichment, and skills development across all engineering disciplines for the purpose of helping the global engineering community to advance solutions that improve the quality of life.

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SENIOR DESIGN PROJECT PLACES SECOND AT NORTHEAST BIOENGINEERING CONFERENCE April 30th, 2015

BME TEAM DEVELOPS POINT-OF-CARE DIAGNOSTIC FOR GONORRHEA

By Mark Dwortzan Even though it’s treatable, the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea remains a formidable threat to populations in developed and developing countries. That’s because it’s highly underdiagnosed. To diagnose the disease quickly and prevent its spread will require accurate, point-of-care detection of the pathogen that causes it, Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG).

Now a BME senior design team has developed a credit card-sized, microfluidic chip with molecular diagnostic capabilities that promises to improve diagnosis of gonorrhea in any health setting. Impressed with the technology and its potential impact, judges at the 2015 North East Bioengineering Conference (NEBEC) senior design competition awarded the team second prize on April 17 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

The competition, which is structured as a poster session with student presenters answering questions from judges and other attendees, fielded entries from 79 teams based at 19 different universities.

The BME team includes Courtney Ellenson, who has worked on the project in Professor Catherine Klapperich’s (BME, ME, MSE) lab since 2012; and fellow BME seniors Gil Covarrubias, Jr., Danielle Conneely and Nelson Boland.

The BME senior design team has developed a credit card-sized, microfluidic chip with molecular diagnostic capabilities that promises to improve diagnosis of Gonorrhea in any health setting. quest to develop a low-cost, microfluidic diagnostic to detect NG. “The team’s initiative and creativity have combined to make this project such a successful endeavor,” said Jacqueline Linnes, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Klapperich Lab, who initiated the project, supervised the team and now serves as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Purdue University. “I am thrilled that they are being recognized for the exceptional research that they have performed.”

To enable NG detection at the point of care, the team designed the chip to capture, amplify and detect NG DNA from patient samples such as urine. Using sophisticated valve structures and DNA amplification techniques, the chip minimizes sample loss and contamination, amplifies NG DNA and visually detects the amplified DNA. “We successfully transitioned from many separate off-chip processes to one fully integrated on-chip process,” said Ellenson, who was drawn to the project because of its potential to impact the quality of lives for people

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around the globe. “Our microfluidic chip decreases the need for expensive diagnostic equipment, minimizes sample exposure to outside reagents, and shortens the turnaround time of laboratory results—all of which are improvements over current clinical practice paradigms.”

The team’s fast, affordable diagnostic test promises not only to increase accurate gonorrhea diagnoses but also to reduce misdirected treatment of patients with symptoms of the disease who have received incorrect diagnoses.

“An additional, worrisome aspect of the spread of gonorrhea infections is the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of NG,” said Research Assistant Professor Mario Cabodi (BME), who also advised the team. “While it is not yet possible to design a molecular test to identify resistant NG infections, the increased sensitivity of a fast and inexpensive DNA test would have an immediate impact on clinical decision-making for gonorrhea patients.”

NEW ADDITIONS TO MSE FACULTY KAREN N. ALLEN, Chemistry, appointed MSE 2014 KEITH BROWN, ME, appointed MSE 2015 DOUGLAS HOLMES, affiliated MSE 2015

FACULTY PROMOTIONS MSE FACULTY PROMOTED TO FULL PROFESSORS March 6th, 2015 Excerpted from an article by Rich Barlow, BU Today The following MSE faculty were promoted to full professors: Kamil Ekinci, ENG Professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering Ekinci earned his promotion in part by developing techniques to build nanoscale devices and to measure extremely small signals coming from these devices. His work, which promises many practical uses, including biomedicine, won him a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a visiting fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology.

Daniel Segré, CAS biology and ENG bioinformatics and biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering Segré uses theoretical and computational modeling and experimental tests to unravel cellular metabolism in microbes, yielding biomedical advances. With almost $8 million from the NIH, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense, he has written dozens of articles in leading publications and was a DuPont Horizons in Biotechnology distinguished speaker.

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Catherine Klapperich, ENG professor of biomedical engineering and materials science & engineering Klapperich integrates systems science and engineering to design diagnostic, cancer screening, and treatmentmonitoring tools for underserved groups. A Kern Innovation Faculty Fellow, she directs the NIH-funded Center for Future Technologies in Cancer Care and the Laboratory for Diagnostics and Global Healthcare Technologies.

She is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Elise Morgan, ENG professor of mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, and materials science & engineering Morgan studies how mechanical signals contribute to the development, adaptation, degeneration, and regeneration of bone and cartilage. She has written dozens of widely cited journal articles and presentations. Her research and teaching awards include a Young Investigator Award from the International Osteoporosis Foundation and last year’s ENG Faculty Service Award.

Roberto Paiella, ENG professor of electrical & computer engineering and materials science & engineering Paiella studies photonics and materials science and develops semiconductor structures and efficient devices, such as lasers, green light LEDs, and infrared detectors that emit stronger light. He has won grants from the NSF, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Department of Energy. A senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, he sits on the editorial board for Scientific Reports.

Muhammad Zaman, ENG professor of biomedical engineering and materials science & engineering Zaman specializes in the interface of cell biology, mechanics, systems biology, and medicine, using computational and experimental tools to understand and ultimately prevent cancer metastasis. He is equally devoted to the delivery of modern medical technology to the developing world. The recipient of numerous NIH grants and a recent Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professorship, he has authored two books, seven book chapters, and dozens of widely cited articles on the properties of cell clusters and improved global health.

In addition to the above promotions, Gretchen Fougere, ENG, Administration, was appointed Adjunct Associate Professor MSE, 2014.

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HIGHLIGHTED NEW GRANTS ZAMAN RECEIVES $2 MILLION “SAVING LIVES AT BIRTH” GRANT August 5th, 2014

FUNDING TO ENABLE SCALE-UP OF COUNTERFEIT DRUG DETECTOR

By Mark Dwortzan

The portable PharmaChk can verify a drug’s safety in a matter of minutes.

One of the biggest challenges in global health is the proliferation of drugs that do not perform as labeled, due to false claims about their effectiveness or faulty manufacturing and storage practices. Up to 50 percent of medicines distributed in developing countries are either counterfeit or significantly substandard, and procedures used to check their quality are largely inaccurate, not to mention slow, expensive and complicated. The result: hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths each year.

To address the problem, a team of Boston University biomedical engineers and public health researchers led by Associate Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE) has spent the past four years developing and field-testing PharmaChk, a user-friendly, low-cost, portable, fast and accurate detector for screening counterfeit and substandard medicines. Once deployed on a large scale, the technology could substantially improve fragile health systems and save countless lives—including those of mothers and newborns suffering from malaria, sepsis and other diseases—in many developing nations.

Recognizing the potential of PharmaChk to vastly improve health outcomes for this population, the Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development program has awarded Zaman’s team with a $2 million “transitionto-scale” grant to demonstrate the impact of its technology at scale—one of only four such awards among 30 announced at the Saving Lives at Birth’s annual DevelopmentXChange conference in Washington, DC. The PharmaChk team was among 52 finalists at the conference (winnowed down from an original field of 550 teams from dozens of countries) competing for funding to realize and scale disruptive technologies and other innovative ideas to save the lives of mothers and newborns in the poorest places on the planet. Zaman’s team was the only engineering group to receive a “transition-to-scale” grant and one of a select few to do so within two years of receiving a $250,000 seed grant from the program,

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“This is a huge honor not only for our team but also for Boston University, and underscores the university’s leadership and strong commitment to technological innovation and global health,” said Zaman. “We are deeply honored to be the first team at BU to be awarded the transition-to-scale grant and are eager to work with our partners in Boston and around the world to address this huge global challenge.”

Named one of “Ten World Changing Ideas” in its 2013 year-end roundup article on proven, scalable innovations that could dramatically impact society in the near future, PharmaChk was developed by Zaman and graduate students Darash Desai (BME), Nga Ho (BME), Andrea Fernandes (SMG, SPH) and research scientist Atena Irani Shemirani (BME). The user places a pill into a small testing box that instantly reports the amount of active ingredient found in the pill. The device is simple to operate and verifies a drug’s safety in a matter of minutes, thanks to complex, microfluidic, lab-on-a-chip technology developed in the Zaman lab.

Building on earlier work testing a prototype in Ghana, the team plans to use the new funding to incorporate feedback from local users of PharmaChk and scale the technology with the help of partners in Ghana and the US Pharmacopeial (USP) Convention in Rockville, Maryland. By ensuring that essential medicines are safe at all points along the supply chain—from manufacturers to distributors to suppliers in rural areas—Zaman’s team aims to have a profound impact on the health of mothers and newborns.

The device’s clear potential to dramatically improve health outcomes in resource-limited countries has attracted significant funding over the past two years from the USP Convention under the Promoting the Quality of Medicines (PQM) program funded by USAID. USP has provided both financial and logistical support in Ghana through its Center for Pharmaceutical Quality Research Center. PharmaChk has received additional funding from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, and support and mentorship from the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) (including critical assistance from CIMIT Accelerator Program Executive Wolfgang Krull), and the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance.

Launched in 2011 to stimulate innovative preventative and treatment methods to improve health outcomes for mothers and newborns around the time of delivery, the Saving Lives at Birth partnership includes the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada (funded by the Government of Canada) and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). Supported by a $50 million commitment, Saving Lives at Birth has funded 59 innovations in its first three rounds, aiming to address the 289,000 maternal deaths, 2.9 million neo-natal deaths, and 2.6 million stillbirths that occur each year.

BU TEAM SEEKS TO IMPROVE SOLID OXIDE FUEL CELL LIFETIMES August 12th, 2014

LONGER DURATION CRITICAL TO COMMERCIALIZATION

By Mark Dwortzan

Mockup of a solid oxide fuel cell

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The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), a device that produces electricity directly from oxidizing a fuel source, is one of the most environmentally benign technologies for converting the chemical energy in fossil fuels to electrical energy. But the performance of today’s SOFCs, which operate at very high temperatures, tends to degrade over time, resulting in shorter lifetimes than those of conventional power generation systems. As SOFC power systems approach commercialization and use in applications ranging from electric power stations to long-haul transportation, their long-term performance is becoming critically important.

At the heart of this problem are the electrochemical interfaces—the cathodes, anodes and electrolytes that enable the fuel cell to work like a turbocharged battery—whose structure changes over time through exposure to high temperatures. To better understand how these interfaces evolve and how their degradation might be mitigated, the Department of Energy has awarded an $800,000 grant to a team of BU researchers with expertise in many areas relevant to the problem, from electrochemistry and coatings to thermodynamics.

The BU team consists of Associate Professor Srikanth Gopalan, Professors Soumendra Basu and Uday Pal, and Assistant Professor Emily Ryan (all ME, MSE); and an industry partner, Fuel Cell Energy of Danbury, Connecticut, one of the world’s leading developers of solid oxide fuel cells.

“This project seeks to unravel the fundamental mechanisms that underlie degradation,” said Gopalan. “Unraveling these complex threads is critical to achieving acceptable lifetimes and broader adoption of SOFCs.”

BU WINS LIFE SCIENCES CAPITAL GRANTS March 24th, 2015

By Sara Rimer, BU Research The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) has awarded $1.74 million to Boston University’s Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) to help build a new lung regeneration facility. The new facility, to be housed at CReM on the Medical Campus, will bring together academic and industry scientists from across the state to apply stem cell biology advances to developing new treatments for cystic fibrosis and other lung diseases.

Darrell Kotton (from left), Constance Phillips, and Thomas Bifano accepted capital funding awards from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center.

Photo by Jackie Ricciardi The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) has awarded $1.74 million to Boston University’s Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) to help build a new lung regeneration facility. The new facility, to be housed at

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CReM on the Medical Campus, will bring together academic and industry scientists from across the state to apply stem cell biology advances to developing new treatments for cystic fibrosis and other lung diseases.

In two additional capital funding awards to the University, the MLSC gave an $180,000 grant to the undergraduate Biomedical Laboratory & Clinical Sciences (BLCS) program, a collaboration between Metropolitan College and the School of Medicine, and awarded $363,750 to the Photonics Center for a new incubator for biophotonics start-ups.

MLSC, an investment agency that supports life sciences research and development, announced the awards—and an additional $15 million in grants to other educational institutions and medical centers in Boston and Cambridge—at a March 18 ceremony at Roxbury Community College.

The Photonics Center grant will be used to create laboratory space at its Business Innovation Center for up to four start-up companies. The Photonics Center is a national leader in biophotonics research, which uses light to understand cellular behavior and to diagnose and treat diseases.

“We are grateful for the award from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center for improvements to the biophotonics facilities at the Business Innovation Center and for their support of innovation and economic development in the state,” says center director Thomas Bifano, (ME, MSE), who accepted the award. “The Innovation Center has a track record of success in technology transfer and job creation that has helped retain the pipeline of talented engineering and science graduates in the state. The award will further enhance our reputation as a leader in commercialization of biophotonic technologies.”

The goal of the new lung regeneration facility is the clinical application of recent discoveries in stem cell research that have been led by CReM codirectors Darrell Kotton, a MED professor of medicine and pathology, and Gustavo Mostoslavsky and George Murphy, both MED assistant professors of medicine.

The BLCS award was accepted by program director Constance Phillips (SPH’91), a MED research assistant professor of medical sciences and education. It will be used for essential equipment, including a small bioreactor and an HPLC protein chromatography unit, and to help launch an electronic laboratory information and management system to train students in the ever-evolving methods of record keeping in the biotech industry.

TISP GAINS MAJOR BOOST FROM AT&T April 1st, 2015

$145,000 CONTRIBUTION FOCUSES ON IMPROVING HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES Excerpted from an article by Janet A Smith The College of Engineering has received a $145,000 contribution from AT&T to create a two-year engineering and technology program for an urban high school population, and to document its impact on high school graduation rates.

The funding from AT&T will enable undergraduate Inspiration Ambassadors from the College’s Technology Innovation Scholars Program (TISP) to deliver classroom and after-school engineering activities at the Josiah Quincy Upper School (JQUS) in Boston beginning in September.

Gretchen Fougere, Associate Dean for Outreach and Diversity for the College of Engineering and Adjunct Associate Professor in materials science and engineering, noted, “This contribution validates the extraordinary vision driven by the College and likely impact of TISP. It will provide the resources to apply formal methods to measure our program’s success and to advance its national impact.”

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Fougere, who leads TISP, noted, “We are creating a diverse pipeline of secondary students who are motivated to graduate from high school because of their raised appreciation and understanding of STEM and engineering. This contribution will enable us to provide all the benefits of TISP engineering outreach: fun design activities, afterschool robotics, and summer enrichment and scholarships and deliver our relatable role models to a partner high school in Boston. We continue to engage students of all backgrounds and abilities and both inspire and prepare them for post-secondary success.”

AT&T’s support is a part of AT&T Aspire, the company’s signature education initiative focused on high school success and career readiness. With an unwavering commitment to data-driven education outcomes, AT&T Aspire has impacted more than 1 million students since its launch in 2008.

BELLOTTI WINS BU OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT IGNITION AWARD April 27th, 2015

By Gabriella McNevin, ECE Professor Enrico Bellotti (ECE, MSE) and collaborating PhD students Adam Wichman and Ben Pinkie won the Boston University Office of Technology Development (OTD) Ignition Award for research in “high sensitivity optical detectors in light starved applications.” The purpose of the Ignition Award is to help launch promising new technologies into the marketplace.

Ignition Award recipients participate in a program that supports further research and enables investigators to develop and position technology to be well-received by potential consumers. According to the OTD, “Ignition Awards help bring new technologies to a mature enough state where they can be licensed, spun off as a new venture, or create a new, non-profit social enterprise.”

The award will help develop an infrared detector prototype advanced by Belotti and based on a novel architecture invented by Wichman that overcomes deficiencies of existing technologies. Bellotti has pursued research on infrared detectors for more than a decade; he won an NSF Early Career Award in 2005 for his work on the physics of avalanche photon detectors. Since joining Bellotti’s group in 2012, Pinkie and Wichman have been the driving forces in taking a fresh approach to image detection.

The team’s invention will lead to more sensitive infrared detectors that can operate using less power and at higher temperatures, thereby eliminating the need for certain cooling devices required by the current generation of infrared cameras. This advance may enable novel applications, especially for portable devices where weight and power consumption are at a premium.

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FACULTY AND STAFF FACULTY KAREN ALLEN Professor, Chemistry Protein structure and function through X-ray diffraction and enzyme kinetic studies PhD, Brandeis University, 1989

RICHARD AVERITT Associate Professor, Physics Ultrafast Optical Spectroscopy of Materials, Time-Integrated Optical Spectroscopy of Materials, Terahertz (far infrared) Spectroscopy, Correlated electron materials, metamaterials, and plasmonics • PhD, Rice University, 1998

RAMA BANSIL Professor, Physics Polymers, Soft Materials and Biological Gels • PhD, University of Rochester, 1975

SOUMENDRA N. BASU Professor, ME; Co-Associate Division Head, MSE Thin films for energy, photonic, electronic, and superconducting applications: thermal barrier and environmental barrier coatings for gas turbine and fuel cell applications, environmental degradation of materials at elevated temperatures, structure and stability of interfaces, and characterization of structure and phase transformations in materials using electron microscopy techniques • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1989

ENRICO BELLOTTI Professor, ECE Computational electronics, semiconductor materials and device simulations, power electronics, parallel computing • PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999

DAVID BISHOP Professor, ECE, Physics; Division Head, MSE; Acting Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, College of Engineering Low temperature physics; mechanical properties of materials at low temperatures; MEMS and NEMS; MEMS in lightwave networks; all-optical switching; superconductivity and superfluidity; magnetic vortices in superconductors and their phase transitions; nanotechnology; Casimir effect and Casimir oscillators; VLSI cooling using nano-patterned structures; energy efficient networking; electron coherence effects in metallic nanostructures at low temperatures; cybersecurity and protecting critical infrastructure • PhD, Cornell University, 1978

KEITH BROWN Assistant Professor, ME; Nanoscale transport processes that span nanophotonics, biomaterials, electronics, and heat. Advanced scanning probe techniques for imaging and manipulating nanomaterials

33

SCOTT BUNCH Assistant Professor, ME Experimental Nanomechanics of 2D Materials, Molecular Transport through Porous Graphene, Graphene Adhesion, Mechanical Properties of 2D Materials, Graphene Balloons and Atomic Drums • PhD, Cornell University, 2008

DAVID CAMPBELL Professor, Physics General nonlinear phenomena and complex systems; novel electronic materials, including conducting polymers and organic and high tc superconductors; electron transport in semiconductor superlattices • PhD, Cambridge University, 1970

LUCA DAL NEGRO Associate Professor, ECE Nano-optics, optical materials, light in complex media, nanoplasmonics, computational electromagnetics • PhD, University of Trento, Italy, 2003

ALLISON DENNIS Assistant Professor, BME Semiconductor quantum dots as nanoscale sensors • PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009

LINDA DOERRER Associate Professor, Chemistry Synthetic inorganic chemistry • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996

KAMIL EKINCI Associate Professor, ME Nanomechanics, nanofluidics, nanophotonics, applications of MEMS and NEMS • PhD, Brown University, 1999

SHYAMSUNDER ERRAMILLI Professor, Physics, BME Biological materials • PhD, University of Illinois, 1986

GRETCHEN FOUGERE Associate Dean of Outreach and Diversity, Engineering • PhD in Materials Science and Engineering (Nanotechnology), Northwestern University, 1995

MICHAEL GEVELBER Associate Professor, ME, SE Development of control and sensing systems for electrospinning of nanofibers, plasma spray, ebeam deposition, crystal growth, CVD, and intelligent building HVAC systems • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988

RUSSELL GIORDANO Associate Professor and Director of Biomaterials, Department of Restorative Sciences and Biomaterials, GSDM Fabrication of multiple-phase interpenetrating ceramic composites • DMD, CAGS, DMSc, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, 1991

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BENNETT GOLDBERG Professor, Physics, BME, ECE; Director, Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology; Director Nanomedicine Initiative Nano-optics of semiconductors and biological systems; Raman studies of materials including graphene; single nanoparticle and virus imaging and detection; nanomedicine • PhD, Brown University, 1987

JILLIAN GOLDFARB Research Assistant Professor, ME Chemical Thermodynamics, Chemical Kinetics, Pyrolysis and Combustion, Renewable Energy, Novel Materials for Energy and Environmental Applications, Materials Characterization and Environmental Degradation • PhD, Brown University, 2008

SRIKANTH GOPALAN Associate Professor, ME Fuel cells, chemical thermodynamics, kinetics, and transport phenomena to model the behavior of electrochemical systems • PhD, University of Utah, 1997

MARK GRINSTAFF Professor, Chemistry, BME Polymers, biomaterials, nanomaterials, wound repair, tissue engineering • PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1992

RAMESH JASTI Assistant Professor, Chemistry Synthetic organic chemistry, materials, nanotechnology • PhD, University of California, Irvine, 2006

JONATHAN KLAMKIN Assistant Professor, ECE Integrated photonics, silicon photonics, optical communications, nanophotonics, microwave photonics, compound semiconductors, photonic integration techniques, electronic-photonic integration • PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2008

CATHERINE M. KLAPPERICH Associate Professor, BME, ME Diagnostics for the developing world, microfluidics, bio-micro electromechanical systems (BioMEMs) • PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2000

XI LIN Assistant Professor, ME Materials theory, predictive simulation of materials, electronic, optical, magnetic, and mechanical properties • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003

KARL LUDWIG Professor and Chair, Physics Surfaces, real time x-ray studies during thin film processing, phase transitions • PhD, Stanford University, 1986

35

MALAY MAZUMDER Research Professor, ECE Solar energy systems, particle engineering, material science, electrostatic processes, self-cleaning solar panels, respiratory drug delivery • PhD, University of Arkansas, 1971

ELISE MORGAN Associate Professor, ME, BME Mechanical behavior of biological materials, mechanical stimulation of tissue differentiation, micromechanics of multiscale media, damage mechanics • PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2002

THEODORE MOUSTAKAS Professor, ECE, Physics; Co-Associate Division Head, MSE Growth, properties and applications of wide bandgap semiconductors of the GaN family; the materials are grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) and Hydrate Vapor Phase Epitaxy (HVPE) Device applications include optoelectronic devices covering the spectral range from deep UV to terahertz (LEDs, Laser Diodes, Optical modulators, Detectors) • PhD, Columbia University, 1974

ROBERTO PAIELLA Associate Professor, ECE Optoelectronic devices based on semiconductor quantum-confined systems and photonic nanostructures • PhD, California Institute of Technology, 1998

UDAY B. PAL Professor, ME Energy conversion and storage, green manufacturing, high temperature electrochemistry • PhD, Pennsylvania State University, 1984

TYRONE PORTER Associate Professor, ME, BME; Associate Director, Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology Development of novel stimuli-responsive colloidal micro- and nano-particles for diagnostic imaging, targeted drug delivery, and theranostic applications • PhD, University of Washington

SIDDHARTH RAMACHANDRAN Professor, ECE Optical physics of guided waves, Micro- and nano-structured optical fibers, High-power fiber lasers and fiber sensors, Biomedical imaging and microscopy with optical fibers, Classical and quantum communications • PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1998

EMILY RYAN Assistant Professor, ME Computational modeling of energy systems, pore scale phenomena, porous media, reactive transport, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, thermodynamics, fuel cells, electrochemistry, competitive adsorption and multi-scale systems.

• PhD, Carnegie Mellon University, 2009

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VINOD K. SARIN Professor, ME Materials science, surface modification, physical and chemical vapor deposition, consolidation of ceramics/composites, structure/property consolidations, and transparent optical ceramics • ScD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971

SAHAR SHARIFZADEH Assistant Professor, ECE Understanding and predicting the functional behavior of novel materials using first-principles electronic structure methods • PhD, Princeton University, 2009

KEVIN SMITH Professor, Physics, Chemistry Electronic structure of materials • PhD, Yale University, 1988

DIMITRIJE STAMENOVIC Associate Professor, BME Cellular mechanics, rheology of soft tissues and cells, respiratory mechanics, mechanics of foam-like structures • PhD, University of Minnesota, 1983

JOHN E. STRAUB Professor, Chemistry Theoretical and computational chemistry and biophysics • BS, University of Maryland, 1982 • PhD, Columbia University, 1987

ANNA K. SWAN Associate Professor, ECE, Physics Development of nanoscale optical self-interference microscopy, optical properties of carbon nanotubes • PhD, Boston University, 1993

OPHELIA K.C. TSUI Professor, Physics Synthetic and biological macromolecules • PhD, Princeton University, 1996

SELIM ÜNLÜ Professor; ECE, BME, Physics; Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, College of Engineering Photodetectors, nano-optics, high resolution and solid immersion lens microscopy, subsurface imaging of semiconductor devices and circuits, biophotonics: biosensor fabrication and biological imaging techniques • PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1992

ALICE WHITE Professor, Chair of ME Nanofabrication, optical materials, optoelectronic integration and packaging, thermal management, 3D printing • PhD, Harvard University, 1982

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JOYCE WONG Professor, BME Biomaterials, nanomaterials, biointerfaces for diagnostic imaging, therapeutics, tissue engineering • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994

MUHAMMAD ZAMAN Associate Professor, BME Systems biology of cancer, cell adhesion and migration in 3D environments, cellular mechanics, applications of BME in the developing world • PhD, University of Chicago, 2003

XIN ZHANG Professor, ME Fundamental issues and applications of Micro- and Nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS or micro/nanosystems) • PhD, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 1998

AFFILIATED FACULTY PAUL BARBONE Professor, ME Theoretical and computational (bio) mechanics and (bio) acoustics, medical (ultrasound) imaging • PhD, Stanford University, 1991

ETHAN BAXTER Associate Professor, Earth & Environment Isotope geochemistry, petrology, and mineralogy to understand the evolution of the solid Earth including the role of minerals in the storage and cycling of water and carbon dioxide • PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2000

THOMAS G. BIFANO Professor, ME; Director, Photonics Center Deformable mirrors, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), adaptive optics, biophotonic microscopy, astronomical telescope instrumentation, laser wavefront control • PhD, North Carolina State University, 1988

JAMES BIRD Assistant Professor, ME Interfacial fluid dynamics, fluid-solid interactions, microfluidics, electrohydrodynamics, drops and bubbles • PhD, Harvard University

JOHN CARADONNA Associate Professor, Chemistry Mechanism of action of non-heme iron metalloenzymes and synthetic complexes involved in oxygen activation and catalytic substrate oxidation processes • PhD, Columbia University, 1985

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ANTONIO H. CASTRO-NETO Professor, Physics Graphene, strongly correlated systems, disordered magnetic systems • PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994

CLAUDIO CHAMON Professor, Physics Strongly correlated quantum matter and out-of-equilibrium dynamics of classical and quantum systems • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996

XIN CHEN Assistant Professor, Chemistry Physical surface chemistry of soft materials • PhD, Stanford University, 2005

LAISHENG CHOU Professor of Biomaterials; Professor and Director of Oral Medicine, GSDM Molecular biocompatability of implant materials • DMD, Shanghai No.2 Medical University, 1977 • CAGS in Oral Pathology, University of California San Francisco, 1988 • CAGS in Oral Medicine, University of California San Francisco, 1989 • PhD, University of British Columbia, 1997

DAVID COKER Professor, Chemistry; Director, Boston University Center for Computational Science Theoretical and computational chemistry, excited state dynamics in condensed phase complex systems • PhD, Australian National University, 1986

JAMES COLLINS Professor, BME, SE Synthetic biology, systems biology, noise enhanced sensorimotor function • DPhil, University of Oxford (England), 1990

CHUANHUA DUAN Assistant Professor, ME Micro/nanofluidics, energy conversion and storage, phase change heat transfer • PhD, University of California, Berkeley

MICHAEL EL-BATANOUNY Professor, Physics Magnetism at surfaces • PhD, University of California, Davis

GERRY FINE Professor of the Practice, ME Product design and innovation, manufacturing/operations strategy and management, formation and management of technology ventures, advanced manufacturing techniques • PhD, California Institute of Technology

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MAXIM FRANK-KAMENETSKII Professor, BME DNA structures, DNA topology, triplex DNA, DNA functioning, PNA (peptide nucleic acid), DNA detection • PhD, Moscow Physical-Technical Institute, 1967 • DSci, Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Science, 1971

DOUGLAS HOLMES Assistant Professor, ME Elasticity, geometry, structural stability, mechanics PhD., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2009

GUILFORD JONES Professor Emeritus, Chemistry Photochemistry and photophysical properties of dyes, dye probes, and chromophore conjugates of polymers and proteins, design of photosynthetic models (photoactive peptides) that are capable of charge transport • PhD, University of Wisconsin, 1970

WILLIAM KLEIN Professor, Physics Statistical physics of materials, phase transitions and kinetics of phase transitions • PhD, Temple University, 1972

J. GREGORY MCDANIEL Associate Professor and Associate Chair, ME Structural acoustics, automotive brake squeal, biological vibrations, and ocean wave energy • PhD, The Georgia Institute of Technology, 1992

AMIT MELLER Associate Professor, BME and Physics Nonpore force spectroscopy of RNA folding kinetics, DNA switches and transcription initiation kinetics, RNA helicases activity, mapping transcription factors interaction with DNA, ultra-fast DNA sequencing, novel optical methods for single molecule detection • PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), 1998

PRITIRAJ MOHANTY Professor, Physics Nanoscale materials, mechanical properties • PhD, University of Maryland, 1998

THEODORE MORSE Professor, ECE Photonic material processing, optical fiber fabrication, lasers, and sensors, high power double clad fiber lasers • PhD, Northwestern University, 1961

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DAN NATHANSON Professor and Chair, Department of Restorative Sciences and Biomaterials, GSDM Biomaterials with emphasis on esthetic restorative materials • DMD, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 1972 • Advanced Restorative Dentistry, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, 1975 • Research Fellowship in Dental Materials, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, 1976 • MSD, Dental Public Health, Boston University School of Dental Medicine, 1985 • Advanced Prosthodontics, Boston University School of Dental Medicine, 1990

HAROLD PARK Associate Professor, ME Surface effects on the mechanical properties of nanoelectromechanical systems, coupled physics (thermomechanical, optomechanical, electromechanical) analyses of nanomaterials, mechanics of graphene, multiple scale modeling of solids, atomistic modeling of metal nanowires • PhD, Northwestern University, 2004

RICHARD POBER Research Associate Professor, GSDM Ceramics engineering, interpenetrating phase materials, mechanics of materials, materials design, process design, and equipment design • ScD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971

ANATOLI POLKOVNIKOV Associate Professor, Physics Quantum dynamics of interacting systems, phase space methods, cold atoms, strongly correlated systems • PhD, Yale University, 2003

CLAUDIO REBBI Professor, Physics Computational methods applied to the study of quantum chromodynamics (QCD, the theory of interacting quarks and gluons), of theories of electroweak symmetry breaking, and of graphene • PhD, Università degli Studi Torino, Italy

SIDNEY REDNER Professor, Physics Non-equilibrium statistical physics of materials • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1977

BJÖRN REINHARD Associate Professor, Chemistry Photophysical properties of nanoparticles and the applications of these nanoparticles to biological sensors and devices • Dr. rer. nat., Technical University Kaiserslautern, Germany, 2003

MICHELLE SANDER Assistant Professor, ECE Femtosecond lasers; ultrafast photonics and nonlinear processes; fiber and integrated optics; frequency combs; infrared spectroscopy and biomedical applications • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012

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ANDERS SANDVIK Professor, Physics Computational research on interacting quantum many-body systems • PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1993

AARON SCHMIDT Assistant Professor, ME Nanoscale energy transport, ultrafast laser metrology, and laser-material interaction • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008

DANIEL SEGRÈ Associate Professor, BME, Bioinformatics Program, Biology Evolutionary adaptation and dynamical regulation of metabolism in microbes and microbial communities, with applications to human health, metabolic engineering, and evolutionary biology • PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science, 2002

ANDRE SHARON Professor, ME; Director, Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation Electromechanical machine design, control, automation, biotech/biomedial instrumentation and devices, and rapid microdiagnostics platforms • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988

MICHAEL SMITH Associate Professor, BME Mechanotransduction via the extracellular matrix, fibronectin, engineered cell culture platforms for regulating and measuring cell behavior in vitro • PhD, University of Virginia, 2004

H. EUGENE STANLEY Professor, Physics, BME Statistical physics of materials, including liquids, networks and financial systems • PhD, Harvard University, 1967

BELA SUKI Professor, BME Biomechanics of tissues and extracellular matrix, the ensemble behavior of complex biological systems, nonlinearities in biological systems • PhD, Jozsef Attila University (Hungary), 1987

JOE TIEN Associate Professor, BME Vascularization of biomaterials; quantitative physiology of engineered tissues; biomaterials for microsurgical applications; lymphatics; interstitial transport; inverse problems in vascular imaging; vascular biophysics; thermodynamics of complex systems • PhD, Harvard University, 1999

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DANIEL TSUI Research Professor, ECE Fundamental properties of electronic materials, especially conduction in ultra-small structures, transport, and quantum physics of electronic materials in strong magnetic fields and low temperatures, in particular the quantum phases and their phase transitions • PhD, University of Chicago, 1967

KATHERINE YANHANG ZHANG Associate Professor, ME, BME Mechanobiological behavior of soft biological tissue and extracellular matrix, cardiovascular mechanics, multi-scale modeling of biological composites, micro and nano- mechanics of thin film devices • PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2003

LAWRENCE ZIEGLER Professor and Chair, Chemistry Ultrafast femtosecond laser measurements in a variety of materials, femtosecond carrier relaxation dynamics and optical properties of wide range of materials, which includes liquids, supercritical fluids, photo dissociative molecules, biologically important species and wide band gap semiconductors. Nanostructured plasmonics resonances are exploited for biosensing applications of pathogen, cancer, and body fluid detection • PhD, Cornell University, 1978

PETER ZINK Lecturer and Research Assistant Professor, ME Novel materials development for electrochemical applications, including mixed metal/oxide recycling, sustainable energy storage and conversion, and potentiometric and amperometric sensors.

• PhD, Boston University, 2010

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DIVISION ADMINISTRATION DAVID BISHOP Division Head

SOUMENDRA N. BASU Associate Division Head

THEODORE MOUSTAKAS Associate Division Head

RUTH MASON Division Director

ELIZABETH FLAGG, Ed.M. Graduate Programs Manager

CHERYL STEWART Communications Manager

DIVISION COMMITTEES Leadership: David Bishop, Chair Soumendra Basu Theodore Moustakas Linda Doerrer Srikanth Gopalan Ruth Mason

Steering: David Bishop, Chair Uday Pal Soumendra Basu Ted Moustakas Linda Doerrer Karl Ludwig Catherine Klapperich Mark Grinstaff Russell Giordano Ruth Mason

MSE Innovation Grants: Srikanth Gopalan, Chair Siddharth Ramachandran David Bishop

Graduate Programs/ Admissions Committee Soumendra N. Basu, Chair Allison Dennis Linda Doerrer Srikanth Gopalan Karl Ludwig Siddharth Ramachandran Sahar Sharifzadeh Elizabeth Flagg

MSE Colloquium: Ophelia Tsui, Chair Ruth Mason Cheryl Stewart

PhD Qualifying Exam: Srikanth Gopalan, Chair Soumendra N. Basu Enrico Bellotti Uday Pal Xi Lin Sahar Sharifzadeh Ophelia Tsui Elizabeth Flagg

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Materials Workshop: Tyrone Porter, Chair Ruth Mason Cheryl Stewart

Scheduling: Soumendra Basu, Chair Ruth Mason Elizabeth Flagg

GRADUATE PROGRAMS ENROLLMENT 67 | Number of students enrolled in the MSE graduate programs, 2014-2015

Table 1: GRADUATE STUDENT BREAKDOWN US PhD

International

Total

Female

Male

Female

Male

4

8

6

10

28

1

2

13

16

MS MS w/ Practice

1

MEng

1

2

LEAP

1

5

TOTAL

6

16

5

1 8

16 6

14

31

67

Table 2: STUDENT POPULATION BY PROGRAM, 2009 TO PRESENT

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GRADUATE STUDENT FUNDING Table 3: GRADUATE STUDENT FUNDING FOR AY 2014-2015 MEng

MS

PhD

Total

Dean's Fellows

3

3

Graduate Teaching Fellows

7

7

0.75

0.75

16.25

16.75

21

0

36.5

2

1

3

23

28

67

Division Fellows Research Assistants

0.5

Independent

15.5

Tuition Scholarship TOTALS

16

Table 4: RESEARCH ASSISTANT FUNDING BY AGENCY

DEGREES AWARDED 19 | Number of PhDs awarded since the Division was founded in 2008-2009 2 | Number of students awarded their PhD degrees this year (Table 6) 38 | Number of MS degrees awarded since the Division was founded in 2008-2009 8 | Number of students awarded their MS degrees this year (Table 7) 28 | Number of MEng degrees awarded since the program was offered in Fall 2011 10 | Number of students awarded their MEng degrees this year (Table 8) 5 | Number of students awarded their undergraduate minor since the program was offered in 2011-2012

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Table 5: DEGREES AWARDED

TABLE 6: PHD DEGREES AWARDED AY 2014-2015 Student

Advisor

Dissertation Title

Mertiri, Alket

Erramilli

Yurt, Abdulkadir

Unlu

Mid-Infrared Photothermal Hyperspectra Imaging of Biomolecular Systems Subsurface Optical Microscopy of Semiconductor Integrated Circuits

TABLE 7: MS DEGREES AWARDED AY 2014-2015 Last Name

First Name

Advisor

Heiling

Calvin

Mazumder

Hsueh

Hao-Wei

Pal

Jin

Yuxiao

Basu

Liu

Jianfeng

Pal

Liu

Sichang

Pal

Rainville

Meliha

Ludwig

Stark

Thomas

Bishop

Yu

Yang

Basu

Mainzhausen Espinosa*

Maria

Pal

*MS with Practice

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TABLE 8: MENG DEGREES AWARDED AY 2014-2015 Last Name

First Name

Advisor

Cao

Ye

Pal

Han

Xiao

Pal

Joe

Pauline

Gopalan

Li

Xuhui

Pal

Lin

Keng-Wei

Bishop

Medford

Shawn

Gopalan

Sokolinski

Tatiana

Pal

Wang

Xiao

Pal

Zhang

Xiaoyu

Pal

Zhao

Yihong

Pal

RECRUITMENT In academic year 2014/2015 the MSE program received 227 applications of which 86 were admitted, and 39 matriculated.

For Fall 2015 we received 272 applications, 104 were admitted and of those offers of financial aid were made to 26 students, including fellowships and half tuition scholarships. We expect 26 students to matriculate in Fall 2015. The BU MSE program competed directly with top programs in materials science.

Of the 26 students expected in Fall 2015, all 7 PhDs are fully funded and four MS students have partial tuition scholarships. The new students come from several strong programs, including: Barnard College Brigham Young University Carleton College Carnegie Mellon University DongHua University Hainan University Hubei Normal University Jilin University National Taiwan University Nazarbayev University Northeastern University State University of New York at Stony Brook Tehran University University of Alberta University of California at San Diego University of Miami University of Science and Technology Beijing University of Western Ontario Worcester Polytechnic Institute Wuhan University of Technology The entering PhD class has a mean undergraduate GPA of 3.7.

48 Â Â

Admissions

MEng MS PhD Totals

2 5 8 15

7 13 5 25

2 9 3 14

4 17 11 32

MEng

1

2

2

2

Totals 39 94 94 227

15 44 27 86

7

MS

1

9

4

10

24

PhD Totals

1 3

1 12

2 8

4 16

8 39

Applicants

Matriculants

TABLE 9: ADMISSIONS RESULTS FOR 2014-2015

Degree MEng MS PhD Totals

Domestic Female Male 2 9 7 29 13 19 22 57

International Female Male 7 21 15 43 25 37 47 101

Applicants

Table 10: ADMISSION PROJECTIONS FOR FALL 2015

Degree MEng MS PhD Totals

Domestic Female Male 4 7 11 13 11 30 26 50

International Female Male 11 23 21 58 30 53 62 134

Admissions

MEng MS PhD Totals

4 3 7

4 7 9 20

5 12 1 18

17 36 6 59

Stud. Accepts

Totals 45 103 124 272

26 59 19 104

MEng

1

1

2

4

MS

4

3

4

4

15

PhD

1

3

3

7

Totals

5

7

5

9

26

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CURRICULUM ENHANCEMENTS NEW COURSES The Division voted to adopt the following courses as Elective or Practicum courses as indicated.

• CH552 Materials Chemistry (Concentrations: Biomaterials, Nanomaterials, and Materials for Energy and Environment) • CH621 Biochemistry (Concentration: Biomaterials) • CH629 DNA Nanotechnology (Concentration: Biomaterials) • CH631 Structure and Bonding (Concentrations: Nanomaterials, Materials for Energy and Environment) • EK 691 Lean and Agile New Product Development (Practicum) • PY 741 Solid State Phys 1 (Concentrations: Electronic and Photonic Materials, Materials for Energy and Environment) • PY 742 Solid State Phys 2 (Concentrations: Electronic and Photonic Materials, Materials for Energy and Environment) • PY 745 Experimental Surface Physics and Chem (Concentration: Electronic and Photonic Materials)

SATISFACTORY ACADEMIC PROGRESS FOR PHD STUDENTS

The College of Engineering defined Satisfactory Academic Progress for PhD Students. The policy was emailed to all PhD students and posted on department and division web pages. The policy is as follows:

The College of Engineering is committed to five full years of financial support for graduate students in the CoE Ph.D. program who maintain Satisfactory Academic Progress. This support will be in the form of Teaching Fellowships, Research Assistantships, or Graduate Fellowships. Funding beyond five years is generally provided (but not guaranteed) to students who are working productively toward the Ph.D. degree. The following achievements are required to maintain Satisfactory Academic Progress: -Students must complete the required course work with a B average (GPA of 3.0) or better and pass the Ph.D. qualifier exam within the allotted time frames. Thereafter they need to complete a Dissertation Prospectus and a Dissertation. Details on the course requirements and qualifier exams are found on the respective departmental or division web sites.

-Students are required to find a research home and funding no later than 12 months after beginning the program.

The preponderance of the funding arises from extramural sources such as fellowships, training grants and research funding from grants of individual faculty. Once securing a funded research home the department/division guarantees continued funding through the 5th year. Typically this funding will derive from extramural sources. If, however bridge resources are required from the departmental/division, the department/division can require that the student be a teaching fellow for the time they are being supported.

The inability to find a faculty research supervisor willing to serve as a research supervisor by the end of 12 months and with funding is initially interpreted as not making satisfactory progress toward the Ph.D. degree. In rare cases, after the first 12 months a student is able to identify a faculty member willing to serve as a research supervisor but neither the faculty nor the student is able secure extramural funding for the second year. This student can petition and request one additional year of funding from departmental or division resources. Such a request will need to convey to the chair or division head that that the student has found a research advisor willing to supervise the student and that the advisor and/or student have a concrete plan to secure extramural funding sources following the additional year. Decisions to support this request are at the discretion of the department chair/division head. If no such funding has emerged after the second year, these students will be deemed as not making satisfactory academic progress and they may not be permitted to complete their Ph.D. studies.

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-After joining a laboratory according the conditions above, students register for research credits each semester and summer they work in that laboratory. If the supervisor feels the student is not making satisfactory progress, the supervisor will provide a 4 month warning letter (equivalent to a semester or summer). If the progress remains unsatisfactory, the faculty will dismiss the student from their laboratory. The student must then either find an alternative funding source from an individual faculty member or leave the program. After dismissal, the student has one summer or academic semester to find alternative support. During this period, the department or program is under no obligation to find support for the student but may choose to do so, at the discretion of the department/program leadership.

GRADUATE OUTCOME EVIDENCE AND TIMING

The Provost’s Office requested that all College of Engineering programs prepare Graduate Outcome documents for annual review, due in October of each year. Each Materials Program document outlines Learning Outcomes, the URL where the outcomes are published, Evaluation methods, Program Reviews, Curricular Changes Due to Assessment, and Annual Program Assessment Schedule. · · ·

http://www.bu.edu/provost/files/2013/12/PhD-in-Materials-Science-Engineering.pdf http://www.bu.edu/provost/files/2013/12/ENG-MS-in-Materials-Science-Engineering-4.2014.pdf http://www.bu.edu/provost/files/2013/12/MEng-in-Materials-Science-Engineering-Engineering.pdf

MASTERS W ITH ENGINEERING PRACTICE In Fall 2014 the College of Engineering adopted a new degree option, With Engineering Practice, for any student enrolled in one of the College’s master’s programs. With Engineering Practice is a valuable opportunity for a student at the master’s level to complete an approved internship integral to their program of study. This degree option allows a student to develop additional technical and professional skills.

Students interested in the With Engineering Practice option must apply and meet the requirements outlined below. Students successfully completing the requirements will earn the accompanying degree designation (e.g., Master of Science in Materials Science and Engineering with Engineering Practice).

Students may fulfill the requirement for this degree option by completing an approved internship. Internship choices must be relevant to the student’s program of study and must go through a department-level approval process. Satisfactory completion of the requirement is determined by the department and then formally received and recorded by the Graduate Programs office.

Prerequisites • Students who are US citizens and permanent residents may begin an internship after completing a minimum of 12 credits toward their program plan.

• International students must first complete two semesters in full-time status to be eligible to begin an internship in the United States, and they must complete additional paperwork with the BU International Students & Scholars office (ISSO).

• The internship and report must be approved by the student’s faculty advisor.

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Requirements and Grading • Students interested in pursuing the degree option, With Engineering Practice, must be in good academic standing with a GPA of 3.0 or above.

• Students who are US citizens and permanent residents may fulfill With Engineering Practice requirements by submitting a completed With Engineering Practice Approval Form with the required documents. After the advisor’s approval is obtained, the form and documents must be submitted to the Graduate Programs office for final review and formal registration for this degree option.

• International students completing an internship off campus must complete the Curricular Practical Training (CPT) form. Students must also submit With Engineering Practice Form with the required documents. After the advisor’s approval is obtained, the form and documents must be submitted to the Graduate Programs office for review and formal registration for this degree option. Students will then bring their documents to ISSO for review and final approval for off-campus curricular practical training.

• A mid-point review between the student and the internship supervisor must be conducted and submitted.

• Before the end of the semester in which the internship takes place, the student must submit a report for review by the academic advisor. The report must then be submitted to the Graduate Programs office for the Senior Associate Dean’s review.

• Students receive a grade of Pass or Fail. The final grade is based on satisfactory completion of all requirements and is determined by the academic advisor in consultation with the internship supervisor.

COMMUNITY-BUILDING ACTIVITIES MSE facilitated social events and empowered our graduate students through the BU student chapters of the ASM International, and the Materials Research Society (MRS) professional societies.

SOCIAL INTERACTION ASM and MRS Student Chapters were given a budget to enhance their outreach and to organize several studentonly activities. Their activities are outlined in the Graduate Student Professional Societies section.

Students were invited to the following events in AY 2014-2015: July 17, LEAP Ice Cream Social August 27, College of Engineering Orientation August 28, Division Welcome Lunch, Sichuan Gourmet August 29, LEAP Orientation September 1, ISSO Orientation September 4, MSE PhD Orientation September 12, MSE Masters Orientation September 26, Materials Student Social November 6, ASM General Assembly Meeting November 21, Second Annual MRS Thanksgiving Potluck December 3, BU-MRS Reception, 6:30-8:30, Sheraton Boston Hotel, Co-sponsors: Physics, and CNN December 12, Physics Holiday Party

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December 18, MSE Division Holiday Lunch Buffet February 26, Open House Welcome Dinner February 27, Open House Graduate Student Lunch March 2, Alternate Open House, Student Lunch March 9, Alternate Open House, Student Lunch March 30, BU Scholars Day May 15, Fourth Annual Cinco de May Lunch (10 days late, but olé!)

May 18, ASM Materials Experience for High School Students May 28, College of Engineering Employer Open House All Student Association of Graduate Engineers (SAGE) events (at least 2 monthly) MSE Colloquium Series: September 12, 18; October 17, 24, 29, 31; November 7, 14, 21; December 5 (2 speakers); January 23; March 20; May 18 Career Development Office Seminar Sessions and Speaker Series

GRADUATE STUDENT PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES BU MATERIALS RESEARCH SOCIETY (MRS) STUDENT CHAPTER Officers And Advisors President – Tom Stark Vice President – Erin Roberts Secretary – Deniz Cetin Treasurer – Gozde Erdem Faculty Advisor – Soumendra N. Basu Faculty Advisor – David Bishop

Winners for the Sustainability @ My School Poster Competition, 2014 MRS Fall Meeting

Front Row (Left to Right): Yakup Gonullu of Univ of Cologne, Binxing Yu of Rutgers (2nd place), Jennifer Leduc of Univ of Cologne, Zhen Wang of Stevens Inst. of Technology, and Xin Li of Stevens Inst. of Technology (tied 3rd place ) Back Row: SHIZHAO SU of Boston University (1st place), YIHONG JIANG of Boston University, Anas Abutaha of KAUST (tied for 3rd place), and Alexander Sasinska of Univ. of Cologne

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BU ASM INTERNATIONAL STUDENT CHAPTER ASM Officers President – Thomas Villalon Vice President – Yihong Jiang Treasurer – Yang Yu Secretary – Shizhao Su

The main outreach effort of the ASM Chapter is to provide volunteers and logistical help for the BU Materials Day co-organized by ASM-Boston chapter and the ASM BU Chapter. ASM Boston has helped organized the BU Materials Day (formerly known as the Materials Experience) at Boston University for the past 3 years and this th year will be the 4 . This year it was hosted on May 18th. It is a one day program to excite and encourage high school students to pursue careers in materials science and/or applied science and engineering disciplines.

A total of 64 local high school students from five high schools attended the event (photos below). The event featured lectures and interactive demonstrations at the Engineering and Product Innovation Center (EPIC) and also gave the high school students tours of the College of Engineering.

The involvement of BU chapter consisted of arranging the facilities as well as gathering volunteers to assist in eight educational modules. More than 20 volunteers from all engineering departments in BU signed up and helped with the event.

GRADUATE STUDENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

MARGARET CHERN was selected by the Henry Luce Foundation to receive a Clare Boothe Luce Fellowship starting in Summer 2015. The Clare Boothe Luce Fellowship is awarded for a period of two academic years to a highly qualified woman who is a doctoral candidate (in some cases, candidates for a masters or other specialized graduate or professional degree will be considered) in the sciences and engineering. The Fellowship is awarded solely on the basis of merit. (Advisor: Allison Dennis)

SCOTT GILLARD was awarded a Project Glacier NSF DGE GK12 Fellowship. (Advisor: Vinod Sarin)

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SHIZHAO SU, YIHONG JIANG and YIWEN GONG (PhD students); and XIAO HAN (MEng) won the silver medal and an $8,000 cash prize at the TECO Green Tech Contest in Taiwan for their project, “Innovative Green Technology for Cost-Effective Metals Production.” (Advisors: Uday Pal, Srikanth Gopalan)

Yihong Jiang, Shizhao Su and Yiwen Gong with their silver medal at the Green Tech Contest. (Xiao Han was unable to attend.)

SHIZHAO SU and YIHONG JIANG, First Place, Sustainability @ My School Poster Competition, for “Carbon-free Solid Oxide Membrane (SOM) Based Electrolysis for Metals Production and Sustainable Energy Applications,” 2014 MRS Fall Meeting. (Advisor: Uday Pal)

ALEXANDROS-ANDREAS KYRTSOS was selected to receive a $5,000 grant from the Gerondelis Foundation. With this grant, Kyrtsos plans to continue his computational studies of point defects in GaN research with Professor Enrico Bellotti (MSE, ECE). Kyrtsos earned his bachelor’s degree from the National Technical University of Athens, School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences. The Gerondelis Foundation Inc. is a private foundation with offices in Lynn, Massachusetts. (Advisor: Enrico Bellotti)

MELIHA GOZDE RAINVILLE was one of only 100 US graduate students invited to attend the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, an annual conference and technology showcase that brings together experts from different technical disciplines and professional communities to explore the nation’s energy challenges in new and innovative ways. This year’s conference met in Washington, DC on February 9-11. (Advisor: Karl Ludwig)

ABDULKADIR YURT received the 2015 MSE PhD Dissertation Award for his dissertation titled: "Subsurface Optical Microscopy of Semiconductor Integrated Circuits.” (Advisor: Selim Unlu)

MSE COLLOQUIUM STUDENT HOSTS MSE Colloquium student hosts help arrange the speaker’s schedule and help with logistics for their visit to BU. The faculty hosts and the Division administrators appreciate their assistance! The following students were student hosts for the 2014-2015 academic year: Margaret Chen, Christa Hosken, Heng Luo, Thomas Villalon, Yang Yu

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MSE GRADUATE STUDENT PHOTO CONTEST MSE graduate students were invited to submit the coolest, most intriguing and visually appealing photos of what they were doing in their laboratories and research. The MSE Leadership committee selected the winners: First Place: Khwanchai Tantiwanichapan (Advisor: Roberto Paiella)

“Micro-space” is composed of a dark-field microscope image of graphene and PMMA transferred on SiO2 substrate and a scanning electron microscope image of a drop of Lead on Si substrate. (Photographer: Khwanchai Tantiwanichapan)

Second Place: Jian Yin (Advisor: Roberto Paiella)

Scanning Electron Microscope image of Nanomushrooms fabricated in the OPF using silicon on insulator wafers with metal caps on top. (Photographer: Jian Yin)

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Second Place: Leonard Kogos (Advisor: Roberto Paiella)

Leonard Kogos running Plasmonic simulations using Lumerical FDTD software. (Photograher: Xioawei Wang)

Second Place: Lu Yan (Advisor: Siddharth Ramachandran)

Green laser light at 532 nm is coupled into a spool of single mode optical fiber (1.5 km). Part of the light goes into the cladding of that fiber causing the glowing. The green shining cylinder on the left is the optical fiber on a plastic spool. The bright line-shape object on the right is the input fiber pigtail. (Photographer: Lu Yan)

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RESEARCH RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS BEYOND BACTERIA July 15th, 2014

A PROMISING NEW METHOD FOR ENGINEERING MAMMALIAN CELLS

By Mark Dwortzan At the heart of synthetic biology is the assembly of genetic components into “circuits” that perform desired operations in living cells, with the long-term goal of empowering these cells to solve critical problems in healthcare, energy, the environment and other domains, from cancer treatment to toxic waste cleanup. While much of this work is done using bacterial cells, new techniques are emerging to reprogram eukaryotic cells— those found in plants and animals, including humans—to perform such tasks.

To engineer useful genetic circuits in eukaryotic cells, synthetic biologists typically manipulate sequences of DNA in an organism’s genome, but Assistant Professor Ahmad “Mo” Khalil (BME), Professor James J. Collins (BME, MSE, SE) postdoctoral fellow Albert J. Keung (BME) and other researchers at Boston University’s Center of Synthetic Biology (CoSBi) have another idea that could vastly increase their capabilities.

Rather than manipulate the DNA sequence directly, the CoSBi engineers are exploiting a class of proteins that regulate chromatin, the intricate structure of DNA and proteins that condenses and packages a genome to fit within the cell. These chromatin regulator (CR) proteins play a key role in expressing—turning on and off—genes throughout the cell, so altering their makeup could provide a new pathway for engineering the cell’s genetic circuits to perform desired functions.

Using synthetic biology techniques, the researchers systematically modified 223 distinct CR proteins in yeast to determine their impact—individually and in various combinations—on gene expression in yeast cells. Described in the journal Cell in a paper featuring Albert Keung as first author, their findings could provide a new set of design principles for reprogramming eukaryotic cells.

Among the researcher’s findings was the discovery that selected CR proteins can regulate the expression not only of single genes, but clusters of nearby genes. They also determined that chromatin modifications induced by CR proteins got passed down to new cells once existing cells divided, endowing them with “memory” of specific functions. This memory retention could enable sets of engineered cells to sense a fleeting signal and remember it over a long period of time even as cells divide. Cells within a bodily organ, such as the brain or liver, also require memory of their tissue type in order to maintain their function and avoid becoming cancerous.

“Exploiting the major role that chromatin plays in gene regulation provides us with another layer of control in reprogramming cells to perform specific functions,” said Keung, who envisions the new approach leading to a better understanding of cell biology and a more powerful synthetic biology toolkit.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Science Foundation, Boston University College of Engineering, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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BUILDING THE TEST KITCHEN FOR MEDICAL DIAGNOSTICS July 15th, 2014

ENG PROF INVENTING TECHNOLOGY THAT COULD CHANGE THE FUTURE OF PRIMARY CARE

By Barbara Moran, BU Research

Biomedical engineer Catherine Klapperich is working on a rapid viral load test for HIV. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky Catherine Klapperich moves fast, talks fast, and has at least 15 different ideas rolling through her head at the same time. How, for instance, can she keep her postdocs on track, guide 134 undergrads through their senior project, and meanwhile invent new technology that may change medicine as we know it? She arrived a few minutes late for an interview, preoccupied with a more immediate concern: she had accidentally spilled water on her iPhone. She ran down to her lab to stick it into the vacuum oven, hoping that would dry it out. Then she ran back to her office and sat down to talk.

Klapperich holds three associate professorships at BU in the College of Engineering: biomedical engineering, mechanical engineering, and materials science and engin eering. She also directs the Center for Future Technologies in Cancer Care. Her lab creates point-of-care diagnostics—tools, like a pregnancy test stick, that doctors and consumers can use to immediately test such conditions as high cholesterol or diagnose illnesses like strep throat. One critical need in the developing world is a rapid test for HIV viral load—the amount of HIV in a patient’s blood. The number helps doctors monitor the disease, decide when to start treatment, and determine if HIV medications are working.

BU Today recently spoke to Klapperich about her work.

BU Today: A lot of your work focuses on public health issues. Where does that interest come from?

Klapperich: When I got my PhD at Berkeley, I was studying artificial hips and knees. They have a metal part and a plastic part, and we were engineering the plastic part. I became interested in how cells interact with biomaterial surfaces. And that led into my postdoc, which focused on how cells interact with biomaterials at the level of gene expression.

At that time, gene chips were just becoming a routine tool in the laboratory. And I was completely floored by all the steps to use them: breaking the cells open, getting the DNA or RNA out, amplifying it, putting it on a chip, and then turning on the reader to figure out the expression levels. It was a huge number of steps. As an engineer I

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thought, why? So I became really interested in doing this stuff in a turn-crank way, where I wouldn’t have to do all the little steps.

A machine would do it instead?

The machine would do it. The gene chip is a wondrous thing. And yet it took two and a half days to make the material to go onto that chip. So I became very focused on the sample preparation process. Then it became clear to me that this is why point-of-care diagnostics do not exist in the numbers that they should. Because yeah, we have this chip and it can tell us all this information, but all this prep requires someone with a lot of laboratory skill.

So you want to take the diagnostic chip, have some patient spit on it, and then have the answer show up without two and a half days of sample prep?

Right. And so for DNA and RNA it’s hard, because most of it is inside of our cells or inside the bugs that infect us.

So you have to break cells apart and amplify the DNA or RNA—make many, many copies. Then you tag them with something like a fluorescent protein that allows you to see them. So we need to do three things: we need to extract, we need to amplify, we need to read. Let’s do those three things as simply as we can, in as few steps as we can, as reliably as we can. We want to be the test kitchen for this work.

This field has grown a lot, even in the last 10 years.

Yeah—now you can walk into Walgreens and there’s a little blue sign hanging over the aisle, where it says things like Foot Powder and Toothpaste, and it says Diagnostics. And I remember the first time I saw that a few years ago. I thought, what? That’s crazy! This is now a thing in the aisle.

It’s a noun.

Exactly. There are the glucose strips, there’s a cholesterol test. You can buy a drug test— A drug test for what?

For your kid. This is the marijuana one.

Really? This box you’re showing me is a marijuana test kit?

Yeah. This is great. You can buy the 4-drug test, the 7-drug test, or the 12-drug test. You can test your kid for depressants, barbiturates, methadone, benzodiazepines, opiates, ecstasy, amphetamines, methamphetamines, cocaine, marijuana, and Oxy. It’s pretty amazing. And it’s just pee. I think it really empowers people to have information about their own health. If you think about cholesterol tests, and HIV yes/no, respiratory infections, strep, these things can be done by the patient. That can save an office visit, which saves money; it saves the potential of infecting other people; it saves the time of the clinician. I think it will change the primary care model a lot.

What’s the first thing out of your lab that might make it into Walgreens?

It’s an HIV viral load test that we’re working on with a company in San Francisco. A colleague told me last week, from his clinic in South Africa, “We need a viral load test. If people come to see me and I tell them, ‘I’m going to take your blood, come back to get the results,’ 50 percent of them just don’t come back. Something that would help tomorrow is if I could give that person their results right there. And if their viral load is suppressed, then I don’t have to expend any resources seeing that person until the following year.”

They’re testing that right now in South Africa. That could be deployed in a primary care clinician’s office, and that’s the first thing that will come from our laboratory.

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TRACKING OSTEOARTHRITIS WITH NANOPARTICLES July 15th, 2014

By Mark Dwortzan

The new osteoarthritis diagnostic method exploits tantalum oxide nanoparticles as contrast agents to image surface and interior regions of cartilage coating the joints.

A chronic disease afflicting more than 27 million Americans and 630 million worldwide, osteoarthritis occurs as the protective cartilage coating on joints in the knees, hips and other parts of the body degrades. No cure for osteoarthritis exists, but treatments can slow its progression, reduce pain and restore joint functioning. Now a team of researchers led by Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE) has developed a sensitive imaging method that promises to enhance diagnosis of osteoarthritis and enable improved care through earlier detection and more targeted treatments.

The method combines nanotechnology, engineering and medicine, and exploits new, biocompatible nanoparticles as contrast agents to image surface and interior regions of articular cartilage (the smooth, waterrich tissue that lines the ends of bones in load-bearing joints) — regions that traditional X-ray illumination cannot detect. The research, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, is described in the June 30 issue of Angewandte Chemie.

“In the short term, these contrast agents could be used to image cartilage over time to monitor the efficacy of proposed osteoarthritis drugs,” said Grinstaff. “With continued development, they may enable clinicians to diagnose and stage the disease so that the most appropriate course of treatment could be followed.”

Two members of Grinstaff’s lab, MD/PhD student Jonathan Freedman (Pharmacology) and Postdoctoral Fellow Hrvoje Lusic (BME and Chemistry), synthesized a new nanoparticle contrast agent made of tantalum oxide that diffuses into the cartilage, thus enabling clinicians to use CT-scans to assess cartilage thickness and pinpoint lesions and injuries in osteoarthritic tissue. Guided by their clinical collaborator, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School physician Brian Snyder, Freedman and Lusic used the nanoparticles to successfully image rat articular cartilage in in vivo and ex vivo experiments, as well as in a cadaverous finger joint.

They chose tantalum as a contrast agent material because it absorbs a greater fraction of X-rays produced at clinical scanning voltages than traditional materials. In addition, the tantalum nanoparticles’ positive charge automatically directs the particles to the cartilage, which carries a negative charge. Building on their initial success, the researchers plan to conduct additional in vivo experiments in animal models.

The impetus for exploring new and better contrast agents came from Snyder, who sought better ways to diagnose and assess treatment of osteoarthritis. Grinstaff sees the new method as especially promising for early detection of the disease.

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“Today we have very poor capability to detect early stage osteoarthritis,” said Grinstaff. “Most patients come into the clinic at stage three when the pain becomes significant, but if diagnostics based on our method is done proactively, many patients could get the treatment they need much earlier and avoid a lot of discomfort.”

HOW FAST CAN A DROP BOUNCE? July 17th, 2014

ENGINEERING THE PERFECT WATER-REPELLENT SURFACE

By Cynthia K. Buccini Teflon has nothing on the lotus plant; droplets of water that land on the surface of the plant’s leaf roll right off, sweeping away dirt particles as they go.

That extraordinary water repellence is known as superhydrophobicity, and scientists would love to harness it for such things as removing droplets from the surface of airplane wings before they freeze to reduce icing or improving the performance of steam turbines by keeping them dry.

“There are a lot of applications where people really want to get drops not just off surfaces, but off surfaces as fast as possible,” says James Bird, a College of Engineering assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, and head of ENG’s Interfacial Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.

ENG’s James Bird uses high-speed cameras to capture the bounce of a droplet. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi Bird is studying how to minimize the contact time of a drop on a surface, and while he hasn’t bested nature, he may be coming close.

The lotus leaf and other superhydrophobic surfaces have two things going for them: a liquid-repellent surface chemistry—like a Teflon pan—and a texture that may appear smooth to the naked eye, but is actually roughened

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by microscopic pits, spikes, and pores. The microscopic texture traps air, so the drop is touching only a fraction of the solid surface.

When a raindrop-sized droplet lands on a superhydrophobic surface, it flattens out like a pancake and then rebounds, leaving the surface 12.4 milliseconds after it arrived.

Bird wanted to figure out how to reduce that contact time. What if the drop retracted in a different way, he wondered. If it splashed unevenly, the drop would theoretically leave the surface faster. “That was our thesis,” he says, “and, spoiler alert—we showed you can do that.”

He and colleagues from MIT found that by changing the surface on which a drop falls, they could change the hydrodynamics of the drop and the contact time. “Our goal was to have something that was manufacturable, more so than just an idea,” Bird says.

They used a laser to etch a rough, microscopic texture onto a silicon wafer, and then added ridges, which were smaller than the droplet, but big enough to see—about the size of a human hair. They captured the bounce using high-speed cameras.

Bird discovered that the drop bounced off the silicon wafer in 7.8 milliseconds, 37 percent faster than off the standard superhydrophobic surface. The explanation: when the drop spreads out into the pancake shape, the thickness varies over the hairlike ridges. That variation leads to variation in retraction speed, which causes the drop to split up and leave the surface more quickly than it would otherwise.

Next, they wanted to learn what would happen if they changed the surface microtexture and the material, from silicon to aluminum and copper. “We see the same dynamics,” says Bird, the lead author on a paper describing the results in the November 21, 2013, issue of Nature.

Bird and his team looked to nature for examples of superhydrophobic surfaces similar to the one they created, and found them in the wings of the Morpho butterfly and the leaves of the nasturtium plant. These scanning electron microscope images show droplets falling on a vein on a Morpho wing (top) and a vein on a nasturtium leaf (bottom). Images courtesy of James Bird Finally, they looked to nature for examples of superhydrophobic surfaces similar to the one they created, with both a microscopic texture and the larger ridges. They found those examples in the wings of the Morpho butterfly and the leaves of the nasturtium plant. Bird points to an image, taken by a scanning electron microscope, of the butterfly wing. “You have this roughness,” he says, “making it superhydrophobic, but you also

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have these veins—and the same for veins on the nasturtium leaf—that cause drops to come off the surface faster. So drops impacting the nasturtium leaf are shed faster than on the lotus leaf.”

Bird thinks the faster bounce rate may be caused by the way the veins are arranged. On the lotus leaf, the veins are just beneath the surface; on the butterfly wing and the nasturtium leaf, they’re on top. “So even though they both have veins that are about the same size, the position of those veins has the effect where one is going to lead to this drop breaking up faster, and the other is not,” he says.

As an engineer, Bird is more comfortable talking about the implications for airplanes and steam turbines than for butterflies and plant leaves. “We’re not doing as well as the butterfly wing,” he says. “But we’re approaching it.”

ENG PROF WINS NASA EARLY CAREER FACULTY AWARD September 12th, 2014

GIVEN FOR DEVELOPING DEEP SPACE COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

By Amy Laskowski

Jonathan Klamkin (ECE, MSE) says photonic integrated circuits will “soon fly into deep space and send large amounts of data back to Earth.” Photos by Cydney Scott Ready to view deep space in high-def?

Jonathan Klamkin is working to make it possible. A College of Engineering assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and a member of the Division of Materials Science & Engineering, Klamkin was recently awarded a NASA Early Career Faculty Space Tech Research Grant for his work developing new and faster ways to send data using integrated laser transmitter technology, which could aid NASA in sending high-definition video of space back to Earth. The grant is given to “outstanding researchers early in their careers” engaged in the development of space technology that has been deemed of high priority for NASA.

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Last October, NASA completed the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, the first mission to demonstrate two-way, high-rate laser communication from lunar orbit aboard the Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). Using traditional methods, it would take the NASA spacecraft 639 hours to download an average-length high-definition movie. But using this new technology, downloading takes fewer than eight minutes. As NASA prepares future trips to Mars, it has granted Klamkin up to $600,000 over three years to develop technologies that can be used in future space missions.

“Technology drives exploration, and these researchers will provide fuel for NASA’s innovation engine,” says Michael Gazarik, NASA’s associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate, of this year’s NASA early career grant winners. “Sustained investments must be made to mature the capabilities required to reach the challenging destinations that await exploration, such as an asteroid, Mars, and outer planets. These investments help to assure a robust university research community dedicated to advanced space technology development.”

Klamkin says he was thrilled to learn he had been selected for the honor, which was awarded to only seven university-based researchers nationwide. “This grant not only allows my research group to interact with NASA and develop technologies for future space missions,” he says, “but will also assist us in developing relationships with leading research institutions conducting optical communications research for NASA, including the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.”

“These NASA early career awards are incredibly competitive,” says Kenneth Lutchen, dean of ENG. “Professor Klamkin is advancing highly creative photonic principles and technologies that can transform our ability to communicate efficiently into deep space. It is wonderful to have such a creative young faculty member impacting these challenging problems.”

Klamkin came to BU last year from the Scuola Superiore Sant’ Anna in Pisa, Italy, where he was an assistant professor and director of the Integrated Photonic Technologies Center. Prior to that, he was a member of the technical staff at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In 2013 he received an ENG Dean’s Catalyst Award, granted to faculty to support promising early-stage projects, and he was recently named a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

At BU, Klamkin heads up the Integrated Photonics Laboratory, where his team researches optical communications, microwave photonics, and sensing. Photonic integration consolidates several photonic functions onto a single chip. Klamkin’s research focuses specifically on specialized data delivery that relies on laser transmitters.

Thinking of new and faster ways to transmit data is critical, he says, because existing radio frequency systems have low data rates. Laser transmitters are able to send data to Earth through space, similar to how internet traffic is sent over fiber-optic cables.

“Deep space communication requires very high performance, but there is less space and power available on spacecraft,” and thus traditional lasers aren’t practical, he says. “Photonic integration, therefore, could be an enabler for reducing the size, weight, and power of laser transmitters for future missions.” The hope is that the photonic integrated circuits will “soon fly into deep space and send large amounts of data back to Earth.”

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BU-BRIGHAM & WOMEN’S HOSPITAL PARTNERSHIP CELEBRATES FIRST YEAR September 16th, 2014

JOINT RESEARCH FOCUSED ON MEDICAL IMAGING AND IMAGE-GUIDED INTERVENTIONS

By Mark Dwortzan Boston University College of Engineering Assistant Professor Darren Roblyer (BME) and Brigham & Women’s Hospital radiologist Srinivisan Mukundan are exploring a strategy that combines a new optical imaging device developed by Roblyer with emerging magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to probe malignant brain tumors during chemotherapy treatment. Their research could enable clinicians to monitor the effectiveness of chemotherapy over the course of treatment and implement changes to chemotherapy drugs and dose levels as needed.

The project is one of five now receiving funding through an ongoing partnership between Boston University and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. On September 12 at the BU Photonics Center, Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen and Dr. Steven Seltzer, Chair of the BWH Department of Radiology, announced the second year of the partnership, which has already provided one year of seed funding to projects ranging from image-guided cancer drug delivery to early detection of heart disease.

“The goal is to leverage synergies between Brigham & Women’s Hospital’s Radiology Department in imaging and image-guided interventions with the College of Engineering’s strengths in developing new materials and technologies as well as novel techniques for processing images and large data sets,” said Associate Professor Tyrone Porter (ME, BME, MSE), who is coordinating the partnership. “The hope is to stimulate research collaborations between the two campuses and develop a National Institutes of Health training program in clinical imaging and image-guided interventions.”

The brainchild of Lutchen and Seltzer, the BU-BWH partnership brings together world-class expertise and equipment from Boston University entities such as the BU Photonics Center and the BU Center for Nanoscience & Nanobiotechnology, and from the BWH Department of Radiology, home to the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Image-Guided Therapy and the Advanced Multimodality Image Guided Operating Suite (AMIGO). Joint research between the two campuses could result in less invasive, more accurate medical imaging and image-guided interventions.

“There’s no question that in so many dimensions, imaging is at the foundation of a tremendous amount of potential breakthroughs in medical discoveries and practice, but there are huge challenges from a scientific and technical point of view,” said Lutchen. “We’ve got tons of interested students and faculty here that need and want to use imaging technologies to address interesting and important questions.”

First-round projects include the engineering of a new “molecular imaging” MRI contrast agent for detecting early calcification of the aortic valve; the combination of ultrasound and MR data to evaluate the elastic properties of tissues, which are associated with pathological indicators of disease; a clinical decision support system for patient-specific cancer diagnosis and management; and ultrasound-guided delivery of chemotherapy drug-laden nanoparticles to metastasized lung cancer cells in the brain. Applications for second-round projects are now underway.

All projects involve at least one principal investigator from each of the partnering institutions, who jointly advise a doctoral student on a project that could positively impact clinical practice. Participating ENG faculty include Professors Joyce W ong (BME, MSE), Paul Barbone (ME, MSE), Venkatesh Saligrama (ECE, SE) and Yannis Paschalidis (ECE, SE); Associate Professor Porter; and Assistant Professor Roblyer.

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“The fields of biomedical imaging and bioengineering have been converging and collaborating for decades, and that collaboration continues to get closer and closer,” said Seltzer, noting a burgeoning clinical need for advanced technologies in functional and molecular imaging; information technologies ranging from data mining to image processing; and minimally-invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures guided by high-technology imaging techniques.

CONTAINING EBOLA WITH NANOTECHNOLOGY September 24th, 2014

BU TEAM’S DEVICE DETECTS VIRUS QUICKLY AND ON SITE

By Mark Dwortzan

NexGen Arrays prototype of SP-IRIS. (Image courtesy of NexGen Arrays) By late January, 1.4 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone could be infected with the Ebola virus. That’s the worst-case scenario of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa recently offered by scientists at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC warns that those countries could now have 21,000 cases of the virus, which kills 70 percent of people infected.

One of the big problems hindering containment of Ebola is the cost and difficulty of diagnosing the disease when a patient is first seen. Conventional fluorescent label-based virus detection methods require expensive lab equipment, significant sample preparation, transport and processing times, and extensive training to use. One potential solution may come from researchers at the College of Engineering and the School of Medicine, who have spent the past five years advancing a rapid, label-free, chip-scale photonic device that can provide affordable, simple, and accurate on-site detection. The device could be used to diagnose Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever diseases in resource-limited countries.

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The first demonstration of the concept, described in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters in 2010 and developed by Professor Selim Ünlü’s (ECE, BME, MSE) research group in collaboration with Professor Bennett Goldberg (Physics, BME, ECE, MSE), showed the ability to pinpoint and size single H1N1 virus particles. Now, after four years of refining the instrumentation in collaboration with Associate Professor John Connor (MED) and other hemorrhagic fever disease researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch, the team has demonstrated the simultaneous detection of multiple viruses in blood serum samples—including viruses genetically modified to mimic the behavior of Ebola and the Marburg virus.

In a multiplexed detection configuration, Ebola, Marburg and Lassa antibodies on the SP-IRIS surface capture corresponding viruses specifically. As shown in the images produced by the device, SP-IRIS then identifies and counts each virus particle and classifies it based on its size.

Mentioned in Forbes magazine as a potentially game-changing technology for the containment of Ebola, the device identifies individual viruses based on size variations due to distinct genome lengths and other factors.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the research is showcased in ACS Nano.

“Others have developed different label-free systems, but none have been nearly as successful in detecting nanoscale viral particles in complex media,” said Ünlü, referring to typical biological samples in which a mix of viruses, bacteria and proteins may be present. “Leveraging expertise in optical biosensors and hemorrhagic fever diseases, our collaborative research effort has produced a highly sensitive device with the potential to perform rapid diagnostics in clinical settings.”

Whereas conventional methods can require up to an hour for sample preparation and two hours or more for processing, the current Boston University prototype requires little to no sample preparation time and delivers answers in about an hour.

“By minimizing sample preparation and handling, our system can reduce potential exposure to healthcare workers,” said Connor. “And by looking for multiple viruses at the same time, patients can be diagnosed much more effectively.”

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Professor Selim Ünlü’s (ECE, BME, MSE) (left) and Associate Professor John Connor (MED) have developed a rapid, chip-scale photonic device that can detect viruses, including Ebola, on site. (Photo by Steve Prue) The shoebox-sized prototype diagnostic device, known as the Single Particle Interferometric Reflectance Imaging Sensor (SP-IRIS), detects pathogens by shining light from multi-color LED sources on viral nanoparticles bound to the sensor surface by a coating of virus-specific antibodies. Interference of light reflected from the surface is modified by the presence of the particles, producing a distinct signal that reveals the size and shape of each particle. The sensor surface is very large and can capture the telltale responses of up to a million nanoparticles.

In collaboration with BD Technologies and NexGen Arrays, a BU Photonics Center-based startup run by longtime SP-IRIS developers David Freedman (EE10) and postdoctoral fellow George Daaboul (BME’13), the research team is now working on making IRIS more robust, field-ready and fast—ideally delivering answers within 30 minutes—through further technology development and preclinical trials.

SP-IRIS devices are now being tested in multiple labs, including a Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) lab at the University of Texas Medical Branch that’s equipped to work with hemorrhagic viruses. Other tests will be conducted at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) once the facility is approved for BSL-4 research.

Based on the team’s current rate of progress, a field-ready instrument could be ready to enter the medical marketplace in five years.

LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD October 3rd, 2014

ENG 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION SHOWCASES EXCELLENCE AND IMPACT

By Mark Dwortzan With sunny skies overhead and an autumnal chill in the air, College of Engineering alumni from across the country converged on Cummington Mall on September 19 to celebrate the College’s first 50 years. The atmosphere was festive both outside, where cotton candy and popcorn were on offer, and inside various campus buildings, where alumni, faculty and students learned about high-impact ENG research and entrepreneurial achievements, toured new facilities, participated in a design challenge and engaged in spirited conversations ab

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SYMPOSIUM AND BANQUET HIGHLIGHT RESEARCH IMPACTING SOCIETY At a late afternoon symposium at the Photonics Center Auditorium, alumni heard two talks on high-impact faculty research and a third focused on the value of higher education. Professor Thomas Bifano (ME, MSE), director of the BU Photonics Center, described several photonic technologies that are improving our quality of life. These included Associate Professor Xue Han’s (BME) pioneering use of light to silence and activate neurons in the brain as a means of studying brain disorders and explore potential treatments; Professor Theodore Moustakas’ (ECE, MSE) patented technique to make blue LEDs found in smartphone and flat panel displays; and Bifano’s development of adaptive optics with deformable mirrors that are now being used to image retinal cells—technology that promises to improve clinical research on diabetic retinopathy.

Emphasizing the critical need for robust technologies to address outbreaks of the Ebola virus, malaria, HIV and other major diseases in the developing world, Associate Professor Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE) asked, “What is it that I, as a BU engineer who is ready to make a positive impact on the world, can do for the world? We need technologies that are portable, low power, inexpensive, easy to use, robust and perform quantitative tests.” He highlighted one such technology, PharmaChk, which he’s now advancing to help reduce the prevalence of substandard and counterfeit drugs, a problem affecting hundreds of thousands of people every year. Field-tested in Africa, PharmaChk can test drugs at the point of care and anywhere along the supply chain.

Dean Kenneth Lutchen presented statistics and analysis showing that despite the buzz about Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a residential college education—especially in engineering—remains an excellent investment, both in terms of financial success and preparation for lifelong learning and impact. The bottom line?

“Go to college,” said Lutchen. “It’s expensive (partly) because it’s very valuable.”

The ENG 50th Anniversary Gala Banquet in the Trustee’s Ballroom capped off the day’s events. More than 200 alumni, friends, faculty and students attended the event, which featured a video presentation that explored the College’s history and some of the current research that promised to make significant impacts on our world. After dinner, Associate Professor Edward Damiano (BME) discussed his efforts to develop a bionic pancreas that could vastly improve the quality of life for people with Type 1 diabetes. Damiano’s handheld system, which automatically manages type 1 diabetes, was recently shown to be as effective as the conventional, manual approach, in which patients periodically check their own blood sugar levels and determine the amount of insulin needed.

WHAT IS PHOTONICS, ANYWAY? October 24th, 2014

PUTTING LIGHT TO WORK IN VIRUS AND CANCER DETECTION, RETINAL DISEASE, BRAIN RESEARCH

By Barbara Moran, BU Research A playful artwork titled “…on the shoulders of giants.” —Sir Isaac Newton dominates one wall of Boston University’s Photonics Center lobby. Colored balls of light dance on the screen, bouncing, then floating, then bouncing again.

Students and faculty often stop, mesmerized. The art sends a clear, if surprising, message: Hey, photonics is cool!

No one embodies this spirit more than Thomas Bifano (ME, MSE), the energetic and enthusiastic director of the Photonics Center for the past seven years. Bifano champions the field of biophotonics, where scientists work at the intersection of biology and engineering to investigate viruses, turn brain cells on and off, and examine the human eye.

As a College of Engineering mechanical engineering professor, Bifano’s own research concentrates on adaptive optics—adjustable mirrors that change shape to focus light in telescopes and medical devices. A professor for over two decades, Bifano was the ENG manufacturing engineering department chair from 1999 to 2006, and the college’s 2013 Distinguished Lecturer. He likes to point out that both positions came with actual chairs. “If I can get four more,” he says, “I’ll have a dining room set.”

BU Research spoke with Bifano recently about what goes on inside the Photonics Center.

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BU Research: A lot of people walk by this building and they think, photonics? What’s that?

Bifano: Right. And it’s funny because everybody knows what electronics is, but nobody knows what photonics is.

And really, photonics is the use of light for some practical purpose, just like electronics is the use of electricity for some practical purpose. Electronics is having electrons fly around in certain patterns and shunting them hither and yon. Photonics is the same thing using light.

Everybody knows about electronics because everybody has a stereo.

But everybody has a DVD player, which is all photonics.

I think you need to do some photonics branding.

Yeah, there you go. The problem is that photonics is a relatively diverse field, and it would be hard for a layperson to say how it’s impacted their lives. But all data transmission—all data transmission throughout the world—is fiber optics. It’s a huge impact on our lives. All of the Human Genome Project was optics. It was only optically that we were able to detect the A, G, Cs, and Ts in the genome. I could sit here all day and give you examples.

The center has done some interesting work on virus detection—can you explain that? What do viruses have to do with light?

We do a lot of work in infectious diseases at BU. And people had been working on how to detect a virus, which is much smaller than bacteria. The chemical way to do that is to make the virus attach to something very large and very easy to detect: a fluorescent particle. And then I can see the virus because it’s been tagged.

But one of the things that’s interesting in photonics is that we get to think about things that are very small. The wavelength of light is fractions of a micrometer. The size of the virus is fractions of a micrometer. There’s actually a wonderful marriage between those length scales. So ENG Professor Selim Ünlü (ECE, BME, MSE) and ENG and College of Arts & Sciences Professor Bennett Goldberg (Physics, BME, ECE, MSE) figured out that if a virus attaches to a surface, it will make the surface slightly taller. And by being slightly taller, they could detect that change with exquisite precision. So they were not only able to detect single viruses; they were able to say what they look like.

It’s so interesting. I always thought of photonics in the realm of fiber optics and DVD players, but using it for biology makes sense, because it’s on the same length scale. And with molecular biology merging with engineering in so many ways now, you see all these possibilities to use light not just to observe biological systems, but to manipulate them.

Absolutely. Thank you, that’s a great introduction for where I’m going next. So we decided at some point: let’s pick a topic and build a collaboration with business where we can translate our research to something of value to society. And we chose the area of biophotonics for that. Biophotonics is just like it sounds. It’s the use of light to enable some kind of biological measurement or treatment, exploiting the fact that many biological materials react to light in very well-known, easily measured ways. Each year we run four or five projects through our Industry/University Collaborative Research Center and have an annual colloquium and seminar.

Can you give an example of one of the current projects, or is it secret?

No, I can give you an example. One of the projects is led by ENG Professor Jerome Mertz, in biomedical engineering, and he invents new techniques of microscopy. And he was given the task: can you develop a new technique that will enable us to see cells that are passing at very high speed in a cell-sorting device?

Why are you sorting the cells?

Suppose you have a cancer cell— So they’re trying to get a cancer count?

Well, that would be a great example. If you’ve had a metastasis and you want to know if cancer cells are in your bloodstream. But there are all sorts of reasons you would want to measure particles flowing by very fast in a biological system. And so the problem is that generally, with high-precision microscopy you have a very narrow depth of field. You can’t see very far. And so Mertz developed a technique that can extend the depth of field while maintaining the resolution. So that was beautiful.

That kind of thing would knock your socks off—if you’re used to seeing things at a certain depth of field or resolution and suddenly it takes a huge leap forward.

The other thing I wanted to talk about in the biophotonics world is that if you look at the pillars of strength in research on the Charles River Campus, photonics is one. Another one is neuroscience, and yet another one is

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bioengineering. What’s at the intersection of those three? The brain. There’s a wonderful new field in brain science called optogenetics. It’s the idea that you can tag photonically active proteins to neurons, and that gives you a control system. So suddenly, for the first time ever, we have the capability to not only measure what’s going on in the brain optically, but also to control it optically. So this is a wonderful, exciting new field.

It seems this sort of research would have been impossible 15 years ago. There’s been this leap from being able to just observe the brain to what is now possible.

Absolutely.

It’s funny, because I didn’t think we were going to talk about the brain at all. I thought we were going to talk about telescopes.

Oh, I can talk about telescopes.

An image from the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), recently installed on the 8 meter Gemini South Telescope showing the light scattered by a disk of dust orbiting the young star HR4796A. BU and its spinoff company, Boston Micromachines Corporation, developed a deformable mirror for the GPI, which corrects for atmospheric distortion and allows the instrument to see planets orbiting distant stars. Image processing by Marshall Perrin, Space Telescope Science Institute This is much more exciting. But is there a connection between the work you’ve done with mirrors and telescopes and this new work in biophotonics? Somehow it seems different.

I’ll give you a connection. So in telescopes you have this huge problem. To look out at a star from the ground, you have to look through this soup of atmosphere. So if I start by sending a plane wave out from here, by the time it gets through the atmosphere, it’s kind of wiggly. And similarly, coming from the star, the light gets wiggly on the way to the telescope. The idea is that if you can measure that effect of the atmosphere, you can fix it. My whole research life has been about making mirrors that fix it.

Now every telescope that’s worth its salt has adaptive optics, and it works really well. And then the scientists said, “Okay, so that allows me to get a beautiful image of a star. Let’s try to find a planet around the star.” Well, if you think about that, it’s ridiculously small and the star is a billion times brighter than the planet. And the atmosphere’s still screwing you up. It’s a hopeless optical problem.

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And so they came to BU and our spinoff company, Boston Micromachines Corporation, to make that mirror. And we made that mirror, and put it into an instrument that went to the Gemini Planet Imager in Chile, and now all of a sudden you’ve got the best images ever of planets around stars.

How big is the mirror?

This is the mirror we put in.

This little thing on the table? It’s so small, like a big postage stamp.

This is exactly the one. So the telescope is the size of the room. This is the secondary mirror. The big mirror collects all the light, it goes down to this one, this fixes it. It’s done.

There’s a comparable problem in trying to look at your retina. All the major eye diseases are diseases of the cells in the back of the retina. The cells of interest are photoreceptors—cones and rods—and it turns out, sadly, that the blood vessels in your eye are in front of your photoreceptors. Why? What was God thinking? It’s the wrong design. I want to file a complaint.

Ah, biology.

It’s a worse optic than you could buy off the shelf, let’s just say. So the physician can’t see the cellular structures in your eye. They just see a gray mishmash.

Is this because of the shape of the eye or because of the fluid inside?

No, it’s the shape. It’s totally the shape. So what people did was develop instruments that did exactly what the telescope did, adjust for the aberrations of the eye.

And when I think about these two impacts that the technology coming out of my lab has had—one in astronomy, finding planets, answering the big fundamental question “Are we alone?” and the other helping people cure retinal disease—I’m drawn more toward the retinal disease. It’s messier, it’s uglier, the patients are sick. They don’t want to sit in front of an instrument for 10 minutes. So it’s complicated. But in another way, I think this is a place where we make a big impact.

Barbara Moran (COM’96) is a science writer in Brookline, Mass.

VISION QUEST November 24th, 2014

TWO BU GRADS SEEK TO REVOLUTIONIZE THE EYE EXAM

By Barbara Moran, BU Research Imagine that you’re nearsighted. For many Americans, that’s not hard to do. Around 30 percent of people in the United States are nearsighted, and for most of them, the solution is simple: go to the eye doctor and get some glasses or contact lenses. That way, they can drive, read street signs, and recognize friends walking down the street.

For most of the world, it’s not so easy. About 90 percent of the world’s visually impaired people live in lowincome settings, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And often, there are no eye doctors or eyeglasses available. In Rwanda, for example, there are about 10.5 million people—and 14 vision specialists.

Without access to an eye exam or glasses, simple nearsightedness becomes debilitating.

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The SVOne shines light into the eye and instantly calculates an eyeglass prescription. “All you have to do is look straight,” says co-creator Marc Albanese. Photos by Conor Doherty Now two Boston University College of Engineering graduates, Yaopeng Zhou and Marc Albanese, are trying to change those statistics. They’ve invented a handheld device called Smart Vision One (SVOne) that scans a person’s eyes, instantly determines whether he or she needs glasses, and decides what their prescription should be. Bolstered by a $1 million 2013 Powerful Answers award from Verizon, their company, Smart Vision Labs, is poised to start manufacturing and delivering SVOne devices in early 2015.

“This could be big,” says Thomas Bifano, (ME, MSE) director of BU’s Photonics Center, who advised both Zhou and Albanese on their theses at BU and now serves on their board of directors. “If this caught on, it could be so cheap that everyone has one, like a thermometer. It has the potential to be hugely disruptive.”

The device is a small block of plastic, a little larger than a deck of playing cards, which slips over an iPhone. To perform an exam, one person holds the device (technically known as a “wavefront aberrometer”) up to a patient’s eye, and presses a button. Light shines into the patient’s eye, bouncing off the retina and back out the front of the eye. Curves and imperfections in a patient’s eye will cause beams of light to bend, bouncing out of the front at slightly different angles. A sensor collects this information, the computer in the iPhone interprets it, and the result is a prescription specific to that eye. (Unless, of course, the person has perfect vision.)

Traditionally, optometrists have determined eyeglass prescriptions by asking patients to look through a phoropter, a bulky device on a swivel arm containing multiple lenses. A patient looks through lenses of different strengths and reports which ones make his or her vision the sharpest. “It’s a big, clunky, subjective measure,” says Albanese. “What we have is a small, portable device that offers you an objective number. It just gives you the answer! All you have to do is look straight.”

Albanese also says that the device could work well for young children, who are generally not known for their cooperation during eye exams.

The genesis for the device came over a decade ago, when both Zhou and Albanese were working on their graduate degrees in electrical engineering at BU’s College of Engineering. Bifano, a mechanical engineering

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professor, had worked for years developing “adaptive optics”—tiny, adjustable telescope mirrors that could help astronomers correct for atmospheric haze and see distant objects more distinctly. Then the technology took a twist. Bifano was invited to join a team from Schepens Eye Research Institute that was working with a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use adaptive optics for a different application: taking better resolution photos of the mouse retina.

“All the major eye diseases affect the cells in the retina,” says Bifano. “If you have a disease like, say, diabetic retinopathy, your capillaries get clogged up, and you get little microaneurysms and new, leaky vessels forming in the retina. Seeing these in the early stage of disease would help diagnosis and treatment. But because your eye is misshapen, the physician can’t see the cellular structures in your eye. They just see a gray mishmash.”

In the summer of 2002, Bifano chose Zhou and Albanese to join the team at Schepens and help develop the technology in mice. “The eye is a window into all these health issues,” says Albanese. “Our goal was to see the blood flow in the retina, but it’s not a clear optical path.”

Eventually Zhou and Albanese wrapped up their work on the project and went their separate ways. They got jobs and then each landed separately at New York University (NYU), at different times, to work on their MBAs. In early 2012, Zhou started thinking again of his work at Schepens. He had read an article about billions of people worldwide suffering with poor vision, with no access to an optometrist. He met up with his old friend Marc Albanese at a bar in Union Square, and they discussed the problem over beers. “And Yaopeng said, ‘Why not use the same optical measurements that we used at Schepens to give people prescriptions?’” says Albanese.

In the intervening years, technology had changed to their advantage. During their work under Bifano, they had used a Dell computer costing $5,000 and a camera costing the same. “Now a $500 iPhone has basically the same camera and processing ability,” says Albanese. “You have a computer and a camera in your pocket that can do most of the work for you. It just all came together.”

The two decided to work on the project together, and formed a company. While they worked on optical problems (like finding the perfect light source and screening out unwanted reflections from the front of the eye), they also started raising money. In 2013, they won $75,000 in the NYU business plan competition. That was followed by a $100,000 grant from Founders.org, and then, in January 2014, the $1 million award from Verizon.

“That helped a lot,” says Albanese. “Yaopeng had been working on a prototype, but nothing helps a prototype like a million dollars.” The money allowed them to buy a 3D printer, hire a full-time mechanical engineer and a software engineer, and also a “director of social venture” (and director of sales) to help them bring the device to the developing world.

They now have 11 working devices—all handmade—and they will soon start production in Boston for 100 more.

They are now accepting preorders for the SVOne and expect the first orders to ship out in early 2015. The device costs $3,950 with an iPhone, compared to other similar devices on the market, which cost between $15,000 and $40,000.

While their primary market is American optometrists (they made their first sale to one running a Pearle Vision center in Philadelphia), their ultimate goal is to make the device widely available in less-affluent countries.

Albanese and Greg Van Kirk, the company’s director of social venture, envision a fleet of “optometrist entrepreneurs” who use the device to prescribe and sell glasses in the developing world, creating jobs and saving sight.

“I’m really excited to see this thing go,” says Bifano. “These two guys took what we taught them at BU and just ran with it. It’s been a thrill for me to see them build something from scratch. They just buckled down and made it happen.”

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BUILDING A PAPER GENE CIRCUIT December 1st, 2014

NEW TOOL PUTS A BIOLOGY LAB ON A PIECE OF PAPER

By Barbara Moran, BU Today

BU postdoctoral fellows Keith Pardee (left) and Alexander Green have created a “paper gene circuit,” which may provide a quick, cheap way to perform sophisticated lab work in the field. Photos courtesy of Harvard’s Wyss Institute The first case of the Ebola outbreak currently ravaging West Africa appeared in Guinea in December 2013. But it wasn’t until March 22, 2014, that scientists finally confirmed the virus as Ebola. By that point, 49 people had already died.

Why did it take so long? Partly because confirming the diagnosis required that epidemiologists fly from Europe to Africa, collect blood samples, fly back to Europe, and analyze them in sophisticated labs.

Now a team of biologists at BU, led by Professor James Collins (BME, MSE, SE), has created a new tool that could provide a quick, cheap way to perform sophisticated lab analyses and diagnostics in the field, and may also offer a way to speed science in the lab. The tool, called a paper gene circuit, takes biological reactions out of cells and puts them onto a piece of paper. It is described in the November 6, 2014, issue of Cell.

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Biology on paper. Each dot holds a gene circuit and the cellular components that make it work.

“This could really be a game-changer for a lot of applications, including diagnostics,” says Collins, who is also a core faculty member at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. “You can literally carry this in your pocket and run an experiment in the field without any additional equipment.”

The best diagnostic tools currently use antibodies to sense things like hormones or viruses in a patient’s bloodstream. A standard pregnancy test, for example, tests for a hormone produced when a fertilized egg implants into a women’s uterus. Such tests work well but can be expensive and time-consuming to develop. “The antibody-based tests are exquisitely sensitive, and we can’t compete with that sensitivity yet,” says Keith Pardee, a postdoctoral fellow in Collins’ lab, co-author on the Cell paper, and a Wyss Institute research scientist. “But to make a custom antibody, it costs between $4,000 and $30,000, and it will take between four and six months.

We made 24 different Ebola sensors and tested them in a day, for $21 each.”

The portable Ebola diagnostic is a proof-of-concept project, not yet ready for the field. But it demonstrates the power of synthetic “gene circuits” made sterile, portable, and convenient. Like computer circuits, gene circuits usually consist of a sensing component (or “input”), a logic gate, and an output, but they are crafted from parts of cells, rather than wires and transistors.

Over the past 15 years, biologists have created hundreds of these gene circuits, picking and choosing useful bits of biology and putting them together in new ways. Pardee’s circuits use a device called a “toehold switch,” created by co-author Alexander Green, also a postdoctoral fellow at BU and Pardee’s colleague at the Wyss Institute, which allows the scientists to rationally design sensors and detectors.

Because biological systems are particularly good at sensing changes in the environment—our cells constantly monitor blood sugar and scan for infection, for example—synthetic gene circuits are especially useful for detecting things like contaminants, pesticides, heavy metals, and counterfeit drugs. “You can imagine that there’s a lot of potential for these gene circuits, because they can sense and they can report by, say, changing color. Does your fruit have listeria on it? Is the soil contaminated with pesticides? The gene circuits can answer these questions,” says Pardee.

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But there’s a problem. Because synthetic gene circuits are usually hosted in organisms like E. coli, they can’t be used for many applications—smearing fruit with E. coli may detect contamination, for example, but will also add to it. “For these types of applications, it’s totally inappropriate,” says Pardee. “We recognized that there was this potential but also this huge limitation.”

Pardee wondered if there was a way to build a gene circuit that could function outside a cell. Ideally, it would be sterile, easily transported, and stored without refrigeration, and it would produce answers by changing color, so a person could read the answer by eye alone. Pardee decided to try embedding the gene circuits and the necessary cellular enzymes into paper.

In concept, the idea is similar to pH strips—a chemical reaction embedded into paper that changes color when it touches an acid or a base. But would something that worked for a chemical reaction work for biology, too? “That was our first question: can we even get gene expression in paper?” says Pardee. Using a standard laser printer stocked with special wax-based inks, he printed patterns of small dots onto uncoated filter paper. Each dot served as a well or pit to hold a gene circuit and the cellular enzymes that made it work.

But Pardee wanted to take it a step further, stabilizing the components at room temperature by freeze-drying them, sticking them onto paper, then seeing if he could add water and make them work again.

“Freeze-drying is a pretty common thing to do in pharmaceuticals. If you freeze-dry a protein like insulin, you can often re-constitute it and get its function back,” says Pardee. But Pardee didn’t know if he could freeze-dry the whole package—the gene circuit instructions, the enzymes that power the reactions, the cellular machinery that builds proteins—then add water and have it pop back to its former self.

“If even one part didn’t work, then you’d be stuck. That would be the weakest link,” says Pardee. “But they all did!

I was surprised. I immediately knew this was going to be really awesome.” Even better, the paper circuits still worked after a year on the shelf. “There’s still tons of work to do,” he adds. “But I knew that having that core insight was going to enable the whole thing.”

“This was Keith’s big insight—freeze-drying the circuit,” says Collins. “I couldn’t believe it worked as well as it did. We got phenomenal activity—there was basically no loss of function.”

Collins and Pardee are now working on technologies that will increase the sensitivity of the tool to make it practical for both diagnostics in the field and also for faster science in the lab. “In biology, you spend a lot of time tool building. You build your tool, then you do your experiment, then you go back to building tools,” says Pardee.

“Now researchers can see if a tool works on paper in a matter of minutes and use only the best-performing tools in their experiment.”

The technology can be embedded in any porous material, such as cloth, potentially opening the door for wider applications, says Collins. He envisions smart scrubs for health care workers that can sense exposure to a virus; bandages that signal when a wound is infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria; or smart clothing that tells a runner she’s getting dehydrated. “This opens a lot of possibilities,” says Collins. “It could give people a lot of valuable information very quickly.”

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MAKING NANOMANUFACTURING VIABLE December 9th, 2014

MSE’S DAVID BISHOP OFFERS ROADMAP IN PHYSICS TODAY COVER STORY

By Mark Dwortzan

Professor David Bishop (ECE, Physics, MSE) and collaborators at BU and Bell Laboratories have developed a low-cost, microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based method that directs atoms onto a surface through tiny holes in silicon plates that move with nanometer precision.

BU researchers envision mass-producing high-speed nanoscale devices ranging from integrated circuits to biosensors, but their aspirations have been hampered by a persistent inability to precisely manipulate nanomaterials to build reliable, functional products at a reasonable cost. In a nutshell, the key challenge has been to pattern extremely small materials at exact locations in a repeatable manner over relatively large surfaces all within a very short timeframe. Current nanomanufacturing processes are likely to become wasteful and/or expensive if applied on a commercial scale, potentially costing orders of magnitude more than the value of the devices or systems they’re designed to build.

“Absent major breakthroughs in nanomanufacturing, the current trend in smartphones, laptops, PCs and other electronic devices toward smaller, faster, better and cheaper models may grind to a halt,” says MSE Division Head and Professor David Bishop (ECE, Physics, MSE). But Bishop is confident that with sufficient investment, nanomanufacturing can evolve from a laboratory technology to one capable of generating commercial products on a massive scale within the next decade or two. In the cover story of the December 2014 edition of Physics Today, he and coauthor Matthias Imboden, an ECE postdoc, explore three potential pathways— each requiring further research, to overcome current limitations—to the high-speed, low-cost and scalable manufacture of devices with nanoscale features.

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Precise pattern created using MEMS-based machine to deposit gold atoms onto a surface.

The first and primary avenue that nanomanufacturing researchers are pursuing is resist-based nanolithography, a nanoscale version of photolithography, commonly used today in the manufacture of semiconductor devices. In conventional photolithography, manufacturers pass light through a mask, which transfers the pattern of the mask (holes and traces of different shapes and sizes) to an intermediate photoresist layer, which, in turn, transfers it to a target device layer beneath it.

In nanolithography, the features or holes in the mask are on the order of one-billionth of a meter, resulting in similar-sized features on the manufactured device layer. To achieve deep nanoscale features—those sized below 100 nanometers—will require replacing visible light with something that has much shorter wavelengths, such as x-rays, which are hard to produce and focus; or electron beams, which now take a prohibitively long time to get the job done.

The second approach is nanoimprinting or nanostamping, a process akin to using a nanoscale rubber stamp.

Capable of making identical copies of nanoscale features on a device layer, nanoimprinting could be ideal for manufacturing memory chips and magnetic displays. It works very well for single-layer systems in the lab, but has challenges ensuring that multiple layers of an integrated circuit or other nanomanufactured device will line up correctly.

The third strategy is to apply a direct writing technique, controlling the placement of atoms with nanoscale precision. An example of this is dip-pen lithography, which deploys atoms at precise locations on a device surface just as a ballpoint pen’s inkball deposits ink on a piece of paper. Dip-pen lithography works with a variety of materials, but it’s a slow, serial process, akin to writing out a newspaper with a pen.

Another direct writing technique that was invented by Bishop at BU, atomic calligraphy, effectively spray paints atoms at desired locations on a surface through precisely positioned holes in a mask. In 2013, in a paper in the journal Nano Letters, Bishop and collaborators at Boston University and Bell Laboratories introduced this new technology: a low-cost, microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based machine that directs atoms onto a surface through different-sized holes—each one 50 – 200 nanometers across—on silicon plates. These MEMS plates can move with nanometer precision to create exacting patterns over surfaces of more than 400 square

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microns, roughly the area of several human hairs. Shutters positioned micrometers above each MEMS plate enable high-speed control of where and when atoms are deposited.

The researchers produced lines, bridges, rings, infinity symbols, BU logos and many other nanoscale metal patterns by depositing gold and chromium atoms through the holes while moving the plates. By scaling the number of micromachines and using arrays of apertures, the process could be made parallel, and thus potentially fast enough for commercial-grade nanomanufacturing. Spearheading a project called “Fab on a Chip,” Bishop is exploring ways to incorporate this method in a cost-effective, chip-based fabrication process for atomic-scale materials and devices that are initially designed in digital simulations, making possible everything from downsized electronics to more compact biosensors.

Of the three methods, nanoimprinting has shown the most promise so far for achieving commercial viability, but Bishop cautions against favoring one method over another.

“This is not a one-size-fits-all proposition,” he says. “One technique will probably not end up ‘the winner,’ but they’ll all have regions of optimal applicability. Nanomanufacturers of the future may place different technologies on a chip that can be activated at different times to achieve different purposes.”

A PAPER STRIP TEST FOR TB? January 12th, 2015

BME POSTDOC DEMOS PROMISING PORTABLE DIAGNOSTIC

By Mark Dwortzan

By applying heat to a strip of chromatography paper dipped in a urine sample, the TB test Sharon Wong is developing would evaporate most of the liquid and concentrate a TB biomarker at the heated portion of the strip, thereby enhancing downstream detection of the biomarker.

Diagnostic tests for tuberculosis usually involve chest x-rays, which require heavy, expensive equipment, or phlegm samples, which can take weeks to culture. In resource-limited countries where TB is endemic, such tests are hard to come by outside of major cities, leaving healthcare workers with few good options. The simplest is a TB test that works like a home pregnancy test, diagnosing the disease based on the detection of lipoarabinomannan (LAM), a biomarker for TB present in the urine of TB-infected individuals. Although the test is cheap, easy-to-use and can be administered at the point of care, it produces accurate results only for patients who are also infected with HIV, since LAM is more abundant in their urine.

Now Sharon Wong, a postdoctoral fellow in Associate Professor Catherine M. Klapperich’s (BME, ME, MSE) lab, is working toward a similar inexpensive, user-friendly test that can overcome this limitation and serve

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the general TB population at the point of care. By applying heat to a strip of chromatography paper dipped in a urine sample, the device would concentrate LAM while evaporating most of the liquid sample. As a result, the low levels of LAM in non-HIV patients’ urine, which don’t register in the commercially available test, are increased and can be more easily detected.

Described in the November 24 online edition of the American Chemical Society journal Analytical Chemistry, the new test is the first to demonstrate the use of heat on a paper-based device for the purpose of quickly concentrating biological material for clinical analysis. Wong developed the test in collaboration with Klapperich, Research Assistant Professor Mario Cabodi (BME) and Jason Rolland, the former director of research at Diagnostics for All, a Cambridge-based nonprofit focused on low-cost, user-friendly, point-of-care solutions for the developing world.

“This protocol that Dr. Wong has developed has the potential to increase the utility of one of the most simple and inexpensive methods to detect TB,” said Klapperich. “Strip tests are easy to use and understand and could positively impact patient care in many low- resource settings.”

In lab tests, Wong diluted a small quantity of LAM in a sample of synthetic urine in a beaker and inserted one end of a piece of chromatography paper into the sample. The urine wicked up the paper until it reached the other end, which was warmed to 220 degrees Celsius by an electric heater. Most of the urine evaporated off within 20 minutes, leaving a concentrated amount of LAM at the tip of the paper strip. Using an antibody that binds to LAM, Wong then determined that the biomarker was 20 times more concentrated at the tip than at the end submerged in the sample.

“After spending months trying different ways to heat the paper, this was my last ditch effort,” said Wong. “So it was very exciting when it finally worked. I can now envision, in the foreseeable future, a TB diagnostic that can be used on anyone, by anyone, anywhere in the world.”

Wong’s next steps include optimizing the system by fine-tuning the heating temperature and duration, paper strip dimensions and other variables; validating it on clinical samples; and identifying other unplugged power sources, such as batteries, to make it portable. Beyond the lab, she envisions a test that not only indicates the presence of TB with a single line, but also shows higher concentrations of LAM with additional lines. This additional information could enable clinicians to easily track the effectiveness of drug treatment for the disease over time.

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MATERIALS SCIENCE & ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM SERIES Date

Speaker

Institution

Title

9/12/14

Herbert Shea

Microsystems for Space Technologies Laboratory at EPFL

David Bishop

9/18/14

Anton Malko

University of Texas, Dallas

Miniaturized Dielectric Elastomer Actuators: Towards Intelligent Soft Machines Semiconductor Nanocrystals: From Quantum Phenomena to Applications in Energy Sustainability

10/17/14

Dimitrios Maroudas

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Theoretical Studies of StructureProperty Relations in Graphene-Based Carbon Nanomaterials

Xi Lin/ Heng Luo

10/24/14

Nandini Trivedi

Ohio State

Interplay of SpinOrbit Coupling and Coulomb Correlations in Transition Metal Oxides

David Campbell/ Margaret Chen

10/29/14

Amedica Alan Lakshminarayanan

Silicon Nitride – A Bio-Graphy

10/31/14

Dalin Tang

In Vivo ImageBased Atherosclerotic Plaque Modeling and Stress/Strain Analysis for Plaque Progression and Rupture

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

CoSponsor

Faculty Host/ Student Host

Allison Dennis/ Margaret Chen

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Ramesh Jasti/ Yang Yu

Katherine Yanhang Zhang/Heng Luo

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11/7/14

Michael Hickner

Pennsylvania State University

11/14/14

James Dickerson

Brookhaven National Lab

11/21/14

Wesley Wong

Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital

12/5/14

Art Ramirez

University of California, Santa Cruz

12/5/14

Lijie Grace Zhang

1/23/15

Polymer Membranes for Large-Scale Energy Conversion and Storage The Role of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Addressing the World’s Energy Challenges

Uday Pal/ Christa Hoskin

Mechanical Force in Nanoscale Biology: From Hemostasis to Single-Molecule Centrifugation The Frustration Paradigm for Materials

Sahar Sharifzadeh/ Thomas Villalon

George Washington University

Integrating 3D Printing and Nanomaterials for Complex Tissue Regeneration

Tyrone Porter/ Heng Luo

Byung Hee Hong

Seoul National University

Recent Progress in Large-Area Graphene Synthesis and Its Application to Advanced Chemical Analyses

Anna Swan

3/20/15

Shanta Dhar

University of Georgia

Targeted Nanoparticles for Mitochondiral Medicine

Linda Doerrer

5/18/15

Catherine K. Kuo

Tufts University

Engineering Embryonic Microenvironments to Instruct Tendon Engineering and Regeneration

David Bishop

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Anna Swan/ Thomas Villalon

David Bishop

RESEARCH LABORATORIES

ADVANCED MATERIALS PROCESS CONTROL LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MICHAEL GEVELBER http://www.bu.edu/pcl/ 15 St. Mary’s St., Brookline, MA 02446 617-353-9572 Research in this laboratory focuses on improving materials processing capabilities by applying a controls-based approach. Our controls-based approach integrates process modeling, sensor development, both system and control design, and experimentation to achieve greater control of material microstructure as well as improving yield and maximizing production rate. Research projects, typically conducted with industry partners, span a range of application areas including opto-electronic applications, advanced engines, power systems, and biomedical applications. Ongoing research projects include real-time control for plasma spray for thermal barrier coatings and fuel cells, e-beam deposition for precision optical coatings, electrospinning of nanofibers, chemical vapor deposition, and Czochralski crystal growth. Research is also being conducted on developing intelligent control and sensing approaches for optimizing building HVAC systems, using university buildings to test out new ideas.

APPLIED ELECTROMAGNETICS PROFESSOR MARK HORENSTEIN AND RESEARCH PROFESSOR MALAY MAZUMDER http://www.bu.edu/ece/research/electro-physics/applied-electromagnetics/ 8 St. Mary’s Street, Room 417 617-353-1909 This laboratory is devoted to problems in experimental electromagnetics with a primary focus on medical and industrial electrostatics, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), and sensors. Current projects include transdermal injection of medicinal nanoparticles via pulsed electric fields, development of a passive laser communication node using a MEMS retro-reflective mirror, the design of a “smart-joint” variable-stiffness endoscope, the use of an electrodynamic screen to remove dust particles from solar collectors, and the development of a new type of electrostatic-based, dry powder inhaler. The research work also involves experimental studies on particle electrodynamic motion, optical characterization reflectivity and transmission properties of solar collectors, and development of pulsed three-phase HV power supplies for activating electrodynamic screens.

ATOMIC MEMBRANE LAB ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SCOTT BUNCH http://sites.bu.edu/bunch/ 8 St. Mary’s St, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-1570 Our lab focuses on the nanomechanical properties of a new class of 2D atomically thin materials such as graphene – single atomic layers of graphite. We are most interested in their remarkable mechanical properties such as high strength, extreme flexibility, and unprecedented barrier properties. We fabricate and characterize nanomechanical devices such as suspended “atomic drumskins” which vibrate at MHz frequencies and stretch with applied pressure differences. This unique geometry has allowed us to experimentally measure a number of

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physical properties of 2D materials such as their elastic constants, molecular transport and barrier properties, and adhesive interactions. These atomically thin membranes act as barriers for gases and liquids and represent the thinnest membrane possible (one layer of atoms) with the smallest potential pore sizes attainable (single atomic vacancies), and unprecedented mechanical stability. The applications that we are primarily interested in are semipermeable membranes for gas or liquid separations and nanoelectromechanical sensors.

BIOMIMETICS MATERIALS ENGINEERING LABORATORY PROFESSOR JOYCE WONG http://people.bu.edu/wonglab/ 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-2374 The Biomimetic Materials Engineering Laboratory is focused on the development of biomaterials to probe how structure, material properties and composition of the cell-biomaterial interface affect fundamental cellular processes. Specifically, we are interested in developing substrata with features that mimic physiological and pathophysiological environments to study fundamental cellular processes at the biointerface. Current research projects include pediatric vascular tissue engineering of vascular patches; development of targeted nano- and microparticle contrast agents for theranostic applications in cardiovascular disease and cancer; and engineering biomimetic systems to study restenosis and cancer metastasis.

CELL AND TISSUE MECHANICS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DIMITRIJE STAMENOVIC 44 Cummington Mall, Boston MA 02215 617 353-5902 Fundamental and applied research of cell mechanics and cell and soft tissue rheology • Measuring and modeling mechanical and rheological properties of the cytoskeleton of living cells at the whole cell and subcellular lengthscales • Measuring an modeling cell-substrate and cell-cell interactions and their effects on cell shape, orientation and homeostasis • Modeling of pneumatic osteoarthritis knee brace.

COKER GROUP PROFESSOR DAVID COKER http://people.bu.edu/cokergrp/index.html 590 Commonwealth Avenue Room 530 Boston, MA 02215 Phone: 617-353-2490 David Coker's research group in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry studies excited state dynamics in condensed phase complex systems. Using simulation and electronic structure methods they are developing accurate models, the quantum dynamics of which, can be treated reliably with their partial linearized density matrix propagation approach. The group's research activities include: 1) exploring how exciton transport in biological and synthetic light harvesting systems is influenced by local variation of chromophore environment and chromophore density, 2) studying the dynamics of multi domain complexes in which exciton transport is followed by competing charge separation and recombination processes, 3) incorporating new semiclassical mapping Hamiltonian methods for treating dynamics of many electron systems into their partial linearized propagation approach to treat dense systems of strongly interacting chromophores, and 4) developing a new approach to sample the initial Wigner distribution characterizing multistate thermal equilibrium that is required for the general implementation of their quantum dynamics methods. This research has the potential for broad impact in several areas of scientific and societal importance including solar energy technology, first principles design of new materials, and quantum information science.

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COLLINS LABORATORY PROFESSOR JAMES COLLINS www.bu.edu/abl 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617–353–0390 Our laboratory is currently working in two areas: 1) we are developing and implementing computationalexperimental methods to reverse engineer and analyze gene regulatory networks in microbes and higher organisms. 2) We are designing and constructing synthetic gene networks for a variety of biotechnology and bioenergy applications. We are also using engineered gene networks to study general principles underlying gene regulation.

COMPUTATIONAL ELECTRONICS LABORATORY PROFESSOR ENRICO BELLOTTI http://www.bu.edu/ece/research/electro-physics/computational-electronics/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-358-1576 The Computational Electronics Laboratory (CEL) is equipped with state-of-the-art computing resources. The lab operates a hybrid shared/distributed memory cluster, employing over 2TB RAM and 392 processors spread over twenty networked nodes running BULinux. The Computational Electronics Group develops numerical techniques and software to study semiconductor materials and to perform electronic and opto-electronic device simulation. Commercial software packages, such as Synopsysis TCAD, complement independently developed tools. Specific applications include calculation of the electronic band structure calculations for material defects, semi-empirical evaluation of material properties, and electrical/electromagnetic characterization of infrared detectors and power electronics.

COMPUTATIONAL ENERGY LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR EMILY RYAN http://www.bu.edu/cel 110 Cummington Mall, Rm 229 Boston, MA 02215 617-353-7767 The Computational Energy Laboratory (CEL) uses multi-physics computational methods to investigate alternative and advanced energy technologies. Our research focuses on developing computational models of the reactive transport, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and electrochemistry to investigate the design and operation of energy related systems, such as high temperature fuel cells, advanced battery technologies, subsurface transport and post combustion carbon capture. Central to the research in CEL is reactive transport in porous media, which is critical to many energy-related technologies and their operation and degradation.

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DANIEL SEGRÈ LAB ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DANIEL SEGRÈ http://www.bu.edu/segrelab/ 24 Cummington Mall, Room 909, Boston MA 02215 617-358-2301 Through a combination of mathematical modeling and experimental methods, we study the dynamics and evolution of metabolism in individual microbial species and in microbial ecosystems. We are interested both in the fundamental principles of biological organization, as well as in applications, especially in the areas of human disease, metabolic engineering, and environmental sustainability.

DENNIS LAB ASSISTANT PROFESSOR ALLISON DENNIS http://sites.bu.edu/dennislab/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Room 601, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-1226 The Dennis Lab is focused on advanced semiconductor quantum dot synthesis for biomedical imaging and biosensing applications. Our unique core/shell colloidal nanocrystals fluoresce brightly under ultraviolet illumination, emitting colors from blue into the near infrared. We are particularly interested in near infrared emitters for tissue-depth imaging and visible emitters for biosensing using fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET).

DOERRER GROUP ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR LINDA DOERRER http://avengingmanateestudio.us/DoerrerGroup/index.html 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 365 Boston, MA 02215-2521 617-358-4646 The Doerrer research group specializes in synthetic inorganic chemistry and is an equal-opportunity element utilizer. Currently there are four main avenues of research in the group: The first two areas involve the use of highly fluorinated aryloxide and alkoxide ligands for the (perhaps transient) stabilization of high oxidation states in first-row transition metals. These complexes are being investigated for CH oxidation and functionalization with Cu(I)/O2 or Cu(II) as well as for O-H activation in water oxidation with other late first-row transition metals. The third area of research involves metal-metal bonds and metal-metal interactions. We are interested in using the phenomenon of metallophilicity, which is the attraction of electron 10 8 rich (pseudo) closed-shell metal centers e.g. d Au(I), d Pt(II), for each other. We have used these relatively weaker attractive forces in combination with electrostatics to form one-dimensional chains of metal atoms for investigation as low-dimensional semi-conductors. More recently heterobimetallic lantern complexes containing unpaired electrons have also been assembled with metallophilic interactions. The fourth area of research is our most recent work. We have begun investigating Fe3O4 nanoparticles and variations on that theme as contrast agents.

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ENGINEERING MATERIALS FOR ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT LABORATORY RESEARCH ASSISTANT PROFESSOR JILLIAN GOLDFARB 8 St Mary's Street, PHO 627, Boston MA 02215 2

The EME Lab tackles issues surrounding the past, present and future generation of energy, and its impact on the environment. These include: (1) mitigating the environmental impacts of energy-derived pollutants via improved understanding of contaminant behavior, (2) developing new materials to reduce waste and remediate or retard the spread of contaminants, and (3) investigating economically viable and industrially scalable alternative energy sources through byproduct and waste conversion pathways.

FEMTOSPEC LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICHARD AVERITT, PROFESSOR LARRY ZEIGLER, PROFESSOR SHAYAMSUNDER ERRAMILLI, PROFESSOR KENNETH ROTHSCHILD http://physics.bu.edu/femtospec/index.html 8 Saint Mary’s Street, Boston MA 02215 617-353- 1271, 617-353-9918 Ultrafast laser spectroscopy is increasingly becoming an indispensable tool for studying the properties of materials. This laboratory aims to develop an advanced femtosecond laser spectroscopy system that will be applicable to a broad range of multidisciplinary problems in the fields of condensed matter physics, chemistry, and biology. Examples of topics to be focused on include quasiparticle dynamics in multifunctional materials, band gaps in carbon nanotubes, molecular events in biological energy conversion and photosensing, ultrafast response to light of heme proteins and the structure of biological polymers such as mucin using high sensitivity 2D-IR. Many studies will be facilitated by the ability of the new instrument to probe the same sample over a broad range of wavelengths from the far-IR to UV and detect small changes in absorbance. This capability should open a new window on ultrafast processes that up to now have been difficult to investigate.

FRAUNHOFER CENTER FOR MANUFACTURING INNOVATION (CMI) PROFESSOR ANDRE SHARON, DIRECTOR http://www.fhcmi.org/Alliance/index.html 15 St. Mary’s Street, Boston MA 02215 The Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation (CMI), a collaboration between FraunhoferGesellschaft, Europe's largest R&D organization and Boston University, conducts research and complements the R&D needs of a broad range of industries, including biotechnology, photonics, manufacturing, and renewable energy. Engineers, scientists, faculty, and students at the Center transform emerging research into viable technology solutions that meet the needs of both domestic and global companies. Our research areas include high precision automation systems, laboratory assays, instruments, and devices.

GREEN MANUFACTURING LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR SRIKANTH GOPALAN 730 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215 617-358-2297 Research in this laboratory focuses on environmentally benign power generation technologies such as solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). We explore the materials science and electrochemistry of SOFCs using impedance spectroscopy, galvanostats and potentiostats. Studies in this lab include measurement of the rates of charge transfer reactions that occur at the interfaces of solid state electrochemical devices, exploration of new processes, and modeling of the transport phenomena that occur in such devices.

In this lab we also conduct research on ceramic gas separation membranes for the separation of industrially important gases such as oxygen and hydrogen. Ongoing projects conducted in close collaboration with industrial

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partners include the development of electrode and electrolyte materials for lower operating temperature SOFCs and the development of mixed ionic and electronic conducting materials for separation of hydrogen. The laboratory is equipped with a Perkin Elmer 263 A Potentiostat / Galvanostat used for characterization of electrochemical systems such as fuel cells, ceramic gas separation membranes, batteries and sensors, a Horiba 910 particle size analyzer capable of obtaining particle size distributions of powders in the range of 0.01 microns to 1 mm using light scattering technique, a Solartron 1255 Frequency Response Analyzer (FRA) used for AC impedance spectroscopy, a high temperature furnace that can operate up to 1700°C, and a Spex 8000 mill capable of producing sub-micron particles for use in solid state electrodes by high energy ball milling in a very short period of time.

HIGH TEMPERATURE OXIDATION LABORATORY PROFESSOR SOUMENDRA N. BASU 750 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215 617-353-3746 The research thrust of this laboratory is to investigate the high temperature oxidation behavior of materials by exposing metal and ceramic samples to corrosive atmospheres containing oxygen and sulfur at elevated temperatures up to 1,400°C. The laboratory is equipped with a CAHN thermogravimetric balance and a Mettler microbalance for weight gain measurements, as well as an apparatus for oxidation in O-18 atmospheres, in order to determine oxidation mechanisms.

INTEGRATED PHOTONICS LABORATORY (IPL) ASSISTANT PROFESSOR JONATHAN KLAMKIN http://www.bu.edu/ipl 8 Saint Mary's Street, PHO 735, Boston, MA 02215 The Integrated Photonics Laboratory (IPL) conducts pioneering research in integrated photonics technologies for optical communications, microwave photonics, and sensing applications. The Laboratory is equipped with a number of simulation and design tools for realizing photonic integrated circuits (PICs) both at Boston University and through external foundries. The Laboratory also houses equipment for device and subsystem characterization. Novel devices can be fabricated using equipment in the IPL as well as in the shared facilities of the Photonics Center and Division of Materials Science Engineering. Specific research areas include lasers for silicon photonics, graphene optoelectronics for ultrafast modulation and photodetection, polymers and plasmonics for switching, photonics for microwave signal processing, and transceivers for optical interconnects.

INTERFACIAL FLUID DYNAMICS LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR JAMES BIRD http://www.bu.edu/fluidlab/ 730 Commonwealth Avenue, EMA 224 617-358-6929 Bird’s research group, located in the Interfacial Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, investigates a variety of phenomena that are dominated by interfacial forces, such as surface tension. These projects range from measuring the drainage and rupture of bubbles to modeling how oil flows through porous rock. Because these phenomena are often counter-intuitive, the group’s approach is to combine carefully controlled bench-top experiments with theoretical modeling. Experimental techniques include interferometry, microfluidics, and high-speed photography. The new physical insights gained from these projects can be applied to problems in manufacturing (e.g. controlling the degassing of bubbles in molten glass), energy (e.g. determining how best to extract oil from porous reservoirs), and the environment (e.g. reducing uncertainty in climate models by better characterizing marine aerosol production).

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LAB FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION & DEVELOPMENT (LEED) ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MUHAMMAD H. ZAMAN http://www.bu.edu/leed/what-we-do/research/ 36 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 A key component of our research activity is focused on developing smart, simple and cost-effective devices for invasive and non-invasive diagnostics. Our strategy is problem-focused rather than platform-focused as we try to optimize our platforms for specific needs in the field. With the help of our partner companies and institutions, versions of the prototype are tested in the field for feasibility before development of a full-scale solution.

LABORATORY FOR DIAGNOSTICS AND GLOBAL HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGIES ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR CATHERINE KLAPPERICH http://www.bu.edu/klapperich/ 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-0253 The Klapperich Laboratory for Diagnostics and Global Healthcare Technologies is focused on the design and engineering of manufacturable, disposable systems for low-cost point-of-care molecular diagnostics. We have invented technologies to perform microfluidic sample preparation for bacterial and viral targets from several human body fluids including, urine, blood, stool and nasowash. These technologies include nucleic acid extraction, protein extraction, microorganism enrichment and/or concentration and small-scale dialysis. We are currently working on devices for the detection and quantification of HIV, hemorrhagic fevers, infectious diarrheas, influenza, MRSA, and cancer biomarkers. Projects include detection by PCR, isothermal amplification, and novel optical techniques. Our main application area is global health. We consider assay development, device design, sample flow, storage and transport all opportunities to drive down the cost and increase the accessibility of molecular tests in the developing world.

LABORATORY FOR MICROSYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY PROFESSOR XIN ZHANG http://people.bu.edu/xinz/ PHO 903, 8 St. Mary’s St, Boston, MA The Laboratory for Microsystems Technology (LMST), directed by Professor Xin Zhang, was founded in 2002 as a college-wide, student-centered, interdisciplinary research and education program in the broad area of microand nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS or micro/nanosystems). Our research includes fundamental and applied aspects of MEMS and nanotechnology. Specifically, we seek to understand and exploit interesting characteristics of micro/nanomaterials, micro/nanomechanics, and micro/nanomanufacturing technologies with forward-looking engineering efforts and practical applications ranging from energy to health care to homeland security.

MATERIALS, DEVICES AND PROCESSES FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY PROFESSOR UDAY PAL http://people.bu.edu/upal/index.htm 750 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215 617-353-0375 The laboratory conducts research on (1) SOM (Solid-Oxide Oxygen-Ion-Conducting Membrane) Process for Electrolysis of Metals and Alloys from their Oxides; (2) Solid Oxide Electrolyte Electrolyzer for the production of

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pure hydrogen and syn-gas from a source of waste and steam; (3) Novel Continuous Co-firing Process for Fabrication of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells ; (4) Large Scale Rapid Response Energy Storage and Electrical Energy Generation System; and (5) Fundamental Studies on Cathode Materials for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells.

MATERIALS THEORY GROUP ASSISTANT PROFESSOR XI LIN http://oned.bu.edu/ 730 Commonwealth Avenue, ENA 207 617-358-3417 The Materials Theory Group seeks to understand the property of materials via modeling and simulation. The Group makes functional materials devices following theoretical predictions in the Materials Theory Laboratory.

MATERIALS X-RAY DIFFRACTION LABORATORY PROFESSOR KARL LUDWIG http://sif.bu.edu/projects/materials-xray-diffraction-lab/ 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215 617-353-7291 Our research investigates how materials evolve on atomic and nano-length scales as they change from one form to another. In particular, we use real-time x-ray techniques to examine structural evolution during phase transitions, thin film growth and surface processing. Many of the experiments use the high brightness of synchrotron x-ray sources – the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago. Where possible, we make contact with fundamental theory and simulation. In the last few years, our detailed interest has been in three directions – understanding surface and thin film processes, investigating nanoscale dynamics in metallic alloys using coherent x-ray scattering and studying the relationship between atomic structure and function in solid oxide fuel cell cathodes. Many of our in-situ studies utilize a unique ultra-high vacuum growth and surface modification facility, that we have helped develop, on the insertion-device beamline X21 at the NSLS. We have been using it to examine surface morphology evolution during ion bombardment (which can cause the spontaneous growth of surface nanostructures) and issues related to the growth of wide-bandgap group III-V semiconductor films using plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (in collaboration with Professor Moustakas in Electrical Engineering). Coherent x-ray scattering provides the ability to probe nanoscale dynamics in metallic alloys and other materials systems. Partially coherent x-ray beams are created using small (10 micron) slits in conjunction with a high-brilliance 3rd generation synchrotron source, such as the APS. The disorder in the alloys produces speckle patterns in the scattered x-ray intensity. The evolution of the speckle pattern can then be related to the underlying dynamics of structural changes (e.g. ordering, phase separation or stacking fault rearrangement) in the alloy. Solid oxide fuel cells offer the potential for highly efficient energy conversion, but improvements in cathode function are needed before their potential can be fully realized. In collaboration with Professors Pal, Basu and Gopalan in Engineering and Professor Smith in Physics, we are examining in-situ the near-surface atomic structure of cathode materials in order to better understand the relationship between function and structure.

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MATRIX MECHANOTRANSDUCTION LAB ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MICHAEL SMITH http://www.bu.edu/mml/ 44 Cummington Mall, Room 515 , Boston, MA 02215 617-358-5489 The form and function of cells and tissues is regulated by various properties of their local microenvironment such as rigidity and cell shape. In vivo, these properties are defined by the extracellular matrix (ECM) and adjacent cells. During dynamic processes such as development, these properties regulate ECM turnover and remodeling in addition to cell movement, proliferation, and contractility. This newly remodeled matrix and altered tissue shape then redefines the local microenvironment, thus further enjoining the cell response in an iterative, closed loop which leads to the coordinated self assembly of higher order structures. The ECM is more than a passive mechanical element in this process since it presents an array of binding sites for cells and cell signaling molecules. Furthermore, cell contractile forces stretch some components of the ECM, for example fibrillar structures composed of the protein fibronectin (Fn), into non-equilibrium conformations that have altered signaling properties. This can occur through protein unfolding, thus exposing amino acids with cell signaling functions that are normally buried in the equilibrium fold of the protein. Understanding how these microenvironmental properties regulate cell fate should increase the clinical efficacy of tissue engineering scaffolds that depend upon both biochemical and physical cues. Alternatively, engineered cell culture platforms might permit long-term maintenance of cell phenotype in vitro, thus permitting diagnostic research on the laboratory bench that might otherwise require animal experimentation. However, much remains to be learned about how these properties converge to direct cell fate in vivo. Predictions derived from reductionist systems often break down in more complicated environments. Broadly speaking, my lab focuses on quantifying the relationship between environmental cues and ECM production, elucidating the mechanisms by which Fn tension and unfolding alters its cell signaling capacity, and finally engineering culture environments to control the form and function of the ECM. These goals are accomplished using an interdisciplinary toolbox including a spectroscopic approach for quantifying strain within Fn matrix fibrils and microfabricated cell culture environments.

MICROSCOPY LABORATORY PROFESSOR SOUMENDRA N. BASU 15 St. Mary's Street, Brookline, MA 02446 This laboratory is dedicated to the preparation of electron transparent specimens for observation in the Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM). Specimens have to be reduced to thickness in the order of 100Å in order to study atomic arrangements by high resolution TEM. Equipment available for this purpose includes a GATAN dimpler and ion-mill, as well as precision grinding and polishing apparatus.

MULTIFUNCTIONAL MATERIALS SPECTROSCOPY LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICHARD AVERITT http://physics.bu.edu/averittlab/ 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-2619 In this lab we use time-resolved optical spectroscopy spanning from the far infrared through the visible to characterize the fundamental and technologically relevant properties of a host of interesting materials. In some cases we design, fabricate, and characterize our own artificial materials, but we also collaborate with colleagues from all over the world to characterize interesting artificial and quantum-based materials that they create. The beauty of optical spectroscopy, whether it is time-resolved or time-integrated, is its breadth of applicability to meaningfully study virtually any material you can imagine. With a very collaborative and multidisciplinary mindset, that is exactly what we do.

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MULTISCALE LASER LITHOGRAPHY LABORATORY (ML-CUBED) PROFESSOR ALICE WHITE 8 St. Mary’s Street, Room 628, Boston, MA 02215 With the installation of a Nanoscribe Photonics Professional GT Direct Laser Writing (DLW) tool, Prof. Alice White’s Multiscale Laser Lithography Laboratory now has the capability to rapidly prototype 3D polymer structures with nanoscale resolution over tens of microns to millimeters. In addition to a yellow-light room where the DLW is done, the lab has a processing bench with a spinner where we mix a wide range of photosensitive materials, as well as microscopes for characterization and a UV lamp and oxide plasma for surface preparation.

We also have a workstation to support CAD design. Current research projects include designing and fabricating mechanical metamaterials, scaffolds for cell studies, antennas for Terahertz radiation, and fixtures to enable neurological studies of birds.

MULTISCALE TISSUE BIOMECHANICS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR KATHERINE YANHANG ZHANG http://www.bu.edu/zhanglab/ 110 Cummington Mall, Room 230, Boston, MA 02215, 617-358-4406 In the Multiscale Tissue Biomechanics Lab, K. Zhang’s research group integrates knowledge of biology, nonlinear solid mechanics, and finite element modeling, especially of complex materials and constitutive behavior. Through the research, the lab provides insights in understanding the relationship between microscopic biological processes and changes in macroscopic tissue mechanics due to diseases, and helps the development of diagnostic, therapeutic, and pharmaceutical techniques. The Multiscale Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory was established in 2006 and includes a fully equipped wet lab and computational facilities for characterization and modeling of the mechanical behavior of soft biological tissues and composites at multi-scale. Current research thrusts in the Multiscale Tissue Biomechanics Lab include the development of structural constitutive models that directly integrate information on tissue composition and microstructure for simulation of cardiovascular diseases and methods of prevention, the structural and functional changes of elastin due to elastin – lipid interactions and glycation, and the cellular level mechanical properties and forces within the extracelullar matrix.

NANO HEAT TRANSFER LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AARON J. SCHMIDT http://www.bu.edu/nanoheat/ 8 Saint Mary’s Street. Room 503D, Boston MA 02215 Research in the Nano Heat Transfer Laboratory is focused on understanding and controlling thermal energy in nanoscale systems such as nanoparticles, thin films, membranes, and multilayers. We specialize in ultrafast optical measurements of transport and laser—material interaction. Applications include development of new materials, solid-state energy conversion, thermal management, thermal wave imaging, and fundamental transport physics. The laboratory is equipped with two custom-built photothermal microscopes for thermal property imaging and transport measurements.

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NANOMEDICINE AND MEDICAL ACOUSTICS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TYRONE PORTER http://www.bu.edu/medal/ 44 Cummington Mall, Room B03, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-7366 The Nanomedicine and Medical Acoustics Laboratory is focused on the development of stimuli-responsive colloidal systems for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. For example, we design and manufacture targeted lipid-coated microbubbles for ultrasound-based molecular imaging of inflammation associated with cancer or coronary artery disease. These targeted microbubbles can also be loaded with drugs for image-guided and highly localized drug delivery. On the nanoscale, we design and produce perfluorocarbon nanoemulsions that can be phase-converted into microbubbles, which are then used to assist in drug transport across cell membranes (i.e. localized drug delivery) or enhance ultrasound-mediated ablation of solid tumors. Lastly, we design and produce drug-loaded lipid- and polymer-based nanoparticles that are sensitive to biological cues, such as changes in pH levels or enzymatic activity. When subjected to a specific cue, these nanoparticles can be designed to release their payload rapidly or gradually, thus delivering an effective dose to diseased cells and tissue specifically and enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of the drug.

NANOSCALE ENERGY-FLUIDS TRANSPORT LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR CHUANHUA DUAN http://www.bu.edu/neft/ 730 Commonwealth Avenue, EMA 222 & 215A, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-3270 The Nanoscale Energy-Fluids Transport (NEFT) laboratory experimentally studies energy and fluids transport at the nanoscale. We are part of the Mechanical Engineering Department of Boston University. Professor Chuanhua Duan is the Principal Investigator of the NEFT lab. Our current investigations include: * Exploring anomalous transport phenomenon in 1-D or 2-D confined nanochannels; * Enhancing ion/molecule transport in batteries and fuel cells using nanostructured materials; * Improving phase-change heat transfer based on patterned micro/nanostructures; * Developing new nanofluidic devices for biomolecule sensing and separation.

NANOSCALE MECHANICAL ENGINEERING LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR KAMIL EKINCI http://www.bu.edu/nems/index.html 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-0253 The research in Nanoscale Mechanical Engineering Laboratory focuses on physical phenomena at the nanoscale as well as nanoscale devices and ultrasensitive measurement techniques for a variety of applications. The physical phenomena of interest ranges from fluctuations to fluid dynamics to photonics. The applications pursued so far involve bio-molecule sensing using nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS), designing motion transducers for nanoscale applications and ultrafast scanning probe microscopy.

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NANOSTRUCTURED FIBERS AND NONLINEAR OPTICS LABORATORY PROFESSOR SIDDHARTH RAMACHANDRAN http://people.bu.edu/sidr/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-353-9881 Light beams in free space travel at the "speed of light," and tend to diverge (diffract). Complex, nano-structured photonic devices can be used to slow light (confine photons in time) and counteract diffraction (by confining photons in space). Some confinement geometries lead to spatially complex beams that possess intriguing properties such as the ability of optical vortices to carry orbital angular momentum or the ability of Bessel beams to self-heal. Our group studies the myriad phenomena encountered by the manipulation of such fundamental effects of light, with the aim of developing next generation photonic devices.

NOVEL MATERIALS LABORATORY PROFESSOR KEVIN SMITH http://nml.bu.edu 590 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215.

617-353-5980 Research in the Novel Materials Laboratory is focused on understanding the fundamental electronic properties of complex materials, in crystalline, thin film, and nano-scaled form. This is intrinsically a diverse and interdisciplinary endeavor, involving aspects of physics, chemistry and materials science. We study a wide variety of different materials, most of which are technologically relevant with an emphasis on materials for energy generation and storage. The tools we use in our research are high-resolution electron and photon spectroscopies, and we both synthesize our own samples and study materials made by numerous collaborators.

All of our research is been undertaken at synchrotron radiation facilities, specifically the National Synchrotron Light Source (Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY), the Advanced Light Source (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA), and MAXLab (Lund, Sweden). The scope of our research activities is quite broad, and stretches from the fundamental quantum mechanics of low dimensional correlated solids, through the electronic structure of nano-scaled thin film organic semiconductors for use in photovoltaics, to the interface properties of multielement metal oxides with potential use in solid oxide fuel cells. We have also studied wide band gap nitride semiconductors, organic superconductors, transparent conducting oxides, and rare earth nitrides.

OPTICAL CHARACTERIZATION & NANOPHOTONICS LABORATORY (OCN) PROFESSOR BENNETT GOLDBERG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ANNA SWAN, AND PROFESSOR SELIM ÜNLÜ http://ultra.bu.edu/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-358-4808, 617-353-1275, 617-353-5067 Nanophotonics addresses a broad spectrum of optics on the nanometer scale covering technology development and basic science discovery. Compared to the behavior of isolated molecules or bulk materials, the behavior of nanostructures exhibit important physical properties not necessarily predictable from observations of either individual constituents or large ensembles. We develop and apply advanced optical characterization techniques to the study of solid-state and biological phenomena at the nanoscale. Current projects include development of high resolution subsurface imaging techniques based on numerical aperture increasing lens (NAIL) for the study of semiconductor devices and circuits and spectroscopy of quantum dots, micro resonant Raman and emission spectroscopy of individual carbon nanotubes, biosensors based on microring resonators, and development of new nanoscale microscopy techniques utilizing interference of excitation as well as emission from fluorescent molecules. We use high-resolution Raman spectroscopy to explore single atomic layers of graphene as well as atomic layers of chalcogenides. In addition to microscopy, optical resonance is nearly ubiquitous in our research projects including development of resonant cavity-enhanced photodetectors and imaging biosensors for DNA, single virus sensing, and protein arrays.

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ORTHOPAEDIC & DEVELOPMENTAL BIOMECHANICS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ELISE MORGAN http://www.bu.edu/odbl/ 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-2791 This laboratory uses experimental and computational methods to explore the relationships between structure and mechanical function of biological tissues at multiple length scales. Current research projects include biomechanics of spine fractures, the effects of mechanical stimulation on bone healing, biomechanics of fracture healing, and microscale mechanical characterization of bone tissue. The laboratory houses a biaxial (axialtorsional) servohydraulic materials testing system with a variety of extensometers and load cells, a miniature torsional testing system, two micro-computed tomography systems, a multichannel signal conditional and amplification system, an X-ray cabinet, and various cutting tools including a sledge microtome and lowspeed wafering saw. Additional space is dedicated to cell and tissue culture. Computational facilities include PC workstations equipped with software for image processing, finite element analysis, and general computing.

PHYSICAL ACOUSTICS LABORATORIES PROFESSOR RONALD A. ROY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR J. GREGORY MCDANIEL, PROFESSOR ROBIN CLEVELAND, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR GLYNN HOLT http://www.bu.edu/paclab/ 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 PACLAB conducts research in several areas of physical, underwater, applied, and biomedical acoustics.

POWDER METALLURGY & X-RAY LABORATORY PROFESSOR VINOD K. SARIN 730 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215 617-353-6451 The powder-processing laboratory is equipped to batch, process, and densify a wide variety of materials. Particle size reduction and uniform mixing are essential in any powder preparation. In addition to a 500cc capacity attritor mill for processing small powder batches, an extensive selection of ball mill sizes and a variety of milling media, including silicon nitride and titanium carbide, are available. Consolidation and sintering capabilities include vacuum, over pressure, and hot pressing up to 25,000 KgF and temperatures in excess of 2400°C. These capabilities make the powder-processing laboratory uniquely equipped for developing high temperature monolithic and composite materials. The laboratory is also equipped with a Bruker D8 Focus diffractometer with independent theta and two-theta axis with copper radiation. This unit extends the laboratory’s capability to perform single crystal back reflection Laue studies for crystal orientation. The standard detector is the scintillation counter, with high dynamic range and low internal background. In addition, several Debye Scherrer powder cameras are also available. This unit is equipped with all necessary components for qualitative or quantitative phase analysis, crystallite size determination, and structure determination and refinement.

PRECISION ENGINEERING RESEARCH (PERL) LABORATORY PROFESSOR THOMAS BIFANO 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-353-5619 Research in the Precision Engineering Research (PERL) Laboratory is directed toward design, modeling, fabrication, and testing of advanced microsystems. A core research area involves development of large-scale arrays of coordinated microactuators for use in photonic or optical systems. Recent projects have included:

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development of deformable micromirror arrays for adaptive optics; modeling of microfluidic transport systems; development of microvalve arrays for control of fluid flow rate and pressure; design and fabrication of advanced optoacoustic MEMS sensors; and micro-scale contouring using ion beam systems. The laboratory houses stateof-the-art systems for design, fabrication, and testing of MEMS devices, including interferometric contouring microscopes, a high speed vibrometer, and adaptive optics and microfluidic test beds.

RESTORATIVE SCIENCES AND BIOMATERIALS LABORATORY PROFESSOR AND CHAIR DAN NATHANSON, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RUSSELL GIORDANO, AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICHARD POBER Housman Medical Research Center (R Building) 72 E. Concord Street, Room 520, Boston, MA 02118 617-638-4756 Research in this laboratory focuses on ceramics and ceramic matrix composites. Projects include the testing of current ceramic restorative systems as well as the development of ceramic matrix composites with improved resistance to fracture and higher toughness. Evaluation of new dental materials systems is also an ongoing part of his research activity. Evaluation of the effects of surface finish on strength of ceramics has involved the application of novel machining systems such as the CEREC CAD-CAM system and the Celay copy milling system as well as the effects of polishing, fine grinding, glazing and etching.

SEMICONDUCTOR PHOTONICS RESEARCH LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ROBERTO PAIELLA http://www.bu.edu/paiella 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-358-3385 Research in this lab is aimed at the development of novel optoelectronic devices based on artificially structured materials systems, whose properties can be tailored by design to meet specific applications in a way that is not afforded by simply using bulk materials. One important example is that of semiconductor quantum structures, in which nanoscale layers (or wires or dots) of different semiconductor materials are assembled to create an energy landscape in which electrons behave in a markedly quantum-mechanical fashion. By controlling the dimensions and geometry of these structures, one can tune their most basic electronic and optical properties to enable entirely new device concepts – an approach that has become known as bandgap engineering. Artificial structures involving materials with different optical properties (e.g., metals and dielectrics) can also be designed in a similar manner, and used to control the flow of light and its interaction with the underlying matter in novel and often useful ways. Ongoing research is focused on THz optoelectronic devices, silicon-compatible light sources, and plasmon-enhanced visible LEDs. Our work in these areas involves both theoretical and experimental activities, including design and simulations, device fabrication, and electrical and optical characterization.

THE SHARIFZADEH GROUP ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SAHAR SHARIFZADEH http://sites.bu.edu/sharifzadeh/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Room 535, Boston MA 02215 617-358-4769 The Sharifzadeh research group focuses on understanding and predicting functional material properties using first-principles electronic structure methods. We develop and apply these methods, which can predict, with quantitative accuracy, the electronic, magnetic, and structural properties of materials from the basic laws of quantum mechanics. The goals of this research are to extract physical intuition about, and ultimately to design, new outstanding materials.

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SOLID STATE RESEARCH LABORATORY PROFESSOR DAVID BISHOP 8 St. Mary's Street, PHO 607, Boston, MA In this laboratory we are developing the techniques and MEMS devices to do "atomic calligraphy" where we can direct write structures and devices with small numbers of atoms. By moving silicon plates as we evaporate a wide variety of materials we can do 3D printing on an atomic scale.

SURFACE MODIFICATION LABORATORY PROFESSOR VINOD K. SARIN 15 St. Mary’s St., Brookline, MA 02446 This unique state-of-the-art university research laboratory has the capability of R&D activities in the field of surface engineering involving both Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) and Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) techniques. It contains two experimental CVD units capable of producing a wide range of tough, adherent and protective coatings for various applications. Two multiple-target DC and RF sputtering units that produce monolithic, multi-layered, and composite coatings are available for coating development by PVD. Research and development of diamond coatings is focused on the combustion flame process. Several combustion flame setups have been developed and fabricated to produce diamond coatings of various morphologies on a wide range of materials. Unique equipment and techniques have been developed to evaluate the mechanical, chemical, and structural properties of coatings, such as a micro-scratch tester to evaluate adherence. A hot wall CVD reactor is used for the deposition of functionally graded mullite coatings. Mullite (3Al2O3•2SiO2) has received considerable attention as a potential coating material for silicon-based ceramics due to its excellent corrosion resistance, creep resistance, high temperature strength, and most critically, excellent Coefficient of Thermal Expansion match, especially with Silicon Carbide. Dense, uniform, crystalline mullite environmental barrier coatings have been deposited by CVD on SiC substrates and these coatings have exhibited excellent high temperature oxidation and hot corrosion resistance. The coating process has subsequently been patented at Boston University. Transparent Radioluminescent Coatings of Lutetium Oxide doped with Europium Oxide are being developed using both PVD and CVD. It is believed that these atomistic deposition techniques will offer extensive promise as an alternative production method for tailoring microstructure and optimizing scintillation characteristics of these ceramics.

THE STRAUB GROUP PROFESSOR JOHN E. STRAUB http://www.bu.edu/chemistry/faculty/straub/ 590 Commonwealth Ave, Room 503, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-6816 The Straub Group investigates fundamental aspects of protein dynamics and thermodynamics underlying the formation of protein structure, through folding and aggregation, and enabling protein function, through pathways of energy flow and signaling. Student and postdoctoral research scientists in the Straub Group work to develop and employ state-of-the-art computational methods while working in collaboration with leading experimental research groups.

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THE TIEN GROUP ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JOE TIEN http://people.bu.edu/jtien/ 44 Cummington Mall, Room 715, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-3055 Research applying techniques adopted from microlithography, self-assembly, microfluidics, and developmental biology to develop methods of assembling cells into ordered three-dimensional aggregates and use these aggregates as artificial tissue and as in vitro models of disease. The Tien Group is developing new techniques to vascularize biomaterials. Current areas of interest are: the synthesis of microfluidic biomaterials (materials that contain open channels for perfusion), the quantitative physiology of engineered microvessels, and the computational design of vascular systems.

TSUI LAB PROFESSOR OPHELIA K.C. TSUI 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215 617-358-4669 Our current research primarily concerns the effects of surfaces, interfaces, confinement and frustration on the dynamics and equilibrium of soft condensed matters, illustrated in polymer ultrathin films and liquid crystal systems. These queries have led us to investigate a wide spectrum of contemporary soft condensed matter physics problems including wetting and dewetting phenomena, adhesion, interfacial viscosity, dynamics of confined systems, surface dynamics, surface or frustration induced orientational ordering. Through collaborations with colleagues around the world, we have also worked on related problems of atomic force microscopic (AFM) mechanics, AFM nanotribology, AFM nanolithography, order-disorder phase transition of evaporating solution cast block copolymer films, formation and structure of protein films, liquid crystal display, and electronic and magnetic properties of magnetic granular nano-composites. The major experimental techniques used in our research include AFM, x-ray reflectivity and scattering, contact angle measurement, ellipsometry as well as optical microscopy. Most of the sample preparation involves cleanroom and microfabrication technologies.

ULTRAFAST NANOSTRUCTURE OPTICS (UNO) LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR LUCA DAL NEGRO http://www.bu.edu/nano/Labs/Labs.html 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-358-5103 The research is mainly focused on: a) nano-optics and plasmonics; b) optics of complex structures; c) ultra-fast emission spectroscopy and optical gain phenomena; d) nonlinear optics of semiconductor and metal nanostructures. Implemented optical techniques include: picosecond fluorescence lifetime spectroscopy, femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy, dark-field scattering spectroscopy, time-resolved variable stripe length gain techniques, emission quantum efficiency, photoconductivity measurements, Z-scan and SHG nonlinear characterization.

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ULTRAFAST OPTICS LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR MICHELLE SANDER http://sites.bu.edu/ufolab/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston, MA 02215 617-358-5153 Our group focuses on exploring optical material interactions to develop novel laser sources in the infrared and mid-infrared wavelength regime. We explore femtosecond pulse generation techniques (1 femtosecond = 1015 seconds) to advance photonic technologies that manipulate and transmit light efficiently. Compact fiber lasers and integrated microphotonic systems are pursued for applications in communications, biomedical diagnostics and treatment, frequency metrology, environmental sensing and spectroscopy.

VIBRATIONS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR J. GREGORY MCDANIEL http://www.bu.edu/mrg/ 15 St. Mary’s Street, Room 139, Brookline, MA 02446 617-353-4847 The Vibrations Laboratory offers a full suite of sensors, instrumentation, and software necessary to research the vibrations of complex structures and technologies that reduce vibration and noise. One area of current interest is the spatial mapping of energy removal by damping treatments in order to better design damping treatments for complex structures. Another area is the mitigation of automotive brake squeal.

WIDE BANDGAP SEMICONDUCTOR LABORATORY PROFESSOR THEODORE MOUSTAKAS http://www.bu.edu/nitrides/WBSL21.htm 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-353-1288 In the Wide Bandgap Semiconductors Laboratory we are investigating the growth, structure, and optical/electronic properties of semiconductors of the gallium nitride (GaN) family. The materials are grown homoepitaxially or heteroepitaxially in the form of thin films, quantum wells (QWs), quantum dots (QDs), and quantum wires on a variety of substrates by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) and Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy (HVPE). In parallel we are also investigating the growth and fabrication of optoelectronic devices covering the spectral region from the deep UV to terahertz. Such devices include deep UV LEDs and lasers, green LEDs based on InGaN quantum dots (QDs), and terahertz emitters and detectors based on quantum cascade structures. Our group works closely with a number of other BU groups. The crystal structure and microstructure of the materials is investigated in collaboration with Professors Ludwig and Basu. The interaction of InGaN QWs and QDs with plasmonic nanostructures as well the terahertz quantum cascade structures are investigated in collaboration with Professor Paiella. The gain characterization of the deep UV emitting devices is investigated in collaboration with Professor Dal Negro. The experimental work is complemented by theoretical studies based on first principal calculations and simulations by Professor Bellotti.

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MSE SHARED CORE RESEARCH FACILITY The Materials Science and Engineering Core Facility was officially commissioned in June 2012. Since that time, it has grown to house multiple core pieces of equipment for the Materials Science Engineering and Photonics Center Community.

The materials processing area is comprised of two Salare hoods that are dedicated to acid and base processing.

Table space is provided within this room to allow for sample preparation and oven use if applicable.

Two Bruker X-Ray systems have been acquired by an NSF MRI award led by Prof. Ludwig, and are available for faculty usage.

Dr. Jeffrey Bacon oversees training and maintenance on these two systems. The N8 Horizon and the D8 Discover systems are complementary, and allow for small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS and WAXS). The N8 Horizon, introduced by Bruker in 2012, is one of the first such systems installed in the US. The instrument is designed for compact spaces and has transmission and grazing incidence SAXS capabilities. The D8 Discover is a very versatile WAXS system with general x-ray

diffraction (XRD), high-resolution XRD, reciprocal space mapping, grazing incidence diffraction, x-ray reflectivity, pole-figure analysis, and sample heating (1000°C) capabilities.

A Zeiss Xradia 410 Versa system was acquired and set up through a separate NSF MRI award, led by Professor Morgan. This tool bridges the gap between high-performing Xray microscopy (XRM) and less powerful computed tomography (CT) systems. This system provides quantitative 3-D characterization of materials microstructure at multiple length scales down to the sub-micron, including porosity, density, surface area, and topological measures such as 3-D connectivity.

The AFM-FM Microscope that was housed in the core facility is currently undergoing major improvements via a third NSF MRI award led by Professor Goldberg. In conjunction with Asylum, the system is being retrofitted with Raman Spectroscopy for enhanced tip capability. Next to the AFM is a new Renishaw Raman Microscope system that includes a heating/cooling stage and multiple wavelengths for Raman observation. This tool was purchased via the Photonics Center Capital Equipment Committee and is open to all Photonics and Materials Science Engineering faculty.

In the basement of the Photonics Center, the Focused Ion Beam/Transmission Electron Microscope Facility is comprised of two laboratories consisting of 600 square feet, and is overseen by Dr. Alexey Nikiforov. This laboratory houses a recently purchased FEI Quanta 3D FEG FIB (Field Emission Gun Focused Ion Beam) system and a FEI Tecnai Osiris 200kV S/TEM (Scanning/Transmission Electron Microscope).

The FEI Quanta 3D FEG FIB is a powerful tool for SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) imaging to aid removal and deposition of materials at a micro/nano scale with a resolution of 1.2 nm in the HiVac mode, 2.9 nm in LoVac mode, and 7 nm with the FIB column. The system includes gas injector modules (GIS) and an Omniprobe

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micromanipulator can be used for TEM sample preparation and lift-out. A Peltier/Heating Stage Control Kit allows for the study of in situ dynamic behavior of materials at different humidity (up to 100% RH) and temperatures (-10°C to 1000°C).

The FEI Tecnai Osiris S/TEM is a versatile scanning transmission electron microscope that allows for brightfield/dark-field imaging, selected area and convergent beam diffraction, and high-resolution imaging with a point-to-point resolution of 0.25nm, and line resolution of 0.102 nm, extended to 0.16 nm with TrueImage™ software, and a STEM resolution of 0.18 nm. The system can seamlessly switch between TEM and STEM modes.

The system also includes energy dispersive x-ray (Super-X EDX) capabilities for composition analysis and mapping, and energy filtered TEM with electron energy loss spectroscopy (Gatan EELS) for light element quantification and mapping.

A new sample preparation room to prepare electron transparent samples for use in the TEM is currently operational and open to all Photonics and Materials Science Engineering Faculty. Through equipment purchases at the Photonics Center, a grinder, cut-off saw, disc cutter, automated polishing and lapping equipment, dimpler, and ion mill are all installed.

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VISITING COMMITTEE MEMBERS DR. H. LEE BUCHANAN is currently Venture Partner, Paladin Capital Group in Washington, DC. He is also a Director of Tektronix, Lucent-Alcatel Government Solutions, TestMart, Corp., Advantage Federal, Corp, and the Robotics Technology Consortium. Prior to Paladin Dr. Buchanan was Vice President, Advanced Concepts, EDO Corporation, a $1B producer of Intelligence, Electronic Warfare, sonar, and weapons systems for the U.S. military; Executive Vice President of Perceptis, a holding company for producers of wireless data collection and intelligence systems; and President and CEO of QualStream.

DR. C. BARRY CARTER is Department Head and Professor in the Chemical, Materials & Biomolecular Engineering Department at the University of Connecticut. Professor Carter is the author of the popular textbook, “Ceramic Materials: Science and Engineering”, published by Springer. Professor Carter’s research interests are in characterization of interfaces and defects in ceramics and semiconductors.

DR. GEORGE CRAFORD is currently the Solid State Lighting Fellow at Philips Lumileds Lighting Company. Prior to joining Philips he was the Technical Director of the Electronics Division at HewlettPackard Company. At Hewlett-Packard, Craford’s group pioneered the development of various types of LEDs and products. Dr. Craford is a fellow of the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has received numerous professional awards including the 2002 National Medal of Technology from the President of the United States in recognition for his contributions to the LED technology.

DR. ARTHUR GOSSARD is Professor of Materials and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before going to Santa Barbara in 1987, he was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the IEEE and the AAAS, a Humboldt Society Senior Award recipient, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the 1983 American Physical Society Oliver Buckley Condensed Matter Physics prize, the 2001 American Physical Society James McGroddy New Materials Prize, the 2009 Al Cho International MBE Award and the 2005 John Bardeen Award of the TMS. His research involves the growth of artificially structured materials by molecular beam epitaxy.

DR. JAMES G. HANNOOSH is currently Vice President of Development for Astra Tech, Inc., and former CEO and Senior Vice President of Atlantis Components, Inc. Both companies produce dental implants and medical devices employing advanced materials.

DR. MAX G. LAGALLY is Erwin W. Mueller Professor and Bascom Professor of Surface Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Lagally is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including his election into the German National Academy of Science, the American Association for the advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Engineering.

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DR. RON LATANISION is currently Corporate Vice President & Practice Director at Exponent Engineering and Scientific Consulting, and Professor Emeritus in Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of ASM International, NACE International, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Latanison’s expertise and interests are in the areas of electrochemical science and processing technologies.

DR. PAUL MANKIEWICH serves as Chief Architect, Mobility Solutions at Juniper Networks. Dr. Mankiewich serves as Chief Technology Officer of the Wireless Networks Product Group. He served as Chief Technology Officer of Alcatel-Lucent for the Americas. Previously, he was Chief Technology Officer and Chief Architect for Lucent Technologies. He was responsible for the technology direction of all Lucent products and solutions including mobile, optical, switching and data networking solutions, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and end-user applications. He was the Chief Technical Officer, Mobility Solutions, and also served as Senior Vice President of Networking Research, Bell Laboratories.

DR. KWADWO OSSEO-ASARE is Distinguished Professor of Metallurgy and Energy and Geoenvironmental Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Professor Osseo-Assare’s research interests are in the areas of materials processing in the aqueous media.

DR. SUBHASH C. SINGHAL is Battelle Fellow and Director, Fuel Cells, in the Energy and Environment Directorate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Utah. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Washington State Academy of Sciences. He served on the Electrochemical Society’s Board of Directors, was President of the International Society for Solid State Ionics. Dr. Singhal’s expertise and interests are in the areas of high temperature materials and solid oxide fuel cells.

DR. HARRY L. TULLER is Professor of Ceramics and Electronic Materials in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Head of the Crystal Physics and Electroceramics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Electroceramics, Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, and elected to World Academy of Ceramics. Professor Tuller’s research interests are in the areas of electroceramics and solid-state materials.

HANS-PETER WEBER, DMD, is the Raymond J. and Elva Pomfret Nagle Professor of Restorative Dentistry and Biomaterials Sciences, and serves as Chair of the Department of Restorative Dentistry and Biomaterials Sciences at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. His expertise is in the area of dental implants and reconstruction.

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Boston University Division of Materials Science and Engineering Annual Report 2014-2015 © 2015 Boston University Photography: Boston University Photo Services except where otherwise noted.

Content: Cheryl Stewart, Elizabeth Flagg, Ruth Mason, MSE staff, and MSE faculty

This report provides a description of the instructional and research activities of the Division of Materials Science and Engineering at Boston University during the 2014-2015 academic year. Instructional activities are reported from the Fall 2014 through Summer 2015 semesters while scholarly activities and budget information are reported from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015.

Boston University’s policies provide for equal opportunity and affirmative action in employment and admission to all programs of the University.

For more information or to download this report as a PDF, please visit our website at www.bu.edu/mse.

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