Title
Topic
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Weng receives USDA funding to explore cyclic peptide biosynthesis
“Plants offer an enormous chemodiversity that is essential for discovering new medicines, with 25% of all FDA-approved drugs coming from plants. However, the production of plant-derived natural products faces significant challenges. Our research [explores] the biosynthesis and bioengineering of lyciumins and moroidins, two classes of branched cyclic peptides with potential pharmaceutical applications. Lyciumins, inhibitors of the human angiotensin-converting enzyme, come from the Goji berry, while moroidins, derived from the Australian stinging tree, exhibit anti-mitotic activities suitable for cancer therapy. … We propose to advance our understanding of RiPP diversity and biosynthesis, supporting new strategies for their engineering and application in…
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Joshi, Nguyen receive patent for ‘therapeutic protein’-secreting bacteria
Associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology Neel S. Joshi, with student Peter Nguyen, received a patent for “Engineered bacteria that secrete therapeutic polypeptides, pharmaceutical compositions comprising the bacteria, methods for producing recombinant polypeptides and methods for using the bacteria for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.”
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Patent for network slicing policies
“Electrical and computer engineering assistant research professor Salvatore D’oro, assistant professor Francesco Restuccia and professor Tommaso Melodia were awarded a patent for ‘Methods for the Enforcement of Network Slicing Policies in Virtualized Cellular Networks.'”
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‘A Gradient of Unisons: The Emergent Superunit in Collective Action’
“As design practice shifts from designing material goods to shaping and facilitating social situations, there is a compelling need to develop a richer understanding of specific social relations as facilitated by design. This article explores bodied unisons—enkinaesthetic entrainments of self + other. We present these unison acts as identifiable patterns of behavior that are observable when people coordinate, patterns that foster a move from individual to superunit.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Design Issues.
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‘Quasi-Fermi Liquid Behavior in a One-Dimensional System of Interacting Spinless Fermions’
“We present numerical evidence for a paradigm in one-dimensional interacting fermion systems, whose phenomenology has traits of both Luttinger liquids and Fermi liquids. This state, dubbed a quasi-Fermi liquid, possesses a discontinuity in its fermion occupation number at the Fermi momentum. The excitation spectrum presents particlelike quasiparticles and absence of holelike quasiparticles, giving rise instead to edge singularities.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Physical Review B.
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‘Rigor With Machine Learning From Field Theory to the Poincaré Conjecture’
“Despite their successes, machine learning techniques are often stochastic, error-prone and blackbox. How could they then be used in fields such as theoretical physics and pure mathematics for which error-free results and deep understanding are a must? In this Perspective, we discuss techniques for obtaining zero-error results with machine learning, with a focus on theoretical physics and pure mathematics. Non-rigorous methods can enable rigorous results via conjecture generation or verification by reinforcement learning. We survey applications of these techniques-for-rigor ranging from string theory to the smooth 4D Poincaré conjecture in low-dimensional topology.” Find the authors list in Nature Reviews: Physics.
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Müftü and Özdemir receive Army Research Laboratory grant
“Sinan Müftü, College of Engineering distinguished professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, and Ozan Özdemir, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, are leading a team that was awarded a $4.38 million grant from the Army Research Laboratory to advance wire-arc direct energy deposition for large-format metal additive manufacturing.”
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‘Carvings in Stone: Design Research for Public Health Investigations in the Age of COVID-19’
“The COVID-19 pandemic presented complex challenges to public health research involving human subjects, necessitating creative thinking to maintain safe and productive qualitative data collection. In this paper, we describe how an interdisciplinary team overcame these challenges by translating in-person workshops into at-home design probes to explore connections between university students’ climate change attitudes and their health. … This case study provides insight into how pandemic-imposed restrictions presented a novel opportunity to reconceptualize how we collect qualitative data in public health research and summarizes the unique benefits of integrating such design-based approaches.” Find the paper and authors list at Design for…
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Zhang receives NSF grant to harness magnonic nonreciprocity
“Electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Xufeng Zhang, in collaboration with Boston University, was awarded a $420,000 NSF grant for ‘Harnessing Magnonic Nonreciprocity Through Dissipation Engineering.’ This project will investigate the principals of energy dissipation in magnonic systems and engineering approaches for manipulating dissipations.”
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‘An Empirical Study of How Service Designers Use Metrics’
“Scholars have advocated for the importance of evaluation in service design, proposing comprehensive frameworks for such integration in design processes. This research seeks to complement existing theoretical studies by providing empirical insights into the utilization of metrics by practicing service designers. Our study presents findings derived from a global survey and in-depth interviews conducted with service designers from eleven countries.” Find the paper and full list of authors at She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation.
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Ghoreishi receives funding to study AI in harsh environments
“Fatemeh Ghoreishi, assistant professor of civil engineering, received a $60,000 grant from the U.S. Army for ‘BRITE: Bayesian Inference and Preference Learning for Unknown and Time-Sensitive Environments’ to further [her] research on AI systems in unpredictable environments.”
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Abur receives NSF grant to integrate renewable energy into power grids
“Electrical and computer engineering professor Ali Abur was awarded a $350,000 grant from the NSF for ‘Robust Transient State Estimation for Three-Phase Power Systems.’ The project aims to facilitate the efficient integration of inverter-based renewable energy sources into future generation of power systems.”
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‘Milk Exosomes Anchored With Hydrophilic and Zwitterionic Motifs Enhance Mucus Permeability for Applications in Oral Gene Delivery’
“Exosomes have emerged as a promising tool for the delivery of drugs and genetic materials, owing to their biocompatibility and non-immunogenic nature. However, challenges persist in achieving successful oral delivery due to their susceptibility to degradation in the harsh gastrointestinal (GI) environment and impeded transport across the mucus-epithelium barrier. To overcome these challenges, we have developed high-purity bovine milk exosomes (mExo) as a scalable and efficient oral drug delivery system, which can be customized by incorporating hydrophilic and zwitterionic motifs on their surface.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Biomaterials Science.
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‘Persistent Anisotropy of the Spin Cycloid in BiFeO3 Through Ferroelectric Switching’
“A key challenge in antiferromagnetic spintronics is the control of spin configuration on nanometer scales applicable to solid-state technologies. Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) is a multiferroic material that exhibits both ferroelectricity and canted antiferromagnetism at room temperature, making it a unique candidate in the development of electric-field controllable magnetic devices. … This study provides understanding of the antiferromagnetic texture in BiFeO3 and paves new avenues for designing magnetic textures and spintronic devices.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ArXiv.
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Dai receives patent for ‘Biodegradable Elastic Hydrogels for Bioprinting’
From the patent’s abstract: “Disclosed herein are hydrogel compositions comprising a triblock copolymer having a formula A-B-A, wherein A is a polycaprolactone (PCL) block or a polyvalerolactone (PVL) block and B is a polyethylene glycol (PEG) block. Also disclosed are methods of making a hydrogel comprising providing a photoinitiator and a triblock copolymer having a formula A-B-A, wherein the triblock copolymer comprises one or more ethylenically unsaturated moieties; and photocrosslinking the triblock copolymer, thereby forming a hydrogel.”
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Daramola elected Scialog fellow in sustainable minerals, metals and materials initiative
“Chemical engineering assistant professor Damilola Daramola has been named a Fellow of the Scialog initiative on Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials. This interdisciplinary community of Fellows represents institutions across the United States and Canada and brings together expertise from fields including chemistry, materials science, geology, ecology, engineering, mining, computational science, physics and more. The community focuses on ensuring a sustainable future.”
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Needa Brown receives Women’s Health Innovation Grant
As part of Governor Maura Healey’s support of the Massachusetts Life Science Center’s Women’s Health Initiative, Needa Brown, assistant teaching professor of physics at Northeastern University, has received funding for her project “InCITE: A Biomaterial Platform to Overcome Barriers to Drug Delivery.”
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Whitford receives NIH grant to ‘enable translation’ across ribosomes
“This award will use theoretical models and high-performance computing to study the ribosome, a massive molecular assembly composed of hundreds of thousands of atoms. The ribosome is responsible for translating our genes into proteins, making its function central to all life. In this study, we will identify the molecular factors that control protein synthesis in bacteria and higher-level organisms. Insights into bacteria will aim to identify novel antibiotics, while the study of human ribosomes can shed light on a range of diseases, including metabolic diseases and forms of cancer.”
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Weng receives funding to identify small molecules involved in diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s
“The proposed research aims to develop a plant-based drug screening platform to identify small molecules that can disrupt protein and RNA aggregation associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The project will utilize the unique lyciumin peptide biosynthesis pathway in plants to generate a diverse library of cyclic peptides. These peptides will be screened in engineered tobacco BY-2 cells … to identify compounds that alleviate cellular toxicity and alter aggregation kinetics. … The established screening platform and identified compounds will be made available to the research community, potentially offering new tools and therapeutic strategies.”