Seven collaborative projects win IBB innovation awards

Rice University’s Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (IBB) has named five winners of this year’s IBB Hamill Awards, given to initiate collaborative research projects led by faculty at Rice, and two winners of IBB Medical Innovations Awards for new collaborations between Rice faculty and researchers at the Texas Medical Center (TMC).

This year's IBB innovation awards will be presented May 8 at the BioScience Research Collaborative.

The IBB Hamill Awards, in their ninth year, are funded by the Hamill Foundation, and the IBB Medical Innovations Awards, in their seventh year, are supported by the Larry and Eileen Tietze Fund. These faculty awards were presented at a May 8 luncheon at Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative. Student recipients of IBB Travel Grants and BRC Collaborative Prizes were also honored.

The Hamill winners are:

Laura Segatori, the T.N. Law Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology, and Angel Marti, assistant professor of chemistry and bioengineering, for their project, “Molecular Probes for Monitoring Protein Aggregation in Cells.” They plan to build upon their development of fluorescent probes to detect signs of neurodegenerative diseases.

Jordan Miller, assistant professor of bioengineering, and Jeffrey Hartgerink, professor of chemistry and of bioengineering, for “Design, Synthesis and Characterization of Strain-Stiffening Hydrogels.” They will endeavor to build a hydrogel mesh that stiffens when stressed, similar to collagen tissue in biological structures.

Cecilia Clementi, the Wiess Career Development Chair professor of chemistry and of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Christy Landes, assistant professor of chemistry and of electrical and computer engineering, for “Characterization of the Conformational Landscape of the NMDA Receptor by a Combined Theoretical-Experimental Approach.” They are working to understand the desensitization in cells’ glutamate receptor proteins, which are implicated in neurological disease including schizophrenia, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Yizhi Jane Tao, associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology, and Ching-Hwa Kiang, associate professor of physics and astronomy, for “Single Molecule Studies of Influenza A Virus Assembly.” They expect their work to help the development of targeted anti-viral drugs that are more effective than current flu vaccines.

Pedro J. Alvarez, the George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Yu Yang, a postdoctoral research associate in civil and environmental engineering; and George Bennett, the E. Dell Butcher Professor of of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, for their project, “Manipulating Biofilm Formation of Halanaerobium spp.” They will seek to mitigate the effects of biofilms that sour oil and gas wells, corrode equipment and pipelines and hinder flow.

The winners of this year’s IBB Medical Innovation Awards:

Tomasz Tkaczyk, associate professor of bioengineering at Rice, and Robert Coffee, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine, for “Hyperspectral Snapshot Camera for Retinal Diagnostics.”
Their goal is to develop new tools for the early detection of changes in the eye’s retina caused by such diseases as glaucoma and macular degeneration.

Janet Braam, professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice, and Roderick Dashwood, director of the Center for Epigenetics and Disease Prevention, Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Texas A&M Health Science Center, for their project, “Crops, Circadian Clocks and Cancer.” They will advance Braam’s study of plants’ internal clocks to assess postharvest storage and associated benefits for human health.