Category Archives: News

Kelvin Lee receives Marvin J. Johnson Award in Microbial and Biochemical Technology

As the director of NIIMBL, the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, Kelvin Lee is a changemaker in the biomanufacturing industry, which has the potential to save lives, improve national security, and increase economic development in the United States. For his impact in microbial and biochemical technology, Lee, Gore Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware, has received the 2019 Marvin J. Johnson Award in Microbial & Biochemical Technology from the American Chemical Society’s Division of Biochemical Technology. He will receive the award at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society, to be held from March 31 to April 4, 2019. “Kelvin has the unique ability to combine scientific excellence with a level of vision and leadership quality to impact the broader biotechnology community,” said Wilfred Chen, Gore Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UD and the 2017 recipient of the Marvin J. Johnson Award. Lee joins Chen and two other UD colleagues who have received the Marvin J. Johnson Award — Abraham Lenhoff (2011) and Eleftherios Papoutsakis (1998). UD and the University of California at Berkeley are the only two universities to have four winners of the Marvin J. Johnson Award on their faculties.

Read UDaily article

UD engineers develop methods to use CRISPR technology for conditional gene regulation

A team of engineers at the University of Delaware has developed a method to use CRISPR/Cas9 technology to set off a cascade of activities in cells, a phenomenon known as conditional gene regulation. Their method, described in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, introduces a new functionality to CRISPR, one of today’s most-talked-about technologies. Gene editing with CRISPR technology has been called “one of the biggest science stories of the decade” for its applications to medicine, agriculture and much more. CRISPR allows scientists to precisely target and edit DNA within living cells, which could help them correct anomalies that cause inherited diseases. The first clinical trials in humans are underway in China. However, until now, scientists hadn’t figured out how to program their CRISPR systems to target DNA while integrating information from within the cells they were studying. At UD, Wilfred Chen, the Gore Professor of Chemical Engineering, and graduate student Ka-Hei Siu designed structures — dubbed toehold-gated gRNA (thgRNA)— for targeted gene regulation in E. coli bacteria.

Read UDaily article

UD engineers develop particles to reach stem cells

Gene therapy holds a lot of promise in medicine. If we could safely alter our own DNA, we might eliminate diseases our ancestors passed down to us. Now, a team of University of Delaware researchers has demonstrated a major step forward in gene therapy by engineering microparticles that deliver gene-regulating material to hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, which live deep in our bone marrow and direct the formation of blood cells. In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, Chen-Yuan Kao, a doctoral student in chemical engineering, and Eleftherios T. (Terry) Papoutsakis, Unidel Eugene du Pont Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, describe how they used megakaryocytic microparticles, which circulate naturally in the blood stream, to deliver plasmid DNAs and small RNAs to hematopoietic stem cells. With more development, this technology could be useful in treatment for inherited blood disorders that affect thousands of Americans. These include, for example, sickle cell anemia, a disease that causes abnormally shaped red blood cells, and thalassemia, which disrupts the production of the blood protein hemoglobin.

Read UDaily article

She also received the Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society

Emily Day, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Delaware, has been selected by the University’s Francis Alison Society to receive the 2018 Gerard J. Mangone Young Scholars Award. The award recognizes promising and accomplished young faculty. The recipient is chosen by fellow faculty members who have received the Francis Alison Award, the University’s highest competitive faculty honor. In high school, Day was inspired by a science teacher who helped her appreciate the joy of learning something new and she now tries to pass that to her students at UD.

About the Mangone Award
About the Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award

Read UDaily article

Babatunde Ogunnaike, the William L. Friend Chair of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware, received the Warren K. Lewis Award for Chemical Engineering Education in October at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) annual meeting. AIChE is the world’s leading organization for chemical engineering professionals, with more than 60,000 members from more than 110 countries. The Warren K. Lewis Award, given since 1963, is sponsored by ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Company. Ogunnaike was the dean of the College of Engineering from July 2011 until October 2018 and joined the UD faculty full-time in 2002. He previously worked in research and development for DuPont for 14 years. He has also taught classes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Lagos and African University of Science and Technology. Ogunnaike earned his doctoral degree in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. In honor of Ogunnaike’s seven years of service as dean, the University established the Babatunde Ogunnaike Global Engineering Student Enrichment Fund, which is structured to provide financial assistance for students to engage in impactful global activities, such as an Engineers Without Borders service trip, a summer, semester, or winter session in a study abroad program, or international research in support of a new entrepreneurial venture.

Read COE article