***Please see Archives (in menu at left) for information prior to summer 2011.
Congratulations to Professor Dan Luo for his 2012 College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Basic Research. Dan is being rewarded for his highly original work in the engineering of DNA and DNA hybrids into novel materials for applications including molecular sensing devices for disease detection, cell-free protein production, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. [November 2012]
Congratulations to Professor Ashim Datta for his 2012 College of Engineering Mr. and Mrs. Richard F. Tucker '50 Excellence in Teaching Award. An awards luncheon was held on November 5, 2012.
Faculty Renewal Gifts: Shaping the Future of CALS. Martin Y. Tang '70 has established a faculty fellowship in honor of BEE Professor Emeritus Norm Scott, the Norman R. Scott Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellowship. Norm is honored for his long-standing friendship with and leadership of the Tang Cornell-China Scholars Program. The fellowship enabled BEE to hire assistant professor C. Lindsay Anderson to establish a program in sustainable energy systems engineering. [periodiCALS, Fall 2012]
Congratulations to the Cornell Local Roads Program (CLRP) for their 2012 Tompkins Tourism Partner Award. The award was received for their annual Highway Superintendents School, "The Tompkins County Legislature thanks you for making an outstanding contribution to the County and its residents and enhancing the local economy by promoting it as a tourism destination".
Synthetic signaling networks for therapeutic applications. This article, by Chris Aurand and Matt Russell, PhD students with Professor John March, has been published in the journal Current Opinion in Biotechnology, October 2012, vol. 23 no.5, 773-779. The cover image for the magazine is from the article. [October 2012]
The 2012 ISMET Meeting, a regional forum for researchers and engineers who work with microbial electrochemical systems and/or the interface between microbes and solid electrode surfaces, was hosted by the Angenent Lab, October 2012. BEE Professor Lars Angenent is a founding member of the group.
North American International Society for Microbial Electrochemical Technologies.
The Switch Energy Project - To a Smarter Energy Future. "A comprehensive documentary film, web and education program to build energy awareness and efficiency, and find practical, balanced solutions to our energy challenges". BEE Professor Larry Walker is interviewed for the Biofuels portion of the project, on developing next generation biofuels, explaining cellulosic and other biofuels, and on the potential to reinvigorate rural areas. Switch was screened at Cornell on October 4th, 2012.
A Big Welcome to BEE's New Faculty, who joined us in July 2012!
Assistant Professor Lindsay Anderson has been an Adjunct Professor and Sr. Research Associate in BEE for six years. She has taught BEE 1510 Introduction to Computer Programming for most of that time, taking over the class from Emeritus Professor Lou Albright. She has added BEE 4880/6880 Applied Modeling and Simulation for Renewable Energy Systems to the BEE course roster. Professor Anderson's current research focuses on the integration of renewable energy technologies into existing power systems and energy markets. Before coming to Cornell, Prof. Anderson was an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The University of Western Ontario in Canada, where she received her PhD in applied mathematics.
Assistant Professor Ludmilla Aristilde works on problems at the interface of environmental chemistry and environmental health. She plans to take on the challenge of teaching BEE 2510 Engineering for a Sustainable Society after focusing her first year on her research program, where she is particularly interested in the fate and effects of emerging contaminants in soils and surface waters and the reactivity and fate of macromolecules in soils. Before coming to Cornell, Prof. Aristilde completed an NSF postdoctoral fellow position at Princeton University, with ecosystem dynamics of marine phytoplankton and the utilization of organic substrates by soil anaerobic bacteria. She obtained her PhD from the University of CA-Berkeley in molecular toxicology.
Associate Professor Mingming Wu has been an Adjunct Professor and Sr. Research Associate in BEE and MAE for ten years. She teaches BEE 4550 Biologically Inspired Microsystems Engineering, and will add BEE 2600 Principles in Biological Engineering to her teaching resume next year. Professor Wu's Biofluidics Lab does research on quantitative micro/nano scale imaging (i.e.,tracking time-space positions of multiple swimming bacteria), BioMEMS (i.e., working with microfluidic and miccrochemotaxis devices), biomachineries (i.e., exploring microfluidic pumps in nature), and microfluidic microvascular modeling (i.e., angiogenesis modeling). Prior to Cornell Prof. Wu was an Associate Professor in the Physics Department at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
This Is the Food We'll Eat on Mars. This article, posted June 2012 on the Popular Science site, discusses the crew of scientists and astronauts that met at Cornell to prepare to feed human colonists on the Red Planet. "I will never go to Mars," says BEE Professor Jean Hunter, "but I hope they'll be eating my recipes." More stories on the Mars program follow:
Six-member crew selected for Mars food mission. [ChronicleONLINE, July 6, 2012]
'Gastronauts' practice Martian cooking techniques for deep-space delicacies. [ChronicleONLINE, June 25, 2012]
Volunteers sought for simulated Mars mission and study of 'menu fatigue'. [ChronicleONLINE, January 26, 2012]
Researchers convert 'beer' into a better-than-ethanol biofuel. Professor Lars Angenent led this study, which was published by Energy and Environmental Science. The journal has promoted it as a "hot paper". "With fuels you want to have pretty long carbon chains," Angenent said. "Ethanol has two carbons, and you can run a car on that but not a plane - it's not dense enough." [ChronicleONLINE, June 26, 2012]
Hydrologic Discovery Through Physical Analysis: Honoring the Scientific Legacies of Wilfried H. Brutsaert and Jean-Yves Parlange. An international symposium was held in May 2012 in honor of two legendary leaders of this process on the occasion of their retirements from Cornell University. Presentations, posters and a photo album are available at this link.
Congratulations to Professor Antje Baeumner
for her 2012 SUNY Chancellor's Excellence in Teaching award. The award
was recognized at the CALS 2012 Dean's Awards Reception, Spring 2012.
DNANO Systems moves protein-expression business to McGovern Center. "The beauty of the technology that [Professor Dan Luo] has discovered and developed is that it's simple and fast, it has a high probability of working in different applications, and it's scalable," says Alan Biloski, CEO of DNANO Systems. [ChronicleONLINE, March 8, 2012]
The Atkinson Center solutions factory: Up and running. This EZRA Magazine Winter 2012 article includes mention of a $9 million DOE award for a national research consortium to improve production of biofuels using aquatic microalgae. Cornell participants include BEE Professor Beth Ahner, CEE Professor Ruth Richardson, and MBG Professor Maureen Hanson. [January 2012]
Portable device will quickly detect pathogens in developing countries. Using synthetic DNA, Professor Dan Luo has devised a method of 'amplifying' very small samples of pathogen DNA, RNA or proteins. The device will speedily identify such pathogens as tuberculosis, chlamydia, gonorrhea and HIV. [ChronicleONLINE, January 30, 2012]
Sustainable seaweed: Researchers explore algae-based animal feed. This same algae is being studied by BEE Professor Beth Ahner, as its own inherent stress response can be harnessed to help in oil production. When starved of nutrients, the algae undergoes physiological changes causing it to exude oil. [ChronicleONLINE, January 18, 2012]
Willow biofuels program ignites with new funding and boiler. Horticulture Professor Larry Smart is running a shrub willow bioenergy program. Funding from the Northeast Sun Grant Initiative, under the direction of BEE Professor Larry Walker, will bolster the effort. BEE Professor Dan Aneshansley is also a collaborator with the willow efforts in Geneva. [ChronicleONLINE, January 6, 2012]
Biosensor may improve disease detection, water monitoring. BEE Professor Dan Luo and his graduate student Songming Peng collaborated on this project with Professor Amit Lal, ECE. [ChronicleONLINE, December 8, 2011]
Artificial intestine could treat children's bowel condition. BEE Professor John March is collaborating with a Pittsburgh pediatric surgeon to turn a research tool engineered in his lab into an artificial intestine. [ChronicleONLINE, December 8, 2011]
Two faculty delegations visit Swedish universities to strengthen ties. BEE Professor Larry Walker was included in the group that went to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden to enhance the potential for collaboration between Universities. [ChronicleONLINE, December 5, 2011]
Professor Dan Luo was a plenary speaker at the Second Nano Today Conference in Waikoloa, Hawaii. His talk was entitled "Engineering DNA as Both Genetic and Generic Materials". [December 2011].
Graduate Student Janet Barclay, who works in Professor Todd Walter's research group, has been chosen as a 2012 IGERT fellow with the Cross Scale Biogeochemistry and Climate (CSBC) IGERT program. Congratulations, Janet!
BEE students receive Global Fellows certificates: Rohiverth Guarecuco (Honduras, Volunteer), Allison Jagoe (Denmark, Study), Kelly McBride (UK, Study), Caitlin Anderson (Tanzania, Volunteer), Lawrence Withers (Kenya, Volunteer), and Charles Coombs (Germany, Study). [Nov. 15, 2011]
Lauren Hodge, a winner of Google's Global Science Fair, worked with graduate student Kyle Delwiche in Professor Todd Walter's lab to determine how pulverized pumpkin reacts to water contaminated with hard metals. [ChronicleONLINE, November 15, 2011]
Alyssa Henning, BE'11, is now the AlumniGEM president. Her team won gold at the America's regional jamboree as well as the track award for the Best Manufacturing Project IN THE WORLD at the iGEM Championship Jamboree. [November 7, 2011]
Artificial intestine could treat children's bowel condition. Professor John March and Professor David Hackam (Univ. of Pittsburgh) have been given a 2011 Hartwell Collaboration Award for their proposal "Generation of an Artificial Intestine for the Treatment of Short Bowel Syndrome in Children". [November, 2011]
A Half Century of Norm Scott: A Biological Engineering Symposium. A symposium was held in November 2011 to salute the distinguished career of service and leadership of Professor Norm Scott. A video is available at this link.
Law School to host international water conference Nov. 4-6. The "Water Scarcity and Policy in the Middle East and Mediterranean" brought scholars from Egypt, Tunisia, Greece, Spain, Lebanon, Ethiopia, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel together to discuss the growing water crisis in the region. BEE was a co-sponsor of this conference, through Professor Tammo Steenhuis. [ChronicleONLINE, October 24, 2011]
Kiln to make rural Kenyan village energy self-sufficient with agricultural boon. Professor Lars Angenent and his researcher Hanno Richter are working with an interdisciplinary team working on a slow pyrolysis unit that will be used to harness the power of organic material to fuel an entire village in Kenya. The project is funded by the David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. The Angenent Lab has made progress in harnessing microbes to produce liquid fuel from the gases produced by slow pyrolysis. [Oct. 18, 2011]
Four Cornell faculty win PECASE awards. Professor John March is a recipient of a Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, which is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on early-career science and engineering professionals. [ChronicleONLINE, October 3, 2011]
U.S. News & World Report ranks four Cornell undergraduate programs in the top 10. Including BEE's Biological Engineering, #4, and Environmental Engineering, #9! [ChronicleONLINE, September 13, 2011]
ABET accreditation received. Seven College of Engineering undergraduate programs, including BEE's Biological Engineering and Environmental Engineering, have received ABET accreditation. This finding is the result of a review and inspection by ABET completed in Fall 2010. More information on accreditation. [August 2011]
Professor Norm Scott, after 49 years of service to our department, has retired and been honored with Professor Emeritus status. [August 2011]
2011 Teaching and Advising Excellence Award Winners. Professor Lindsay Anderson received the Mr. & Mrs. Richard F. Tucker Award, and Professor Antje Baeumner received the Sonny Yau '72 Award from the College of Engineering. Congratulations!
Congratulations to BEE Professor John March for his promotion to Associate Professor with tenure! [July 2011]
The Cornell University Iota Chapter of Alpha Epsilon has been awarded the New Project Seed Money Award and the Most Improved Chapter Award. Congratulations to Graduate Students Elliot Friedman, Sheila Saia, Marie Donnelly and the group as a whole for all their work! See the ASABE announcement.
Understanding synergy between two bacteria could improve fuel cells. See the Cornell Chronicle story on Angenent Lab Grad Student Arvind Venkataraman's work published in Energy and Environmental Science, "Metabolite-based mutualism between Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA14 and Enterobacter aerogenes enhances current generation in bioelectrochemical systems". From the Chronicle article, "Like mutual back-scratching, two common bacteria involved in what was thought to be only a marginally important relationship actually help each other thrive when grown together in bioreactors". [Chronicleonline, June 9, 2011]
Building plasmonic nanostructures with DNA. This article, by Professor Dan Luo's group, has been published in the May edition of Nature Nanotechnology. Picture caption: A vast library of plasmonic atoms can be synthesized using wet-chemistry approaches; various DNA motifs can be created using DNA nanotechnology; the plasmonic atoms and DNA can then be used to rationally design and synthesize a range of plasmonic nanostructures. [June 2011]
Three-dimensional root phenotyping with a novel imaging and software platform. This article, by Randy Clark, a PhD student with Professor Dan Aneshansley, et. al., has been published in the journal Plant Physiology, June 2011, vol. 156 no.2 455-465. The cover image for the magazine is from Randy's research. [June 2011]
Atkinson Center announces 10 new venture fund awards. 10 interdisciplinary projects have been chosen for funding from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. The awardees include David de Villiers, BEE Research Associate, with colleagues Miguel Gomez (AEM) and Huaizhu Gao (CEE) for their project, "Developing a Soil-Based, Sustainable Specialty Crop Greenhouse Industry in the Northeast". More information can be found here. [Chronicleonline, June 1, 2011]