| Posted: May 8, 2007 |
First nano-bio symposium at Hopkins a great success |
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(Nanowerk News) Johns Hopkins University held its first Nano-Bio Symposium on Friday, April 27, 2007. The event, organized by the Institute for NanoBioTechnology, took place at the Homewood Campus. “We had a great program and the symposium went extremely well”, says Peter Searson, Director of INBT. “Based on comments from those in attendance, I think it was a great success”.
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Speaker Session
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The speaker session, which took place in Remsen Hall, was attended by an estimated hundred and fifty students and faculty from Hopkins and local universities, as well as representatives from government, industry, and venture capital firms interested in nanobiotechnology.
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The featured talks covered a wide range of topics in nanobiotechnology, from the use of nanotools to gain new insight in cell adhesion, to the development of new worm-like nanoparticles as drug delivery carriers, to the development of fluorescence-based molecular moieties to probe gelation processes in biomaterials for tissue engineering applications. Wendy Sanhai of FDA talked about the challenges that her organization is facing with the rapid growth of nano-based biotechnologies and Piotr Grodzinski of the National Cancer Institute discussed funding opportunities in nanobiotechnology at NCI.
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A diverse group of speakers from academic and government institutions were brought together for the symposium. They included Michael P. Sheetz, professor of biological sciences at Columbia University; David J. Mooney, professor of bioengineering at Harvard University; Gunter Oberdorster, professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester; Dennis Discher, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Pennsylvania; Gang Bao, professor of biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech; Wendy Sanhai, Senior Scientific Advisor at the Food and Drug Administration; and Piotr Grodzinski, Director of the Nanotechnology Alliance for Cancer at the National Cancer Institute.
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Poster Session
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During the afternoon a poster session was held in the Mattin Center where over one hundred poster presentations were on display offering a broad overview of current nano-bio research efforts at the School of Medicine, the School of Engineering, the School of Public Health, and the School of Arts and Sciences at Hopkins. “I am very pleased that we had so many posters, it shows how eager researchers are to share their work and find out what others in the Hopkins community are doing”, says Denis Wirtz, Associate Director of INBT. The organizers also noted the overall high quality of the posters.
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Four best posters were each awarded a $50 Barnes and Noble gift card. Michael Edidin, Professor of Biology in the Krieger School for Arts and Sciences and chairman of the judges, explained that the posters chosen had a scientific idea to test and used nanoscience or some other aspect of nanotechnology to address the problem. “We were also swayed by clarity of the poster and by the presentations made”, he said.
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The winning posters are:
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- Profiling the Mammalian Cell Surface Glycome. Authors; Sheng-ce Tao, Yu Li, Jiang Qian, Ronald L. Schnaar, Irwin J. Goldstein, Heng Zhu, Jonathan P. Schneck.
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- Focal Adhesion Disassembly Using Electrochemically Programmed Sub-Cellular Release. Authors; Bridget Wildt, Peter Searson, Denis Wirtz.
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- Environmental Fate and Impact of Nanomaterials: Effect of Surface Oxidation on the Colloidal Stability and Sorption Properties of Carbon Nanotubes. Authors; D. H. Fairbrother, W.P. Ball, B. Smith, M. Shin, H.-H. Cho, F. K. Bangash, J. D. Wnuk.
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-Circular permutation of TEM1 b-lactamase improves catalytic activity. Authors; M. Kanwar, G.Guntas, M.Ostermeier.
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