Research

Students from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering presented their research as part of the competitive NC State University Future Leaders in Chemical Engineering symposium this past October. Three students from the department were recognized as awardees.

COVID-19 vaccines are just the beginning for mRNA-based therapies; enabling a patient’s body to make almost any given protein could revolutionize care for other viruses, like HIV, as well as various cancers and genetic disorders. However, because mRNA molecules are very fragile, they require extremely low temperatures for storage and transportation. The logistical challenges and expense of maintaining these temperatures must be overcome before mRNA therapies can become truly widespread.

The Shields Lab has received an NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21) to develop a specialized pipette to isolate and prepare fungal biomarkers for study.

Researchers from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Program are among the authors of “Polymer inhibitors enable >900 cm2 dynamic windows based on reversible metal electrodeposition with high solar modulation” which appeared in the April issue of the highly prestigious science journal Nature Energy.

Cierra Walker, a PhD candidate in the both the Materials Science and Engineering Program and Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology Program at CU Boulder is the first author on a new paper in Nature that explores what happens to cells after a heart attack.

New research from the Sprenger and Whitehead groups aims to identify and map common mutations in “Spike” proteins—the proteins that allow the virus to enter and infect cells. This would provide researchers with a roadmap to anticipate and counteract the development of future SARS-CoV-2 strains with effective vaccines and vaccine boosters.

While solar panels have traditionally used silicon-based cells, researchers are increasingly looking to perovskite-based solar cells to create panels that are more efficient, less expensive to produce and can be manufactured at the scale needed to power the world.

Where do bodily tissues get their strength? New CU Boulder research provides important new clues to this long-standing mystery, identifying how specialized proteins called cadherins join forces to make cells stick—and stay stuck—together.

New research from Professor J. Will Medlin and collaborators at three other institutions points to a new, inexpensive and sustainable method of synthesizing hydrogen peroxide.