Nature provides the answers

close up photo of Messersmith examining a sample of Asparaglue in the lab

An in-depth look at research by Professor Phil Messersmith, who draws on biology to develop cutting-edge materials for medicine. His lab creates adhesives and therapies designed to work with the human body, offering new ways to repair tissues, heal wounds and treat disease.

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Researchers pioneer greener way to extract rare earth elements

photo of Professor Seung-Wuk Lee, in his lab holding up a petri dish, seen from the other side of a supply shelf

Professor Seung-Wuk Lee has pioneered a biomining technique that could be a clean and more sustainable way to mine the rare earth elements essential to modern technology. His lab genetically engineered a harmless virus to act like a “smart sponge” that grabs rare earth metals from water, and, with a gentle change in temperature and…

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Four BioE Faculty Named 2025 Highly Cited Researchers

Highly Cited Researchers 2020 Clarivate banner image

Professors Paul Adams, Adam Arkin, Patrick Hsu, and Jay Keasling have been recognized in the “2025 Highly Cited Researchers” list, meaning their work ranks in the top 1% of citations for their field and publication year in Clarivate’s Web of Science citation index

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Heart-on-a-chip may lead to new treatments for heart failure

A cardiac microphysiological system under fluorescent lighting with fluidic tubing.

A team led by Professors Kevin Healy and Niren Murthy have developed a microfluidic heart-on-a-chip, with which they were able to discover a lipid nanoparticle that could penetrate the dense heart muscle and efficiently deliver its cargo of therapeutic mRNA into heart muscle cells. This new drug delivery method and testing platform may pave the way to new cardiac treatments.

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Taner Sen and Colleagues Sequence Complex Oat Pangenome

head and shoulders photo of Sen

Adjunct Professor Taner Sen and his colleagues at the USDA and beyond have assembled and annotated the genomes of 33 wild and domesticated oat lines, along with an atlas of gene expression across in 23 of these lines, which will enable future efforts to even more hardy and productive strains of the popular grain.

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Alumnus Connor Tou named Stat Wunderkind

head photo of tou on green background with Stat Wunderkind text logo

BioE alumnus Connor Tou (B.S. 2020) has been named a 2025 STAT Wunderkind by by STAT News – an award that honors early-career scientists whose creativity and perseverance are helping to reshape biomedical research and health care.

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Fletcher elected to National Academy of Medicine

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Professor Dan Fletcher has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine for his contributions to the mechanistic understanding of biological self-assembly and mechanotransduction, and his work developing mobile phone-based microscopy for remote diagnosis of infectious diseases. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.

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