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Bradley Chmelka, Guido Pintacuda, and colleagues crank up the speed of magic-angle spinning to overcome the proton coupling issue, sharpening lines. Using only 0.5 mg of sample, the researchers successfully assign many proton resonances in a fully protonated heptahelical transmembrane protein, proteorhodopsin, in native-like lipid bilayers.

ICB-Caltech Project Leader and biochemical engineer Frances Arnold, is being honored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) for paving the way for other women in chemical engineering and for her significant contributions to chemical engineering research over the course of her career—revolutionizing the way researchers design more effective drugs and create cleaner industrial processes.

On October 1, 2017 the ICB’s Caltech campus leader, David Tirrell, will become Caltech’s tenth provost, pursuant to Board of Trustees approval in July. David has been part of the ICB since its inception in 2003, also serving as the ICB’s Biotechnology Tools task order co-leader.  

ICB project leader and lead author of a study that was recently published in the journal Chem, Guillermo Bazan and his team of researchers at UCSB chemically modified the bacteria Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 to increase its energy production capabilities. This research could lead to another way for wastewater treatment plants to not only decontaminate water but to also generate some of their own power without many of the curent limitations.

ICB Systems and Synthetic Biology Project Leader since 2014 Irene Chen has received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award for her cutting-edge research on bacteriophages (phages), viruses that infect bacteria and are therefore natural predators of bacteria—the potential being phage-based alternatives to antibiotics. 

ICB Co-Director Scott Grafton and Daniel Levitin, a cognitive psychologist at McGill University recently conducted an unusual study based on brain scans of the singer-songwriter Sting. Their findings are published in the journal Neurocase, in a report entitled: Measuring the Representational Space of Music with fMRI: A Case Study with Sting.

On July 26th ICB Caltech Program Co-Leader, Richard Murray, was appointed to the Defense Innovation Advisory Board (DIAB) by the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter. Murray joins the DIAB as one of 15 innovators, scholars, and leaders focused on new technologies, organizational behavior and culture. 

UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang will be hosting the inaugural lecture and reception celebrating the appointment of Professor Scott T. Grafton to the Bedrosian Coyne Presidential Chair in Neuroscience. Grafton, who has served as the ICB co-director for more than 6 years is also UCSB professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the director of the UCSB Brain Imaging Center. Presentation: The Connected Brain in Health and Injury Followed by Reception

ICB Project Leader and Caltech Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry, Frances Arnold has been awarded the 2016 Millennium Technology Prize in recognition of her pioneering innovation, directed evolution, which mimics natural selection to create new and better proteins in the laboratory. This technology uses the power of biology and evolution to solve many important problems, often replacing less efficient and sometimes environmentally harmful technologies. 

The ICB’s Julia Greer, Professor of Materials Science and Mechanics at Caltech has been named one of fifteen distinguished university faculty scientists and engineers who will form the 2016 class of the Department of Defense’s National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows program. Her research focuses on creating and studying advanced materials that combine hierarchical architectures and unique nanoscale material properties; nanotechnology that will change how large-scale things like airplanes to small-scale things like biomedical devices are made.