{"id":18738,"date":"2025-10-22T13:03:53","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T17:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/?p=18738"},"modified":"2025-11-12T10:38:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T15:38:31","slug":"bu-ignition-award-winners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/2025\/10\/22\/bu-ignition-award-winners\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brink: From Better Batteries to Improved Cartilage Repair, BU Ignition Award Winners Aim for Real-World Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AerialExcerpt from The Brink | By: Andrew Thurston | October 15, 2025 | Photo: Above Summit for Boston University Photography<\/span><\/p>\n

The annual Ignition Awards honor innovative BU projects that are ready to make the move toward commercialization, from the research phase to consumer use. Given by BU Technology Development within the University\u2019s Office of Research, the awards come with financial backing, as well as a dedicated advisory committee to provide expertise, mentoring, and oversight to help projects navigate any commercialization challenges.\u00a0 There were seven winning teams this year, with projects pushing to improve disease detection, build more sustainable data centers, and create targeted therapies and medicines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe program highlights BU\u2019s role as a growing innovation hub and serves as a bridge between academic discovery and real-world solutions,\u201d says Melinda Shockley, BU\u2019s executive director of faculty entrepreneurship. \u201cWhat really excites me is seeing how the project teams bring fresh thinking from different backgrounds and departments across the University\u2014chemistry, engineering, business, medicine, data science\u2014to solve critical, real-world problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Machine Learning for Designing Better Drugs<\/h3>\n

The project<\/strong>: Combining advanced machine learning tools and innovative chemical thinking to design new types of medicines.<\/p>\n

Team leads<\/strong>: Adrian Whitty, College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of chemistry, and Xuezhou (Jack) Zhang<\/a>, Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences assistant professor of computing and data sciences.<\/p>\n

Potential impact<\/strong>: \u201cIt is well established that macrocyclic compounds\u2014molecules containing a ring of at least 12 atoms\u2014can have advantageous properties as oral drugs,\u201d according to Whitty and Zhang. Their work could make it possible to reliably design macrocyclic compounds that can be taken by mouth, \u201caddressing a key current obstacle in macrocycle drug discovery.\u201d They say the Ignition Award\u2019s \u201cresources, recognition, and the business advice and assistance that is integral to the program, will be invaluable in helping us move our idea forward toward eventual commercialization, as well as providing enhanced educational and training opportunities to the graduate students involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn about one of the winning projects at the BU Ignition Awards 2025 that aims to design new medicines using machine learning and chemical thinking tools, led by professors Adrian Whitty and Xuezhou (Jack) Zhang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25279,"featured_media":18746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[356,5,232,230,35,245,244],"tags":[339,525,661,26,378],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18738"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18954,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18738\/revisions\/18954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cds-faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}