Category: Research
2024 Ignition Awards Bring BU Science and Tech to Market
Awarded annually by BU Technology Development, Ignition Awards are designed to accelerate the advancement of promising science and technology. This year’s awards support six projects, including strengthening teeth against sensitivity, processing encrypted data in the cloud, monitoring kidney dialysis in real time, jump-starting a cure for lung disease, helping immune cells fight pancreatic cancer, and a new way to attack liver cancer.
Mark Grinstaff Receives NSF Trailblazer Engineering Impact Award
A new technology that could revolutionize vaccines has garnered William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor Mark Grinstaff one of just six inaugural Trailblazer Engineering Impact Awards. The $3 million award will allow Grinstaff and his team to explore new possibilities in the engineering of messenger RNA to make more effective and longer-lasting vaccines.
BU’s Framingham Heart Study Gets New Director
Donald M. Lloyd-Jones has been appointed director of the nation’s longest-running study of heart disease. The study is run by Boston University and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Seven BU Researchers Win Prestigious Early-Career Awards
The prestigious NSF CAREER awards mark a significant achievement for early-career scientists and come with five years of continuous funding. The 2024 winners include Michael Albro, Ana Fiszbein, Jonathan Huggins, Wenchao Li, Andrew Sabelhaus, Rabia Yazicigil, and Rachel Brulé (not pictured).
BU Researcher Named a 2024 Hertz Fellow
Emmy Blumenthal (CAS’23) has been named a 2024 Hertz Fellow—one of just 18 this year. Blumenthal, who is preparing to start a PhD program, specializes in biophysics and has been ranked among the nation’s “most promising innovators in science and technology.”
BU Innovator Pioneers Devices in Astronomy, Microscopy
The director of the University’s cross-disciplinary Photonics Center, Thomas Bifano, is the 14th winner of the Innovator of the Year award, given to an “outstanding faculty member who has translated world-class research into an invention or innovation that benefits humankind.” A holder of 10 patents, Bifano is also chief technology officer of Boston Micromachines Corporation, a company he cofounded to develop and market deformable mirrors and other optics products.
As head of the Photonics Center—which is a hub for the study of light and development of technologies utilizing it—Bifano has helped many others nurture their own innovations. The center is home to 70 faculty research labs and the Business Innovation Center, which hosts tech, biotech, manufacturing, and medical devices start-ups and corporations.
Three BU Researchers Elected AAAS Fellows
Being named an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow puts scholars in distinguished company—and a trio of Boston University researchers have just been selected for the honor.
Electrical and computer engineer Siddharth Ramachandran, physicist Bradley Lee Roberts, and biologist Daniel Segrè have been named AAAS Fellows for extraordinary contributions to their respective fields; they’ll be recognized at a special event later this year. The world’s largest scientific society, AAAS has elected fellows since 1874; this year marks the program’s 150th anniversary. During that time, more than 110 BU scholars have been selected for the award.
BU Electrical Engineer Vivek Goyal Named 2024 Guggenheim Fellow
Prediction-making algorithms play a critical role in College of Engineering Professor and Associate Chair of doctoral programs for electrical and computer engineering Vivek Goyal’s burgeoning research on improving microscope imaging. That research is in part what earned Goyal a Guggenheim Fellowship, a prestigious grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His groundbreaking work in electron imaging has significant potential implications for biomedicine and manufacturing, among myriad other applications.
Each year, the foundation awards approximately 180 fellowship grants to individuals making significant contributions in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the creative arts, and the humanities.
BU Researchers Win $46 Million Grant for Osteoarthritis Research
A pair of researchers—David T. Felson and Tuhina Neogi, both professors of medicine at the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and also of epidemiology at the BU School of Public Health—have been trying to understand what causes osteoarthritis. They’re then using that information to find ways to slow its onset and provide more effective and targeted treatments. They have received a five-year, $46 million award to support their ongoing study, one of the largest awards BU’s medical school has received. The funding was given by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging.
FDA Clears Device with BU-Developed Technology That Makes Skin Cancer Detection Easier
A new noninvasive skin cancer detection device—powered by technology pioneered by Irving J. Bigio, a professor at Boston University’s College of Engineering—aims to make telling the difference between a benign or potentially harmful mark easier and faster. The US Food & Drug Administration recently cleared for US markets DermaSensor, which uses light and artificial intelligence to examine skin lesions and assess whether a patient should be referred to a specialist. “It’s a positive statement about BU’s commitment to interdisciplinary research that involves the engineering and physical sciences, as well as the medical school,” says Bigio, who also holds positions in BU’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and College of Arts & Sciences physics department. “They are supportive of collaborative research across schools.”
