IMNI Celebrates its 5th Anniversary!

We invite you to join the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation in celebrating its 5th anniversary on November 9th, 2012.

Friday, November 9th

1 pm - 4 pm
Sayles Hall

1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Poster Session/Competition

1:40 PM - 2:15 PM
Speakers
Robert Hurt, IMNI Director
Clyde Briant, VP of Research, OVPR
President Christina Paxson

2:15 PM
Reception (Food and Beer/Wine)

3:40 PM
Announcement:  Winners for the Poster Competition

Five Questions With: John P. Donoghue

Providence is becoming a growing national hub for neuroscience research, the home of more than 100 top brain scientists. One of the foremost scientists is John P. Donoghue, the director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. Donoghue is also the principal investigator of BrainGate, which has won worldwide acclaim for its development of neural interfaces for people with neurological impairment and limb loss.

PBN: Why has Providence become a hub of what Dr. Edward Wing has called “an extraordinary concentration of expertise” in brain science research and treatment?

DONOGHUE: The number of brain science researchers in Providence, ranging from applied mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists to neurosurgeons and psychiatrists, as well as more traditional neuroscientists, is well over 100.

At Brown, we support and promote collaboration among this diverse community through the Brown Institute for Brain Science.

The Institute is providing state-of-the-art research facilities, including the MRI research facility open to all state researchers, in addition to substantial infrastructure funding such as the new $1 million annual fund to support new core facility equipment.

We also provide a rich environment for students to learn and experience cutting-edge science. The Norman Prince Institute for Neuroscience, founded by a $15 million grant to Lifespan in 2010, is our clinical partner.

The neuroscience institute works with the brain institute to support new innovative research and its translation to clinical application.

Last week we announced yet another important new means of support for research, the Providence VA’s $4.5 million Center of Excellence in Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology.

So, across many institutions, in a coordinated fashion, we are unifying and supporting a large community of talented researchers in fundamental and translational research as well as enhancing clinical care.

PBN: The Providence VA Medical Center just opened its new research center of excellence for neurorestoration and neurotechnology. How will this further the collaboration of scientific endeavor between Brown University and the state's hospitals?

DONOGHUE: The was created through a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs to be a national center of excellence located at the Providence VA Medical Center. The center is a key element of the Institute’s core mission to advance neurotechnology to restore function, including focus areas in advanced prosthetics after limb loss, cognitive disorders, paralysis, and stroke. These efforts are especially targeted at the veterans population, but with clear benefit to people everywhere.

To accomplish that mission the new center brings together researchers and clinicians from the VA, Lifespan and Care New England hospitals, and Brown. For example, in the center’s neuromodulation research focus area, psychiatrists at Butler Hospital and the VA work on technologies to electrically and magnetically stimulate brain circuits to treat mood and anxiety disorders.

The BrainGate brain-computer interface pilot trial for people with paralysis includes Rhode Island Hospital as well as Massachusetts General Hospital.

The new research center is also establishing core support that will facilitate clinical trials of new devices and will advance brain imaging capabilities across the area’s medical systems to the benefit of all.

PBN: What does the future hold for neurobionics -- replacing and restoring lost brain functions with technology?

DONOGHUE: Neurobionics, or using devices to restore or replace lost function, has a bright future. While most neurotechnologies are still in early stages, many show great promise to help those with some of the most devastating nervous system disorders. There is a need for ongoing basic science as well as translational studies to realize these advances.

The brain is incredibly complex and we still have a lot to learn not only about how individual brain cells work, but also about how networks of neurons enable the functions we know as behavior, emotion, and the mind.

On the restoration side, Drs. Cosgrove, Greenberg and Rasmussen are developing ways that help rebalance brain circuits to restore normal brain function in movement, mood and cognitive disorders.

A study by Dr. Linda Resnik is already on the way to providing our Veterans with the most advanced prosthetic limbs.

BrainGate is getting within a few years of fully implanted sensors, being developed by neuroengineer Arto Nurmikko, that allow wireless, brain-based control for people with severe paralysis.

I believe all of these “sci-fi” advances will become widely used in the next decade.

PBN: How does our understanding of how the brain functions in terms of memory and learning changed through your work?

DONOGHUE: We’re learning a lot about higher brain functions like learning and memory through research in the Institute. More than how my work changes that understanding, research of talented basic researchers in the Institute are changing our ability to create better brain interfaces.

A major grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to understand how to repair the damaged brain has allowed Brown professors Rebecca Burwell and David Sheinberg to experiment with memory and perception circuits in animal models using a technology that turns neurons on and off using light.

David Badre is studying how networks involving the most specialized parts of our brain can turn memories into action.

For BrainGate to work, we must understand how complex interactions in the brain lead from very abstract concepts to a specific behavior, like reaching out and grabbing your coffee cup for a sip.

On the other hand, our work is informing the scientific and clinical community about the operations of the human brain at the scale of groups of neurons, a view of our brain that has never before been available.

PBN: What kinds of opportunities are there for potential breakthrough therapies and drug treatments for diseases such as schizophrenia?

DONOGHUE: For all the progress we’re making in the many labs around Providence, we know there is a lot more to be done to understand, prevent and treat autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction, or Alzheimer’s Disease.

One major focus of the Brown Institute for Brain Science is to accelerate our understanding of the brain’s networks, which is where many neuroscientists believe the most interesting functions emerge.

Increasing research in areas like systems and computational neuroscience will enhance our understanding of how those networks function, and sometimes break down, leading to schizophrenia or mood or thought disorders.

Eric Morrow’s work with stem cells is, to me, one of the most exciting new areas of research because it may provide critical clues at the level of brain connections and genes about the causes of autism.

Finally, the Brown Institute for Brain Science includes a large group of researchers interested in the fundamental processes that go wrong at the cellular, gene and molecular level leading to Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s of other neurodegenerative diseases. Finding basic, common mechanisms of disease is at the heart of learning how to treat or prevent them.

By Richard Asinof
Providence Business News

VA, Brown dedicate neurorestoration center

Officials and some famous patients gathered Friday morning, Oct. 26, 2012, to dedicate the new $4.5-million Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology at the Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center. The CfNN’s scientific leadership is jointly appointed by the VA and Brown.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center today announced a new research center, entirely led by scientists jointly affiliated with Brown University, that will develop and test technologies and therapies to help veterans with brain disorders, psychiatric conditions, and limb loss.

The VA funded the new Center of Excellence for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology, with $4.5 million over five years. The CfNN involves more than 30 researchers overall, including some based at Butler Hospital and affiliated with Rhode Island Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

“The VA Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology brings together an exceptional group of scientists, clinicians, and engineers who carry out advanced research that’s leading to the latest cutting-edge technology and the newest therapies,” said John Donoghue, professor of neuroscience and engineering Brown and a research scientist at the VA, who directs the CfNN and the Brown Institute for Brain Science. “The research aims to restore the ability of our veterans to pursue fulfilling and independent lives.”

The CfNN is organized around two cores to support clinical trials and brain imaging, including Brown’s magnetic resonance imaging lab. It focuses on four areas of research: The BrainGate brain-computer interface to help people with severe paralysis; advancing prosthetics for upper-limb amputees; robotic- and computer-assisted rehabilitation for patients with strokes, multiple sclerosis, and other disorders; and neuromodulation technologies, such as electrical and magnetic brain stimulation to treat chronic pain, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other psychiatric disorders.

In a statement, Brown President Christina Paxson praised that mission.

“Advancing science to restore health and quality of life for people with neurological disorders and limb loss is a tremendously inspiring research mission,” Paxson said. “Brown University is proud join with our longtime partners at the Providence VA Medical Center in dedicating this new center. This public investment in a meaningful collaboration between government, academic, and hospital-based researchers has the potential to yield many beneficial innovations for veterans and others.”

In his remarks Donoghue noted that all four research projects are already engaged in clinical trials where innovations are being tested and translated with real patients.

Credit: David Orenstein/Brown University

A Historic Meeting

But for all the speeches on the program, which also included remarks by Gov. Lincoln Chafee, Dr. Joel Kupersmith, chief research officer for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and Dr. Glenn Tung, associate dean of the Alpert Medical School, the loudest applause came at the very end when the two participants in the BrainGate research reported in the Nature paper in May were able to meet for the first time. Patients Bob (known in the paper as “T2”) came in from Connecticut and Cathy (known as “S3”) from Massachusetts.

Providence VA Chaplain Daniel Cottrell foreshadowed the meaning of the moment in his invocation: “May the mysteries unlocked not only be the success of science but the triumph of the human spirit.”

By David Orenstein

How silver turns people blue

Ingesting silver — in antimicrobial health tonics or for extensive medical treatments involving silver — can cause argyria, condition in which the skin turns grayish-blue. Brown researchers have discovered how that happens.  The process is similar to developing black-and-white photographs, and it's not just the silver.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers from Brown University have shown for the first time how ingesting too much silver can cause argyria, a rare condition in which patients’ skin turns a striking shade of grayish blue.

“It’s the first conceptual model giving the whole picture of how one develops this condition,” said Robert Hurt, professor of engineering at Brown and part of the research team. “What’s interesting here is that the particles someone ingests aren’t the particles that ultimately cause the disorder.”

Scientists have known for years argyria had something to do with silver. The condition has been documented in people who (ill advisedly) drink antimicrobial health tonics containing silver nanoparticles and in people who have had extensive medical treatments involving silver. Tissue samples from patients showed silver particles actually lodged deep in the skin, but it wasn’t clear how they got there.

As it turns out, argyria is caused by a complex series of chemical reactions, Hurt said. His paper on the subject, authored with Brown colleagues Jingyu Liu, Zhongying Wang, Frances Liu, and Agnes Kane, is published in the journal ACS Nano.

Robert Hurt

"The particles someone ingests 

aren't the particals that ultimately 

cause the disorders"

Hurt and his team show that nanosilver is broken down in the stomach, absorbed into the bloodstream as a salt and finally deposited in the skin, where exposure to light turns the salt back into elemental silver and creates the telltale bluish hue. That final stage, oddly, involves the same photochemical reaction used to develop black-and-white photographs.

From silver to salt and back again

Hurt and his team have been studying the environmental impact of silver, specifically silver nanoparticles, for years. They’ve found that nanosilver tends to corrode in acidic environments, giving off charged ions — silver salts — that can be toxic in large amounts. Hurt’s graduate student, Jingyu Liu (now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology), thought those same toxic ions might also be produced when silver enters the body, and could play a role in argyria.

To find out, the researchers mixed a series chemical treatments that could simulate what might happen to silver inside the body. One treatment simulated the acidic environment in the gastrointestinal tract; one mimicked the protein content of the bloodstream; and a collagen gel replicated the base membranes of the skin.

They found that nanosilver corrodes in stomach acid in much the same way it does in other acidic environments. Corrosion strips silver atoms of electrons, forming positively charged silver salt ions. Those ions can easily be taken into the bloodstream through channels that absorb other types of salt. That’s a crucial step, Hurt said. Silver metal particles themselves aren’t terribly likely to make it from the GI tract to the blood, but when they’re transformed into a salt, they’re ushered right through.

From there, Hurt and his team showed that silver ions bind easily with sulfur present in blood proteins, which would give them a free ride through the bloodstream. Some of those ions would eventually end up in the skin, where they’d be exposed to light.

To re-create this end stage, the researchers shined ultraviolet light on collagen gel containing silver ions. The light caused electrons from the surrounding materials to jump onto the unstable ions, returning them to their original state — elemental silver. This final reaction is ultimately what turns patients’ skin blue. The photoreaction is similar to the way silver is used in black and white photography. When exposed to light, silver salts on a photographic film reduce to elemental silver and darken, creating an image.

Implications for nanosilver

Despite its potential toxicity, silver has been valued for centuries for its ability to kill germs, which is why silver nanoparticles are used today in everything from food packaging to bandages. There are concerns however that this nanoparticle form of silver might pose a unique health threat all its own.

This research, however, “would be one piece of evidence that you could treat nanoparticles in the same way as other forms of silver,” Hurt says.

That’s because the bioavailable form of silver — the form that is absorbed into the bloodstream — is the silver salt that’s made in the stomach. Any elemental silver that’s ingested is just the raw material to make that bioavailable salt. So ingesting silver in any form, be it nano or not, would have basically the same effect, Hurt said.

“The concern in this case is the total dose of silver, not what form it’s in,” Hurt said. “This study implies that silver nanoparticles will be less toxic than an equivalent amount of silver salt, at least in this exposure scenario.”

The National Science Foundation and the Superfund Research Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences funded the research.

$2.4 Million awarded to extend delayed cord-clamping study for full-term babies. Study involves URI, Women & Infants, and Brown's Advanced Baby Imaging Laboratory

KINGSTON, R.I. – October 4, 2012 – University of Rhode Island Professor of Nursing Judith S. Mercer, already knows from her earlier work that delaying the clamping of pre-term babies’ umbilical cords results in better overall health for the babies.

Now, the National Institutes of Health wants her to find out if doing the same for full-term babies will result in health benefits as well. The national health agency has awarded Mercer a five-year, $2.4 million grant to continue her work. The research project, known as the Infant Brain Study, also recently received a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mercer and her research team will study 128 infants from birth to 24 months to measure the effect of placental transfusion on the structure and functioning of the developing brain.

Debra Erickson-Owens, a co-principal investigator, and certified nurse midwife, said about one-third of the blood is left in the placenta if the cord is clamped immediately.

“The difference between delayed cord clamping and immediate clamping is 60 to 80 milliters of blood or 12 blood tubes (the tubes one sees when blood is drawn in a lab).” Erickson-Owens said. “That means with immediate clamping the babies receive less blood meant to be used in the earliest stages of development.”

The NIH grant comes just three-and-half years after the agency awarded Mercer a $2 million, five-year grant to expand her investigation into the benefits of delaying umbilical cord clamping for pre-term infants. She and her research team are now compiling data and findings from that research.

A pilot study showed strong evidence that delaying cord clamping allows the pre-term infant to absorb essential nutrients that help ward off infection and bleeding in the brain. In the pilot and

expanded nationally funded study, babies born pre-term had their cord clamping delayed 30 to 45 seconds.

In the new study, Mercer and her team want to find out whether delaying umbilical cord clamping for full-term infants by five minutes allows the placenta to transfer iron-rich blood cells to the newborn, reducing iron deficiency and anemia in the baby’s first year. She also wants to determine if delayed clamping enhances myelination in the brain, which is a process that requires iron to form a myelin sheath around a nerve allowing impulses to move more quickly. It leads to more complex brain processes and is critical to a healthy nervous system.

As with past studies, Mercer is working closely with Women & Infants Hospital, and she and Erickson-Owens are teaming up with Sean C.L. Deoni, director of the Advanced Baby Imaging Laboratory at Brown University.

Mercer, also a certified nurse midwife, said the delay time has been increased from the 30 to 45 second range for pre-term babies to five minutes for full-term babies for two main reasons: full-term babies do not usually need immediate and sometimes lifesaving interventions, and it allows a full placental transfusion when a baby is held skin-to-skin on its mother.

“We have been hoping for years to expand our research to full-term, healthy babies, but we needed a strong evaluation tool,” Mercer said.

That tool is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to chart each baby’s brain development, which will be provided by Deoni at Brown’s Advanced Baby Imaging Laboratory.

“Dr. Deoni is the first in the world to examine newborn brain development using MRI,” Mercer said. “If delayed cord clamping is shown to benefit all infants, then this new model of obstetrical care will go global.”

Current obstetrical practice at birth in the United States calls for cutting the infant’s umbilical cord immediately.

When immediate clamping occurs, 20 to 40 percent of the fetal-placental blood volume is left behind, according to the researchers. The blood contains enough iron-rich red cells to meet the infant’s iron needs for the first four to six months of life. Delaying clamping has been shown to increase the amount of iron in the blood without leading to any adverse effects for the infant.

Blood infused with iron is essential to long-term neurologic health, while iron deficiency in infancy adversely affects cognitive, motor, socio-emotional and behavioral development.

Babies participating in the study will be examined at birth, four months, 10 months and two years to assess their brains’ development.

“Delaying just a few minutes doesn’t cost anything,” Erickson-Owens said. “And while the baby is on the mother’s abdomen, skin-to-skin, the placenta can continue to support the baby while he or she gets used to the new environment.”

Participants must be 18 years of age or older, at least 30 weeks pregnant, have a healthy pregnancy, plan to breastfeed, and plan to deliver at Women & Infants Hospital.  For more information, visit http://www.womenandinfants.org/infantbrainstudy/

Professor John Donoghue named to The Institute of Medicine

The Institute of Medicine, one of the National Academies of Science, announced today that John Donoghue, the Henry Merritt Wriston Professor of Neuroscience and Engineering, has been elected as a member. 

“I am honored to receive this high recognition and to become part of an organization so dedicated to advancing progress in science, medicine and health care,” said Donoghue, who joins four other Brown colleagues as active members of the IOM. 

Donoghue directs the Brown Institute for Brain Science. He also pioneered and co-leads research on BrainGate, an investigational brain-computer interface now in clinical trials that is designed to help people with severe paralysis regain the ability to communicate and control their environment. In all, the IOM named 70 new members and 10 foreign associates this year. “Through their research, teaching, clinical work, and other contributions, these distinguished individuals have inspired and served as role models to others,” said IOM President Harvey V.Fineberg.

Five Questions With: Parker Wells, founder of Overhead.fm

Wells, who graduated from Brown in May with a degree in mechanical engineering, talked to Providence Business News about his triumph at the R.I. Business Plan Competition and his experience launching a technology startup.

PBN: Can you tell us a little bit about Overhead.fm and how it works?

WELLS: Overhead.fm is a streaming background music service. We have created an online music service like Pandora or Spotify, but our music is licensed to be played in public spaces like coffee shops, restaurants, doctors offices. This means that any storeowner can subscribe to our service and play music over any computer, tablet or smartphone. We have organized music into business-friendly commercial-free playlists, so you can quickly gain access to the right sound for your store without having to worry about the complicated world of music licensing.

PBN: Since winning the student track of the R.I. Biz Plan Competition, you moved on to StartEngine, an Los Angeles-based startup accelerator, how has that been going for you?

WELLS: Getting our start with the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition was an unbelievable boost for Overhead.fm. It gave us the ability to focus on building a company full-time and gave our business model the initial validation it needed to get into a selective accelerator program like StartEngine. The program itself has been invaluable in making connections in the music industry and meeting California tech investors. Thanks to a lot of support from the RIBPC and StartEngine we have built our music service, signed licensing agreements for musical performance rights, and have started acquiring customers. Moving from concept to sales in three months has already been an amazing experience and we are picking up momentum.

PBN: Do you plan to come back to Providence or are you staying on the west coast?

WELLS: We are definitely excited about moving back to Providence. The startup culture in Rhode Island is currently going through a renaissance. One of the country’s best and most established accelerators, Betaspring, continues to attract some of the best startups from around the country to our little state. Brown University, our alma mater, is also transforming its entrepreneurship program. The new Business, Entrepreneurship, and Organizations concentration is focused on new ventures, giving technology startups even more support than we have already had. We have made some great connections on the west coast and will continue participate fully in their startup-focused culture during our early funding stages. Providence provides the community that young founders truly benefit from.

PBN: What has been your favorite part of your tech startup experience?

WELLS: This is a tricky question. The best part of being a young entrepreneur is being able to meet and learn from remarkable people. While building this company I been given the opportunity to meet many founders and executives from the most influential tech, music, and entertainment companies. I have also been able to work alongside inspiring entrepreneurs and watch them navigate the many hurdles we all face. There are so many great entrepreneurs and executives out there who are also just really nice people and are willing to sit down and share their experiences.

PBN: What advice do you have for other college students or young people looking to form their own technology startup?

WELLS: I recommend going for it. This is a great time to start a technology startup. As far as advice goes, I would say that the most important thing is the team you work with. If your team is dedicated, skilled, and works well together, you can overcome a lot of challenges.

By Emily Greenhalgh

Providence Business News

Grant for Chemical Innovation Center

Researchers at Brown have been awarded $1.75 million to explore the potential of using carbon dioxide instead of fossil fuels in the production of common industrial chemicals. Advances could reduce the chemical industry’s carbon footprint and help stabilize production costs in the face of ever increasing fuel prices. 

“The goal is to find new ways to produce some of the world’s largest-volume chemicals from a sustainable carbon source that the earth not only has in excess but urgently needs to reduce,” said Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering and principal investigator on the grant.

The funding comes from the National Science Foundation’s Centers for Chemical Innovation Program. The research team includes Wesley Bernskoetter, Christoph Rose-Petruck, Dwight Sweigart, and Shouheng Sun from the Department of Chemistry, as well as Robert Hurt and Andrew Peterson from the School of Engineering and Nilay Hazari from the Department of Chemistry at Yale. The team is administered by Brown’s Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation (IMNI).

Brown School of Engineering Hosts NEW.Mech Workshop

The Brown University School of Engineering is hosting the 2012 New England Workshop on the Mechanics of Materials and Structures on November 3, 2012, at the Granoff Center.

The one-day workshop aims to bring together the New England Mechanics community with an interest in exploring new directions on the mechanics of materials and structures and sharing the latest advancements in the field. The workshop is free of charge, and is focused primarily around students (graduate and undergraduate) and postdocs. The previous two years have seen tremendous enthusiasm and excitement from the scientific community and Brown is excited to be this year’s host.

The workshop will consist of four plenary invited talks and a number of contributed short talks. There will also be a poster competition, and the workshop will include a new component, the “Gallery of Mechanics”. This event will include movies that display research in the New England mechanics community. There will be awards for the top three entries.

The workshop is being organized locally by Christian Franck and Shreyas Mandre, assistant professors of engineering at Brown.

For more information, please go to: http://www.brown.edu/conferences/new-england-mechanics-materials-structures/

Professor Nitin Padture Named Editor of Scripta Materialia

Brown University School of Engineering Professor Nitin Padture has been named editor of Scripta Materialia, one of the leading journals in the field of materials science and engineering. In this role, Padture will serve a four-year term and will handle approximately 300 manuscripts per year.

“It is a great opportunity to contribute toward the shaping of a fast moving field, and I am humbled by the honor,” said Padture.

Padture, Professor of Engineering and Director of the Center for Advanced Materials Research (CAMR) at Brown, joined the Brown faculty in January of 2012. Previously he was College of Engineering Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University, and also the founding director of the NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at OSU.

Padture received B.Tech. in metallurgical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (1985), M.S. in ceramic engineering from Alfred University (1987), and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Lehigh University (1991).

He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for three years, before joining the University of Connecticut faculty in January 1995 as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 1998 and was promoted to professor in 2003. He served as interim department head at UConn before moving to Ohio State in January 2005.

Padture’s teaching and research interests are in the broad areas of synthesis/processing and properties of advanced materials used in applications ranging from jet engines to computer chips, impacting transportation, energy, and information technology sectors. Specifically, he has active research in tailoring of structural ceramic composites and coatings, and functional nanomaterials including graphene and perovskites.

Padture has published over 125 journal papers, which have been cited over 5,000 times. Padture is a co-inventor of four patents, and he has delivered some 150 invited/keynote/plenary talks in the U.S. and abroad. A fellow of the American Ceramic Society, he has received that society’s Roland B. Snow, Robert L. Coble, and Richard M. Fulrath awards. Padture is also a recipient of the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Previously, Padture served as a principal editor of Journal of Materials Research and an associate editor of Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

Brown to lead multi-university quantum metamaterials research

Through a new Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) awarded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Brown will lead an effort to study new optical materials and their interactions with light at the quantum scale. The initiative, which includes six other top universities, will receive $4.5 million over three years, with a possible two-year extension.

Harnessing the power of light at the quantum scale could clear the way for superfast optical microprocessors, high-capacity optical memory, securely encrypted communication, and untold other technologies. But before any of these potential applications sees the light of day, substantial obstacles must be overcome — not the least of which is the fact that the wavelength of light is larger than quantum-scale objects, limiting the range of possible light-matter interactions.

Rashid Zia
"This program will bring together ten groups and 40-plus
researchers... to help answer questions that we couldn't
have imagined a short time ago. We are very optimistic
about where this will lead."

Rashid Zia, the Manning Assistant Professor of Engineering, will lead the team in addressing these challenges. He spoke recently with science writer Kevin Stacey.

What are you hoping to accomplish with this MURI?
We’re trying to help define an emerging field. The title of the MURI is “Quantum Metaphotonics and Quantum Metamaterials.” Ultimately what we’re trying to do is expand the range of materials and light-matter interactions available for quantum optics.

The field of metamaterials has already expanded the range of optical materials and phenomena available at larger, classical scales. People are doing things with metamaterials that we couldn’t have imagined before. For example, researchers are making metamaterials with negative refractive indices, which can literally bend light backward around objects. Others have used metamaterials to make lenses that can image things smaller than the diffraction limit of traditional lenses. What we’re doing now is asking what happens when we bring these metamaterials down to the scale of quantum emitters — the level of things that can emit a single photon at a time.

Can you talk a bit about the challenges involved in doing this?
When you talk about the way light interacts with matter at the quantum level, the types of interactions and the strength of those interactions are limited by a size mismatch. The optical wavelength is something like 100 times larger than a quantum emitter. For example, a quantum dot — a small bit of semiconductor we can use as a light emitter — is 5 to 10 nanometers. The wavelength of light is on the order of 500 to 1,000 nanometers. The problem is that the quantum dot doesn’t know there’s a wave. It can’t see the spatial variation of the light wave, just its local variation in time. So we need to shrink the wavelength of light to increase our interactions. Or we might increase the wavelength to collectively interact with many quantum emitters. And hopefully we can learn something fundamental about the nature of light that opens up new ways of manipulating these interactions. Those are the types of things we’ll be addressing.

In quantum optics we’re limited in part by the kinds of materials we can use. One of the common materials for quantum optics today is the nitrogen vacancy defect in diamond, so-called diamond NV centers. As you can imagine, diamond is not the cheapest or most scalable technology. The challenge posed for us is how to use the semiconductor materials we use for electronics and extend their optical properties with metamaterial designs, so we can perform quantum optics at wavelengths and with materials commonly used in telecommunications today.

How does the research you’re doing in your lab at Brown fit in?
It’s usually assumed that all light-matter interactions at visible frequencies result from the push-pull forces exerted by electric fields. These are called electric dipole transitions. One of the things we do in my lab is study things that aren’t electric dipoles — for example, magnetic dipoles. Because of the size mismatch we just discussed, it’s often assumed that magnetic dipole transitions are around 100,000 times less likely to happen than electric dipole transitions. In other words, it’s assumed that light emission from magnetic dipoles simply doesn’t happen. But the fact is we see magnetic dipole emission every day from the lanthanide ions that are commonly found in fluorescent lights. What we’ve been able to do is quantify the magnetic nature of light.

We just published a paper on this in Nature Communications. Basically, we demonstrated a way to tell how light was emitted, and rather than simply counting the number of photons a system generates, we can tell you which fraction of them came from electric dipoles and which fraction came from magnetic dipoles. This helps us understand fundamental properties about quantum emitters, the source of this light. It might also help us access higher-order light-matter interactions, enabling new ways to modulate light or to trap energy in optical excitations and get it out when you want, which could be useful for things like optical memory.

Who else is involved in this work?
The team includes people who are world-class experts in different areas. Nader Engheta at Penn, Nicholas Fang at MIT, and Xiang Zhang at UC–Berkeley are experts in metamaterials. Harry Atwater at CalTech and Mark Brongersma at Stanford are experts in plasmonics, which is the science of using metal structures to enhance light-matter interactions. Shanhui Fan and Jelena Vuckovic at Stanford are experts in quantum optics. Seth Bank at UT–Austin and Arto Nurmikko and me here at Brown, work on quantum emitters.

It’s really an exciting project. Over the next five years, this program will bring together 10 groups and 40-plus researchers with complementary expertise to help answer questions that we couldn’t have imagined a short time ago. We are very optimistic about where this will lead.

Brown School of Engineering to Host Open House for Prospective Students

The Brown University School of Engineering will hold an open house on Saturday, September 29, from 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. in room 166 of the Barus and Holley building (184 Hope Street / Corner of Hope and George Streets). The faculty of the School of Engineering and the Office of College Admission invite prospective applicants, parents, teachers, and guidance counselors to attend this open house.

The program will include an overview of the undergraduate programs of study, information about faculty and student research interests, opportunity to meet faculty and undergraduates from the School of Engineering, and a brief overview of admissions and financial aid.

Students are asked to please RSVP online by Monday, September 24. Students may call (401) 863-7930 for further information.

The Brown undergraduate engineering program enrolls 400 students, and is the oldest in the Ivy League and the third oldest civilian program in the nation.  Students may earn a bachelor of science degree in one of six ABET accredited programs: biomedical engineering, chemical and biochemical engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, materials engineering, or mechanical engineering.

For any students arriving on campus early, the admission office offers regularly scheduled information sessions at 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. and campus tours at 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and noon. Tours leave from the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center located at 75 Waterman Street.

Meet the New Faculty: Jacob Rosenstein

Biological sensors that detect currents at the nanoscale would have important clinical applications, but how to separate signal from noise when the current lasts for 10 microseconds? Jacob Rosenstein has theories and devices that enable measurement at small timescales.

Jacob Rosenstein enjoyed his undergraduate years at Brown and certainly made the most of them. He graduated magna cum laude and co-founded a company with Anubhav Tripathi, associate professor of engineering. Still, when Rosenstein graduated in 2005, continuing in academia was far from his mind.

Jacob Rosenstein
Assistant Professor of Engineering
Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University

But seven years later, following a stint in the semiconductor industry and now all but finished with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, he’s set to return to Brown for a job as an assistant professor of engineering. Much as he did while a Brown student, he plans to continue innovating at the nexus of electronics and biology.

“Integrated circuits are all around us, but historically most of the industry focus has been toward computing and communications,” says Rosenstein. “I’m excited to see what we can do to leverage all of that advanced technology for biological and chemical sensors.”

Rosenstein was a busy senior at Brown. At the same time he was developing a new microphone array platform with Harvey Silverman, professor of engineering, he was also working with Tripathi to develop instruments for microfluidic chips, which are integrated circuits that control the flow of fluids rather than electrical current. They founded Gauge Microfluidics in Providence to commercialize the work.

With a resumé of academic brilliance and entrepreneurship, it didn’t take long for Rosenstein to find an industry job. Shortly after graduation, he moved to Boston to join Analog Devices, a major player in the semiconductor business. He worked in the company’s wireless division, helping to develop and test application-specific integrated circuits and working on prototype cell phone designs.

Rosenstein worked at Analog for more than two years before his whole business unit was sold to the Taiwanese company MediaTek. He was still happy there, but he had begun to do some professional soul searching. The desire to gain more experience in chip design led him back to the notion of graduate school. He enrolled at Columbia in 2008.

In the Bioelectronic Systems Lab of Kenneth Shepard at Columbia, Rosenstein returned to the practice of bringing silicon technology to bear on biophysical systems. At Columbia, his main project has been the design of an integrated circuit amplifier to improve measurements of weak ionic currents. Cell membranes contain a variety of proteins which regulate the movement of dissolved ions in and out of the cell, and the movement of these ions can be measured as an electrical current. However, in many cases this current is very small, making it difficult to measure the signal above the noise. Rosenstein’s amplifier reduces the noise level at high frequencies, considerably improving the quality of fast ion channel recordings.

“As you get down to the range of 10 microseconds or less it gets very difficult to measure that weak current,” he said. “Where I’ve come in is to make new electronics and experimental setups to reduce the noise level and therefore enable measurements at timescales that people have not been able to measure.”

Researchers have been also able to make biosensors inspired by ion channels using very tiny holes called “nanopores.” If its diameter is not much larger than a single molecule, a nanopore can yield a change in its ionic current when a molecule such as DNA passes through the pore. However, these weak signals are usually very brief, making them difficult to measure. In a paper earlier this year in Nature Methods, Rosenstein demonstrated that signals as fast as 1 microsecond can be recorded from individual DNA molecules when a nanopore is integrated with his custom amplifier.

Now back at Brown, Rosenstein is looking forward to exploring other opportunities in bioelectronics. He said the University’s success in harnessing signals directly from neurons in the brain with the BrainGate sensor is a particularly inspiring example.

“There are a lot of other interesting diagnostics, sensors, and hybrid systems that are mostly unexplored,” he said. “I’m very excited to test the waters and get to know the pure sciences and life sciences groups at Brown, and hopefully I can be a hub of instrumentation, sensing, and high-performance electronics.”

Rosenstein returns with an established track record of exactly that.

- David Orenstein/Brown University

Meet the New Faculty: Haneesh Kesari

Understanding a small sea sponge and its ability to anchor itself to the ocean floor, Haneesh Kesari hopes, will point the way to stronger, lighter, better man-made materials.

As an engineer, Haneesh Kesari takes his inspiration from nature.

The new assistant professor of engineering marvels at how nature takes a few proteins and a bit of calcium or silica and creates structures with amazing material properties — emergent properties that might seem impossible given limited raw ingredients.

Haneesh Kesari
Assistant Professor of Engineering
Credit: Frank Mullin/Brown University

“Nature is doing it,” he says, “hence it is possible. How to do it is what my research will be focused on.”

Kesari is currently studying Euplectella, a genus of sea sponges. Sea creatures might seem strange territory for a materials scientist, but Euplectella have peculiarities that make them something of an engineering marvel. Whereas most animal species form their skeletons with calcium, Euplectella are made mostly of silica—glass. But don’t think of these creatures as the fragile Ming vases of the sea. On the contrary, their skeletons are strikingly robust.

Kesari is interested specifically in the root-like appendages that fix the animals to the ocean floor. The glassy structures, called basalia spicules, have properties similar to man-made fiber optic cable, only the sponge-made versions are substantially stronger and more flexible. Imaging these appendages at the nanoscale reveals an intricate construction. Each spicule is made of concentric layers, some made of glass, others made of a polymer. It’s the pattern in which these layers are arranged that caught Kesari’s attention.

“You see it and think, ‘Is this really an animal skeleton or is it a figure from a math book?’” he said. “It had an algorithmic beauty to it. We didn’t know what the algorithm was, but felt that there had to be one, because it had such regularity to it.”

Kesari thought this pattern might contribute to the spicules’ renowned strength, so he set to work calculating what pattern of layers would be the strongest given the materials in the spicule. “We calculated it and it so happens the resulting algorithm matches very well with what we see in the spicule,” he said.

Amazing what nature can accomplish given enough time.

Understanding these sorts of mathematical regularities in nature could lead to the man-made materials of the future. It’s a slow and difficult process, Kesari says, but Brown is the perfect place for that sort of research. There’s a culture in the School of Engineering that “encourages the pursuit of rigor and thoroughness, and rewards originality and creativity,” he says. “It’s nice to see the traditional quality of science — the main reason why many of us chose to do science in the first place — is retained here.”

Not to mention, he adds, that Brown is known for employing many of the “rock stars” in the field of solid mechanics over the years.

Aside from his work on Euplectella, Kesari has worked extensively on understanding adhesive properties and surface roughness, including a theoretical basis for why things like sticky notes and packing tape stick better when you push them down harder. He also studies failure patterns in polymer-based materials.

Kesari earned his Ph.D. from Stanford in 2011. He grew up in southern India, where his fascination with engineering started.

“My father worked in irrigation,” he said. “One of the early experiences I had was going to these small irrigation canals to play. The entire community revolved around water for crops and everything else, and I could see how just having a simple stone structure changed people’s lives so dramatically.”

He came to view engineering as humanity’s way of putting our collective foot down, no longer helpless against the blind whims of droughts and floods.

“Engineering, it seems to me, is a very special enterprise,” he said. Through it “we control our own destiny.”

- Kevin Stacey/Brown University

Meet the Faculty: Jennifer Franck

Passenger jet or flapping bat, Jennifer Frank writes code that simulates the flow of air around things with wings. The computational approach has advantages and efficiencies, especially for someone to whom coding comes naturally.

Jennifer Franck’s first foray into computing was on the venerable, if rudimentary, Commodore 64. As a child, she tapped out simple looping programs that sent a series of numbers to her printer. Since those early days, Franck’s programs have gotten considerably more complex.

Jennifer Franck
Lecturer in Engineering
Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University

The new lecturer in engineering is an expert in computational fluid dynamics. She writes programs that simulate how fluids and gases flow around objects. Specifically, she codes what are called large-eddy simulations, a class of code designed to study turbulence. She mostly uses her model to investigate the dynamics of flight — how wind interacts with wings.

After earning her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Caltech in 2009, she came to Brown as a postdoc to work with Kenneth Breuer in engineering and Sharon Swartz in ecology and evolutionary biology, who are widely known for their research on the mechanics of bat flight. “What I was interested in was to see if I could explain some of the characteristics of animal flight using my models on the computer,” Franck said.

One of the questions Franck looked at is why bats flap their wings, as opposed to using them for soaring flight. “There’s a theory that bats evolved from passive gliders to actively flapping their wings,” she said. “The question was, what’s the benefit of flapping.”

Franck’s models helped to show that flapping creates vortices — tiny pockets of low air pressure — above a bat’s wings. Those vortices create extra lift and may be part of the reason flapping is worth the effort.

Franck has also used her models to explore applications that might improve aircraft flight. “Say you want an airplane to have more lift,” she said. “Could you apply some sort of device on the wing that would pump some extra energy into the flow and give you better performance? I’m interested in applying code to those types of flow control questions.”

There are significant advantages to the computational approach, Franck says. It’s much easier, for example, to modify the parameters of an experiment on a computer than it is to design new physical models for wind tunnel tests. Another advantage is that computer models help to isolate the specific aspects of a problem that researchers are trying to address.

“We generally model a very simple airfoil that’s often just two dimensional because it simplifies the problem,” Franck said. “If we’re looking at the basic physics behind a problem, we don’t want to make things too complicated.”

Though the models may be simple, the code that generates them is not. Most of Franck’s programs require computer clusters that string together multiple processors. For some of her research, Franck has used a cluster at Brown’s Center for Computation and Visualization. For other projects she’s used the Department of Defense’s Army Research Lab cluster in Maryland.

It’s a long way from the Commodore 64, but Franck is right at home. “Coding has always just come naturally to me,” she says.

She and her husband Christian, professor of engineering at Brown, live in Providence with their two kids.

- Kevin Stacey/Brown University

Meet the Faculty: Indrek Külaots

Graphene — sheets of carbon that are one atom thick — could help take mercury and other nasty pollutants out of circulation if only there were a way to keep the sheets from sticking together. Indrek Külaots is working on a system of nanoscale pillars.

Indrek Külaots is using garbage to make the world a cleaner place.

Indrek Külaots
Lecturer in Engineering
Credit: Frank Mullin/Brown University

Untold tons of plant matter are discarded in the United States every day. Much of this biomass — farm waste, sawdust, wood scraps, household yard waste — is trucked off to landfills. As it rots, it produces carbon dioxide and methane, greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

“My research focuses on trying to make better use of this bio-waste material,” said Külaots, lecturer in engineering. He has found a way to turn this trash into sorbent material than can sop up industrial pollutants.

Using a simple technique called pyrolysis — the same process used to make charcoal — plant waste can be broken down into what’s called bio-char. “This char product has relatively high surface area and is also highly porous,” Külaots said. “We can use those pores as workers for pollutant capture.”

He has patented a method of using modified bio-char to absorb elemental mercury. Bio-char could one day be used as a cost-effective way to scrub mercury from power plant vapor emissions, replacing expensive activated carbon filters. Bio-char sorbents also show promise for cleaning up other pollutants like arsenic, cadmium, and lead, Külaots says.

Külaots’ interest in environmental engineering began in his native Estonia. After earning his master’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Tallinn Technical University, he worked on a project to recycle fly ash, a byproduct produced by the burning of oil shale. His work on that subject caught the eye of Eric Suuberg, an engineering professor at Brown. Suuberg thought Külaots’ work could be applied to fly ash created by the burning of coal, which is a major concern in the United States

“He saw my work and said, ‘Why don’t you apply?’” Külaots said. “So I came to Brown as a Ph.D. student and I never left.”

After earning a master’s degree in applied mathematics in 2000 and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 2001, Külaots stayed at Brown as a senior research engineer. In 2009, he was awarded a joint position as lecturer and research engineer. This year he joins the faculty as a lecturer.

In addition to teaching classes in chemical, mechanical, and environmental engineering, he’s expanding his research program to include a hot topic in the material sciences world: graphene.

Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, with vast surface area. It began getting notoriety a few years ago and quickly gained a reputation as a miracle material. Its electrical properties make it a likely successor of silicon in microprocessors. It also holds promise as a way to store gases like hydrogen for use in fuel cells, and it can catalyze chemical reactions.

But for all its miraculousness, graphene has a problem. The sheets have a tendency to get stuck together in stacks when processed, which decreases this vast surface area on each sheet. Think of two sheets of paper stapled at all four corners. It’s not possible to write on the back of the first page or the front of the second because those surfaces are stuck together.

“My research is how to interrupt this stacking,” Külaots said. “How can we get something in the middle so we can actually use the inner layer space as well?”

He’s developing tiny carbon columns to do the job.

“It’s just a pillar, like in ancient Rome,” he said. “But when you’re working at the nanoscale it’s not that easy.” Despite the difficulty, Külaots has had success using his pillars to recover some of this lost space, and recently presented his work at one of the world’s top conferences on carbon materials.

“These pillared graphene and graphene oxide systems have a great potential in the fields of gas storage, separation, and catalysis, if properly converted into bulk materials,” he said.

Such is the fast-paced world of engineering: Even before graphene makes it out of the lab and into production, Külaots is thinking of ways to make it better.

- Kevin Stacey/Brown University

Brown School of Engineering to Host Open House for Prospective Students

The Brown University School of Engineering will hold an open house on Saturday, September 29, from 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. in room 166 of the Barus and Holley building (184 Hope Street / Corner of Hope and George Streets). The faculty of the School of Engineering and the Office of College Admission invite prospective applicants, parents, teachers, and guidance counselors to attend this open house.

The program will include an overview of the undergraduate programs of study, information about faculty and student research interests, opportunity to meet faculty and undergraduates from the School of Engineering, and a brief overview of admissions and financial aid.

Students are asked to please RSVP online by Monday, September 24. Students may call (401) 863-7930 for further information.

The Brown undergraduate engineering program enrolls 400 students, and is the oldest in the Ivy League and the third oldest civilian program in the nation.  Students may earn a bachelor of science degree in one of six ABET accredited programs: biomedical engineering, chemical and biochemical engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, materials engineering, or mechanical engineering.

For any students arriving on campus early, the admission office offers regularly scheduled information sessions at 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. and campus tours at 9:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., and 11:00 a.m. Tours leave from the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center located at 75 Waterman Street.

Brown School of Engineering Hosts Eastman Conference

The Brown University School of Engineering is hosting the 2012 Lester Eastman Conference on High Performance Devices from August 7-9, 2012. The conference will include sessions on green technology; high speed devices; infrared photonics; terahertz technology; power conversion, switching, and transmission; and next generation devices.

The conference will have three plenary speakers: Professor Umesh Mishra (USCB) on Recent Advances in High Frequency Semiconductor Devices; Professor Hideo Ohno (Tohoku Univ., Japan) on Spintronic Devices for VLSI; and Dr. Kamiar Karimi (Boeing Corporation) on High Power Semiconductor Devices.

Larry Larson, Dean of the School of Engineering at Brown, will give a talk on the “Internet of Things”.

The conference is being organized locally by Domenico Pacifici, assistant professor of engineering at Brown. The general chair of the conference is Professor Paul Chow of RPI.

For more information, please go to: http://www.leconf.com/

Do girls need lacrosse helmets?

Joseph Crisco, professor of orthopaedics, wanted to measure the impact of hits to the head in girls’ lacrosse. He invited some players into his lab to take some shots at a test dummy. The data could inform an eventual standard for girls’ and women’s lacrosse.

A little more to the left
To analyze what happens in a girls' lacrosse game when
stick meets head, Joseph Crisco equipped a test dummy
with accelerometers and invited players to take some shots.
Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Dr. Joseph "Trey" Crisco, the Henry F. Lippitt Professor of Orthopaedics and Director of the Bioengineering Lab, recently invited female lacrosse players ranging in age from 12 to 28 into his Rhode Island Hospital lab to swing their sticks for a project titled “Head Accelerations from Various Stick Checks in Girls’ Lacrosse.”

The research, funded by US Lacrosse, the national governing body of men’s, women’s and youth lacrosse, and by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, will provide data on how the head is accelerated after being hit by a stick. Video analysis of players taking whacks at a helmeted dummy, taken at 1,000 frames per second, could inform an eventual standard for girls’ and women’s lacrosse headgear.

For years, Crisco has studied head impacts in sports such as football, hockey, and lacrosse by embedding accelerometers in the helmets of collegiate teams and gathering data from actual practices and competition.

by David Orenstein

Quantifying the magnetic nature of light emission

In collaboration with The Institute of Photonics Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, Brown School of Engineering researchers in the lab of Rashid Zia ’01, Manning Assistant Professor of Engineering, have just published an article in in Nature Communications. Visiting scholar Tim Taminiau from the lab of Niek van Hulst at ICFO worked alongside Brown engineering graduate student Sinan Karaveli to demonstrate how the natural magnetic dipole transitions in lanthanide ions can be used to access optical-frequency magnetic fields.

Authors: Tim H. Taminiau, Sinan Karaveli, Niek F. van Hulst, and Rashid Zia

Examining how light emission is distributed in energy-
and momentum-space can reveal fundamental
information about optical transitions. This image
shows an energy-momentum spectrum of europium ions.
Following bright emissions lines, you may notice
several points where the contrast inverts - these
changes are direct visualizations of the opposite
symmetries of electric and magnetic dipoles transitions.

Abstract:
Tremendous advances in the study of magnetic light-matter interactions have recently been achieved using man-made nanostructures that exhibit and exploit an optical magnetic response. However, naturally occurring emitters can also exhibit magnetic resonances in the form of optical-frequency magnetic-dipole transitions. Here we quantify the magnetic nature of light emission using energy- and momentum-resolved spectroscopy, and leverage a pair of spectrally close electric- and magnetic-dipole transitions in trivalent europium to probe vacuum fluctuations in the electric and magnetic fields at the nanometre scale. These results reveal a new tool for nano-optics: an atomic-size quantum emitter that interacts with the magnetic component of light.

To access the full article, please go to:
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n7/full/ncomms1984.html