SHyNE Resource is pleased to announce the first recipients of the SHyNE External Experiment Development (SEED) program. Scientists from across the Chicagoland area submitted excellent proposals and the committee had a difficult time narrowing down their decision. Eventually, three top proposals stood out.
The recipients will receive funding for training and equipment use at SHyNE Resource’s state-of-the-art nanotechnology facilities. They will utilize our advanced fabrication and characterization instrumentation and staff technical expertise to assist with their research.
Additional funding is still available on a rolling basis. Link to the SEED application site.
SHyNE Resource (an NSF, NNCI node) is a collaboration between Northwestern University and the University of Chicago that offers open access to state-of-the-art nanotechnology facilities, instrumentation, and research expertise. For a summary of SHyNE’s capabilities and equipment, please email Ben Myers, PhD, SHyNE Director of Operations at ben.myers@northwestern.edu.
Primary Investigator: Faruk Toy
Affiliation: BiomeSense
Industry: Biomedical Engineering
Proposal Title: Development of a Biosensor for Scalable, Longitudinal Microbiome Sampling
Facility: Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility (PNF)
Instrument: Optical and Fluorescence microscopy
Project: BiomeSense is developing a novel biosensor for low-cost, automated microbiome sampling. This grant will help us access the resources at the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility that we need to develop the microfluidic assay. Our proposed device will eliminate the adherence, reproducibility, and cost concerns with current microbiome sampling techniques, making daily patient sampling a routine part of clinical trials. This will exponentially increase the data available to researchers, dramatically accelerating the microbiome’s progression to widespread clinical use.
Primary Investigator: Mohammad Asadi
Affiliation: Illinois Institute of Technology; ECSERL
Industry: Academic
Proposal Title: Development of Advanced Catalysts for Electrocatalytic Conversion of Carbon Dioxide to Fuels
Facility: NUANCE Center – Keck-II Facility
Instrument: X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS)-Ultraviolet Photoelectron Spectroscopy (UPS)
Project: The main objective of this research is developing novel materials to effectively convert CO2 to value-added chemicals. This grant will enable us access to the materials characterization facilities at the NUANCE center in the process of development. The results of this study will lead to demonstration of a highly efficient and economically feasible electrocatalytic process for CO2 conversion to liquid hydrocarbons. The outcomes will also make the substantial improvement in the development of large-scale ambient temperature electrolyzers for CO2 reduction reaction.
Primary Investigator: H. Christopher Fry
Affiliation: Argonne National Laboratory
Industry: Biomaterials
Proposal Title: Multi-modal Cryo-TEM Characterization of Functional Biomolecular Materials
Facility: NUANCE Center – BioCryo Facility
Instrument: Cryo-TEM characterization
Project: Our current research involves the development of novel biomolecular materials employed in energetic processes such as light harvesting and catalysis. The function depends greatly on the gross morphological structure but we are limited to characterizing dry samples. This opportunity will facilitate the introduction of cryoTEM to our research program and potentially to our divisional efforts. Users have extensive TEM experience but little to no experience in cryo sample preparation. The goal of our proposed work is to learn how to prepare and characterize samples by cryoTEM. What separates our work from other peptide materials work is the engineering of transition metal and/or cofactor active sites. The project will serve as a gateway to bring some of the capabilities to our user program to expand our user base and facilitate connections with our neighbors at the APS.