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FALL 2006 BECKMAN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ISSUE 3

The BeckmanInstitute andresearchers likeMichael Insana areleading the way in thegrowing field of bioimaging.Page 5

Before being honored as oneof the top young scientists in the country,Mark Hersam gained somevital experience during his time at Beckman.Page 11

The ability to continuethe interdisciplinaryapproach he enjoyed atBell Labs was one rea-son Richard Sproat joined the BeckmanInstitute. Page 14

RR ichard Powers is one ofAmerica’s most acclaimed novel-ists and a faculty member in theBeckman Institute’s CognitiveNeuroscience group. Powers, aprofessor in the Department of English, has earnednumerous literary and academic awards and hon-ors, including Time magazine Book of the YearAward, four National Book Critic Award finalistnominations, an American Academy of Arts andSciences Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship.On November 15 his latest novel, The Echo Maker,won what many consider the highest honor forworks of fiction, the National Book Award forFiction.

Powers had been at Beckman in the 1990s,then returned to the Institute last year to continueresearching and writing The Echo Maker, a bookthat weaves family tragedy and the annual migra-tion of the Sandhill cranes to Nebraska’s PlatteRiver into a story that probes basic questions aboutthe self.

Powers read the neuroscience literature, attend-ed seminars, and talked with neuroscientists atBeckman and elsewhere in researching the book.The Echo Maker tells the story of Mark Schluter, a27-year-old Nebraska slaughterhouse workerwhose truck accident leaves him with a rare case ofCapgras syndrome. Unable to recognize his sisteror even his dog, Schluter is trapped inside a mindthat is connected to his old self in many ways butstrangely disconnected to those people and thingsthat were most familiar to him before the accident.A famous neurologist, Dr. Gerald Weber, is broughtin and a story unfolds that reveals how fragile ourconnections to the world can be and how amazingthe workings of the mind really are. The EchoMaker is Powers’ ninth novel and was composedwith a tablet PC using speech recognition software.

– Steve McGaughey, Beckman Institute Writer

SM: You’ve been at Beckman since March of2005. How did you end up here?

RP: This is my second time through. When I firstcame back to the States after living in the

Netherlands for many years and was invited byIllinois to stay as an artist-in-residence, DickWheeler and Ted Brown – who was head of theBeckman then – came up with this plan to give mean office and an affiliation here; this was in 1992.And by spending that year here, I came up with theidea for Galatea 2.2. There’s a fictionalized Centerin that book that’s sort of a thinly disguisedBeckman. So after finishing that book I gave up theoffice and went back south of Green to the EnglishDepartment and stayed there, wrote some morebooks and taught some classes and helped start thegraduate program, the Masters in Fine Arts degreethat the English Department now issues. I’d beenteaching with them for some years when I startedworking on this book with neuroscientific themes. I realized that I needed to come back and test mystory against the stories that were unfolding hereand the research that was being done. I came backa year ago last spring and have been enjoying beinga fly on the wall once again.

SM: What do your interactions with neuroscientistsat Beckman consist of and did they influence TheEcho Maker?

RP: Very much so. I was working on the book andhad done a lot of research in print and also in inter-

views prior to coming here. But once I was here Ihad several new avenues of connection and newresources available. One was access to informalconversations with scientists here, and that’s beeninvaluable. The number of times that somebody haspointed me to other bibliographies, to an error inmy preconceptions, or just to new and excitingresearch, I can’t count. Just in casual conversations.Beyond that, I’ve had several chances to sit downwith some incredibly exciting researchers likeWilliam Greenough and Neal Cohen, people whowere working in areas that were important to myown narrative. The ability to sit and be in seminarswith them and pick their brains one on one wasreally invaluable to me. Then I also started toattend the regular research seminars here, forinstance the Advances in Sensory andDevelopmental Neuroscience events. That’s wherefolks are bringing stuff fresh out of the lab and put-ting it up for public discussion, even stuff that isstill in formulation. The benefits of that were reallytwo-fold: learning about research before it actuallyhit publication, just as a sense of where things aregoing right now. But also a chance to see as anobserver – but someone sitting in the same room –the whole culture of science. The way that scien-tists interact with each other as people was veryinteresting and eye-opening and part of the storythat I ended up creating.

SM: There are numerous references to real worldneuroscience cases in the book, such as HM, theman Neal Cohen discussed in his Director’sSeminar talk Oct. 20 of 2006. How much researchdid you do before sitting down to write and whywas Capgras syndrome the choice for Mark, thecharacter the story revolves around?

RP: I did hear the Director’s Seminar and Dr.Cohen’s work is just stunning. I was knocked outby that. But I have had a couple of chances to talkto Neal privately and I also heard a similar talk thathe had given in the past. I was participating in amemory seminar that he also participated in and, ofcourse, I read him. So being at the Beckman wasan exciting way to connect the formal presentationof these insights and discoveries as you comeacross them in published form with the actual guydoing the work. To see what he’s like and what his

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fears and his hopes and his dreams are. That wasvery thrilling to me. I had read him on HM andread a lot about other people’s research with HM,but to actually hear him stand up and talk personal-ly about the narrative of his experience with thisguy, the kind of stuff that you can’t put into schol-arly publications, was really useful to me.

SM: In The Echo Maker, the neurologist Weber,when assessing his career, wonders about con-sciousness – what are its neurological correlates, dowe have free will, etc. After researching and writ-ing this book, what are your thoughts on what neu-roscience tells us about the “basic riddle of con-scious existence”?

RP: What’s really interesting about writing thisbook and publishing it in the year 2006 is I thinkwe’re right in the middle of a complete trans-formation of attitude, even toward asking thatquestion. In other words, when I started writing20 years ago or more, scientists would nottouch that question. To do so would be anembarrassment, overreaching, philosophy. Noweverybody’s asking that question. It’s tremen-dously exciting, but we’re still in our infancy inour ability to formulate an answer. So in a waythe question is still philosophy but it’s under-girded now by these new kinds of data, imag-ing data for example, ways into the lockedroom that didn’t exist before. So we’re right inbetween having the question being respectableand having the question being answerable.

SM: You write that “imaging and drugs areopening the locked-room mystery of the mind.”But there are issues with all advances, includ-ing as Weber worries about, the deterministicview that technology will eventually provide aneurological basis for consciousness. He wantsto find more explanation, higher processes,than just interdependent modules making up con-sciousness. What does his search tell us about thefield and about him?

RP: I think it tells us that the field is exploding andit also tells us that the field is incredibly optimisticin a way that it wasn’t until recently but, finally,that the field is incredibly messy and a work inprogress. Anyone who enters this investigationthinking that we will finally have a complete, sim-ple, reduced, elegant sense of who’s driving whoaround inside the human skull is going to be disap-pointed. The field continues to point to models thatare interdirectional, complicated, richer than wethought. So as always the most interesting researchshows us that we have to up the ante with the ques-tions, make the questions more sophisticated, makethe questions more open to complexity.

SM: An idea that comes out of the book is that onetheory for explaining the basic riddle of consciousexistence used to dominate in neuroscience, thenanother opposing theory took hold, but it seems tosay that currently no one theory is dominant.

RP: That would be my guess. As a lay bystander inthis, watching the field as someone in the grand-stands trying to figure out the rules of the game, Iwould say the fact that you can have hugely accom-plished and masterful scientists at war with eachother about their prevailing model leads me tobelieve that the issues are going to remain compli-cated for awhile to come and the grand unifiedsense of consciousness will incorporate all theseviews in the final model somewhere. The mentalnetwork, when we learn how to think and talk clear-ly about it, is not going to be dominated by anysimple mechanism. It’s going to be a hybridized andaggregate view that partakes of many positions thatthe field has embraced. These countervaling waysof looking at what’s going on inside the brain aregoing to have to be integrated in some way.

SM: In The Echo Maker the connections that tie usmost intimately to our worlds are called into ques-tion. Every character in the book has some brokenlink: Mark, whose closest ties in the world – his sis-ter, his dog, even his house – have no emotionalconnection for him because of Capgras syndrome;his friend Bonnie questions religion because neuro-scientists showed that stimulating a certain regionof the brain can produce religious-type effects likeout-of-body experiences; Weber has doubts abouthis past neuroscience work that make him feel dis-connected. Man as a species seems to require thosefamily and social connections, but neurosciencetells us it’s all a construct. So how would you rec-oncile the “illusion of solidity” that Weber talksabout with living a whole, integrated life?

RP: In some ways the book is about empathy. It’sabout whether it’s possible for any of us to knowwhat it would feel like to be someone else, or some-thing else. In what way does the self blind us to therealities of other people and our dependence onthem? Part of what neuroscience has been saying in

recent years is that the self is messy and aggregateand improvised and made up of all these multipleparts. The feeling of continuity and recognizabilityand consistency may be a story, it may be some-thing of a narrative. On the one hand that’s a terri-fying thing. The more that we look under the hoodand see that we aren’t what we feel that we are, themore destabilizing and de-centering it is to contin-ue to be alive. And science has always done that tous, right? It’s always taking a hard look at the storythat we’re telling about who we are and saying,let’s think about this again. So, yes, neuroscience isjust the latest blow to our narrative of self. On theother hand, there are things that are coming out ofneuroscience now that give us our first glimpse ofhow the brain itself makes empathy and how ourindividual selves are actually quite dependent onour connections to other people. How memory is a

collaborative phenomenon and how mirrorneurons inside our brain are actually simu-lating and recreating other people. When Isee someone smile it causes a kind of sym-pathetic circuit, a recapitulation of thatsmile inside me and a simulation of themind of that other person. So there are pos-sibilities coming out of the new neuro-science that suggest maybe this destabiliza-tion of the old monolithic ego-centered selfisn’t such a bad thing and may be makingus more aware of the ways in which we arecollaborations or nodes in a network andthat our selves don’t end so violently withthe limits of our skin, but that they are actu-ally produced in concert with other people.Maybe that’s quite a wonderful and liberat-ing and an encouraging position for us associal beings.

SM: Would someone like the characterBonnie be comforted by that?

RP: No, but it’s absolutely true that science can’tproceed according to whether or not the data iscomforting. It’s up to us to revise our story in away that still makes it palatable to ourselves andyet accepts the repeatable and demonstrable phe-nomenon.

SM: You write in The Echo Maker that because ofknowledge advancements in neuroscience, cogni-tion is heading toward grasping itself and wonderwhat that would mean for us as a species. If thatever did become reality, what do you think thatwould mean for people? Would that be a tippingpoint?

RP: Yeah, I think it is. I think that process is veryslow and fitful and gradual and qualified. In fact,when you describe that process, it’s the sameprocess that we’ve been undertaking since thebeginning of the scientific revolution. This slowand steady revising of our official narrative answerto who are we and what are we doing resembles ina macrocosm the constant checks to an individual’sself-narration: who are you and what are you trying

In some ways the book isabout empathy. It’s aboutwhether it’s possible for

any of us to know what itwould feel like to be some-

one else, or somethingelse. In what way does theself blind us to the realities

of other people and ourdependence on them?

Editor: Sue Johnson, johnso16@uiuc.eduWriter: Steve McGaughey, smcgaugh@uiuc.eduDesign: CarltonBruettDesignWeb: Rick Valentin, rnv123@uiuc.edu

Contact information:Office of External RelationsBeckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology405 N. Mathews, Urbana, IL 61801www.beckman.uiuc.edu

is a quarterly publication of the External Relations office of the Beckman Institute for

Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Each issue will

spotlight the people and science that make the Institute one of the premier facilities for interdisciplinary

research in the world.

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Photo Credits:Cover Image: The Echo Maker book jacket photo iscourtesy of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux; RichardPowers photo courtesy Richard Powers.Cover Bottom Left: Image courtesy BioimagingScience and Technology GroupCover Middle: Image courtesy Mark HersamCover Bottom Right: Richard Sproat image courtesythe Beckman Institute.

to do. Every day presents us with challenges to ourofficial self-narrative. We revise and we improviseand we carry on. The sense of human culture andhuman society has changed so profoundly sinceCopernicus said we’re not at the center of the uni-verse. We’ve been constantly demoted from ourhuman-centric vision. In a sense these new views ofthe mind and the self can be seen as the latest chal-lenges. But I think it’s wrong to think of science asdiminution of the story of what it means to behuman. In fact, looked at in the way most scientistslook at it and the way that the educated lay personlooks at it, the challenges that science has presentedto our official self-images, have actually beenincredibly enriching. The smallest things in us thatwe take for granted are miracles. Science has inten-sified our awe and wonder at who we are andhow we got here. I think, for instance, tobring it right into the central arena thatAmerica is fighting over right now, evolutionas a story is far more staggering and full ofamazement and much grander than creation-ism. Looked at carefully and soberly, evolu-tion hugely increases our astonishment at themere existence of humans. However much ofa shock it is to put aside old stories, the newstories can be full of greater possibility. I tendto be a guarded optimist in general and mybooks tend to try to find some way of affirm-ing the human story. There’s no question thatthis upheaval of science is extremely painfuland volatile. We’re witnessing now in the lastsix years a retrenchment on the part of societytoward funding science, toward supportingscience, toward teaching science, towardbelieving in science. Preserving scientificadvance is not going to be easy. In fact, todaywe’re in great danger of going backward. It’s goingto take a lot of people, scientists and humanistsalike, to say we don’t want to go backwards, wedon’t want darkness, we want more light on things.We want to convey the astonishment and awe andnew sources of meaning that these new discoveriesare creating. When the right attacks science assomehow a threat to family values or the sanctity oflife, it’s out of ignorance. When the left attacks sci-ence as some corporate-driven hegemonic threat toequality, it’s doing so out of ignorance. Scientistsneed to realize that part of the job of science isbringing that data back into a palpable new visionof social humanity. Our future is also going todepend on the humanists, who right now are oftensuspicious and terrified of science, to embrace andto understand and to narrate and to celebrate, andalso to interrogate and to question and understand inevery possible way, the things that are coming outof the lab. I can see us living in a very fitful rela-tionship to science and technology indefinitely. ButI can also see us gradually coming to terms withand accepting and moving forward these reallymagnificent new stories of who we are and what wemight still do.

SM: You started out at the University of Illinois as

a physics major and science infuses most if not all ofyour writing, so obviously it’s an important topic toyou. Sometimes people feel threatened by science orbelieve that they can’t understand it, but you share itwith them through your novels. Could you make acase for why science is important and should beembraced by all of us?

RP: The case can be made in so many ways. Everyaspect of our existence right now, the terms on whichwe lead our daily lives, result from the changes in theworld brought about by science and technology. Ourwhole contract with time and space is different nowand continues to change every year because of scien-tific and technological developments. So like it or not,who we are reflects and incorporates what we’ve

done in the scientific disciplines. Even the most terri-fied anti-scientific Luddite in this country is assumingcertain things about health and happiness and welfarethat have been allowed by these scientific develop-ments. So if the humanist mission is to say who weare and how we got here and where we think we’regoing, you can’t ask those questions without reallyconfronting the single largest consolidated enterprisethat we have going on right now, which is collectivescience. Part of the problem is that in American uni-versities, there is a huge fight for resources. Oftenthere is the perception in the humanities that all themoney is being sucked out of the old-style humanistic

disciplines. That’s going to cause rivalry and turfwars. But I think there are larger issues at stake. If wereally want to be true to our disciplines, we have tosee how everything connects to everything else.That’s where fiction comes in. Science, and to a largeextent the humanities, have succeeded by incorporat-ing this model of reductionism where we can under-stand the whole in terms of the parts. Everybody hastheir specialization and moves ahead controlling thevariables, and simplifying and talking about individ-ual things in isolation. The arts are one of the fewplaces where you can still think holistically and ask:how does everything connect to everything else, andwhat happens when complicated people, each ofwhom is living these separate existences, have to gettogether in the same room and talk to each other.

That’s what I would like to do inside novels.Literature is a way of voicing different world-views and making them bump up against eachother, seeing what kinds of new perspectivesarise when we’re not allowed to dictate theworld entirely through our unique views. It’s aplace for showing multiplicity and diversity ofviewpoints and connectivity. Inside a rich storythe smallest ripple in one person’s world isgoing to have consequences in another – whichis also true in life, but often we’re not allowed totalk about that inside our specialties.

SM: The characters of Mark and Weber are cap-tured very well even though they come fromvery different social strata and, except for Weberin some ways, different backgrounds than yourown. How do their social differences fit into thethemes of the book?

RP: The book shows how each of us is thiscomplex multiple performance. We act as differentpeople with different people. We’re constantly impro-vising new selves in the presence of others. But that’sonly appropriate, given the things that neuroscience istelling us. If the self is this kind of core-making story-teller for these hundreds of distributed systems insidethe brain, is it any surprise that each of us socially isalso this kind of core-making storyteller for all thedifferent ways we have to be in the world?

The Echo Maker is published by Farrar, Straus andGiroux and is available at their Web site(http://www.fsgbooks.com/) as well as bookstores.

It’s going to take a lot ofpeople, scientists and

humanists alike, to say we don’t want to go back-

wards, we don’t want darkness, we want more

light on things. We want toconvey the astonishmentand awe and new sourcesof meaning that these new

discoveries are creating.

hen the call went out last year forseed proposals aimed at developing a possi-ble new research initiative at the BeckmanInstitute, three of the 11 proposals selectedfor funding involved biological imaging.

A long list of Beckman faculty membersand colleagues from outside the Instituteproposed projects that involve using bioimag-ing for advancing medical research in theareas of breast cancer, speech birth defects,and targeted delivery of drugs and otheragents at the molecular level.

The growing interest in bioimaging andbiological engineering for medical and otherscientific uses can be measured by the goalsof funding agencies and through the use ofvarious imaging modalities, including mag-netic resonance imaging, optical imaging,and ultrasound imaging by researchers froman increasing number of disciplines. The

magnets at Beckman’s own BiomedicalImaging Center, for example, have beenused in expected ways such as neuroscien-tists imaging the brain, and in surprisingfashion, like engineers imaging microfluidicflow. Bioimaging is one of four cornerstoneresearch lines at the recently createdDepartment of Bioengineering at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

If a new Beckman Institute research ini-tiative were added within the near future,bioimaging would seem to be a likely candi-date. Beckman Director Pierre Wiltzius saiddiscussion of a new research initiative is stilla few months off, but added that bioimagingwould be a natural fit.

“For the Beckman Institute this is a verynatural area for us to be in because that isthe interface where we want to be at,between the physical sciences and the lifesciences, biological sciences, and social sci-ences,” Wiltzius said. “Where it gets interest-ing in the context of the Beckman Institutebeing driven by interdisciplinary research is

that bioimaging in itself can also be interdis-ciplinary, or multimodal, with many differ-ent techniques applied at the same time.That is something that is very much bynature a Beckman-like topic.”

Wiltzius said there are a couple of rea-sons for the emergence of bioimaging as afield of study.

“I think generally there is a lot of empha-sis on bioimaging. In optical imaging this isindeed driven by technological advances thatcome all the way from new infrared lightsources invented in the telecommunicationsindustry and new detectors, signal process-ing and so on,” he said. “The other reason isthat as a lot of these tools have been devel-oped in the physical sciences and engineer-ing, they do find new applications in the lifesciences and biological sciences.”

Beckman faculty member Michael

Insana is playing a leading role in bioimag-ing developments at the University of Illinoisand at the Institute. Insana, who was chosento head the new Bioimaging Science andTechnology group at Beckman, is co-authorof one of the seed proposals and is a facultymember in the Department ofBioengineering.

Insana said a possible research initiativecentered on bioimaging would complement abroader push to integrate bioimaging theoryand research with real-world applications.

“From my point of view in bioengineeringwe’re trying to put together a new depart-ment,” Insana said. “How are we going to beable to compete with people like Duke andJohns Hopkins, and other places with strongmedical schools? The things we thoughtabout focusing on were really important andinteresting problems in the biological sci-ences for which new technologies can beapplied. The area that I, and many of us inthis group, have been funded to work on iscancer.”

The seed proposal from Insana and fourother Beckman collaborators – ThomasHuang, Zhi-Pei Liang, Stephen Boppart, andRohit Bhargava – is for developing molecularimaging technologies for imaging breast can-cer.

Carle Hospital in Urbana is dedicatingan entire floor of its new Mills Breast CancerInstitute, set to open in 2008, to research byscientists associated with the University ofIllinois. Insana said his group hopes to be apart of this new facility for fighting cancer.

“We’re thinking how is it we can developour science and technology with the eventualgoal of perhaps interfacing with them,”Insana said. “That’s the context in whichwe’re building.”

Boppart, who has been working on usingoptical coherence tomography as a non-inva-sive or minimally invasive method for

detecting breast cancer, has already locatedhis new imaging equipment at Carle andconducted trials there. A current focus ofInsana’s Ultrasonic Imaging Laboratory ison the elasticity of cancer tissue. Liang hasworked on improving MRI techniques forbetter detection of cancer. Along withHuang’s expertise in image analysis andBhargava’s knowledge of imaging tools andcancer pathology, the group looks to have allthe components to succeed in its goal ofdeveloping new and comprehensive methodsto fight breast cancer.

“What we’re hoping to do is to study cer-tain aspects of the problem from the tiniestscale all the way up to the very largestscale,” Insana said. “So each of our technolo-gies in this group looks at a different aspectof breast cancer. There really isn’t someonewho has put all this together to come upwith a fairly comprehensive view of what’sgoing on in the progression of cancer as ittransforms into a metastatic process. Whatwe’re trying to do with that particular

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process is eventually feed it into a model ofhow cancer is formed and progresses.”

Wiltzius said the collaboration with Carleis exciting, but this research line will gobeyond any one project.

“We will be collaborating in strategicareas with Carle and the new breast cancerinstitute,” Wiltzius said. “But it will be wellbeyond that. We’ll collaborate where it makessense but we will certainly be broader interms of our imaging activities, particularlywhen it comes to neuroimaging.”

Imaging of the brain has been a key com-ponent for Beckman psychology researchersfor many years, but improving techniquesand developing new imaging modalities is agoal for both neuroscientists and engineers.Brad Sutton, a member of the BST group andan assistant professor in the BioengineeringDepartment, was the chief engineer for BIC’s3Tesla headscanning magnet used for neu-roimaging. Part of Sutton’s research is gearedtoward improving MRI signal processing forbrain scans.

In addition, neuroscientists at Beckmanare developing their own imaging techniques.Kara Federmeier uses an electrophysiologicalcap developed at her laboratory to measureevent-related brain potentials (ERPs) that areused to gauge how the brain reacts to certainstimuli. Gabriele Gratton and MonicaFabiani, directors of the CognitiveNeuroimaging Laboratory, have developed asystem called EROS (Event-Related OpticalSignal) that uses light and optic fiber bundledetectors for dynamic imaging of brain activi-ty. Fellow Cognitive Neuroscience groupmember Denise Park and BIC director ArtKramer use the 3T magnet for both MRI andfunctional MRI studies of the brain.

The Environmental Scanning ElectronMicroscope of Beckman’s Imaging TechnologyGroup (ITG) is used by both researchers inthe life sciences and students involved inITG’s Bugscope program to view cells withoutcompletely dehydrating them. ITG also fea-tures a micro-CT scanner useful for bioengi-neers interested in imaging bone structure.

The funding is following the bioimagingtrend. In August, the National Institutes ofHealth’s National Center for ResearchResources announced High-EndInstrumentation (HEI) grants totaling $21.5million so research facilities could acquirecutting-edge imaging equipment such as MRIand computed tomography technology for“advancing biomedical research and increas-ing knowledge of the underlying causes of

human disease.” Industry is joining the gov-ernmental and academic push to take advan-tage of emerging bioimaging and bioengineer-ing breakthroughs.

Insana said that researchers from largepharmaceutical companies to universities areincorporating bioimaging and bioengineeringinto their thinking when it comes to drug dis-covery and delivery and the development ofcutting edge biological treatments to developand test new methods and treatments. Hesaid researchers envision using imaging tocustom design for a particular diseaseprocess, for example, and then test for reac-tions to a targeted drug delivery method fortreating that disease.

“Imaging is a way to do this without theexpensive, time-consuming (methods of thepast),” Insana said. “Imaging can look at asmaller group of animals and watch themprogress over time.”

Insana added that most imaging tech-niques are non-invasive and non-destructive,so studies can be done with living organismswithout perturbing the system. Researchersare also developing ways to deliver drugs atthe same time they are imaging a system.Imaging is also playing a role in functionalgenomics. Insana said researchers in theBioengineering Department using computa-tional methods employ imaging data to modela phenotype or a cell that expresses diseasessuch as cancer.

“So a big view of what we’re working onis, can we take all of this imaging informationand all of these different scales and feed thatback into this functional genomic model so wecan study not only the DNA component buthow the environmental factors, things likehormones, other metabolic factors, feed backand maybe influence the way the genomeinfluences the disease and progresses,”Insana said. “Then maybe we can get a prettygood idea about why cancer is so different inso many different patients.”

The Bioengineering Department is so newthat it only began accepting graduate stu-dents in 2004. Beckman faculty membersmake up most of the department’s faculty.Bruce Wheeler, leader of Beckman’sNeuroTech group, is interim head of thedepartment, while Beckman researchersYingxiao Wang, Sutton, Bhargava, andInsana are professors in Bioengineering.

“We sort of revamped the entire processwith a couple of principles in mind, which Ifound quite exciting,” Insana said of thedepartment. “If you’re in, say electrical engi-

neering, you know exactly what your under-grads coming in have in terms of their corecourses. In bioengineering we take peoplefrom biology, chemistry, all kinds of places. Soour challenge is to try to get them up to speedvery quickly so they can become productive,and yet still maintain some sort of a baseknowledge. That’s essentially what a disci-pline is. We had to generate a discipline.”

At Beckman, the Bioimaging Science andTechnology group Insana heads includesSutton, Bhargava, and Wang, but also hasresearchers like Boppart, whose focus is onbiophotonics, and Kenneth Suslick from theChemistry Department. This interdiscipli-nary approach and improvements in imagingtechnology offer a powerful combination foradvancing medical research.

“In each of these imaging modalities thesensors are getting much more sensitive,broader band, so we’re delivering much high-er quality images,” Insana said. “But at thesame time we’re starting to understand howthese radiation systems are interacting withthe body.

“We’re bringing chemists into the imagingrealm and these chemists are developingprobes – meaning little tiny molecules – thatare very novel and able to deliver a contrastmedia to various areas. So this is bringingtogether people from chemical engineeringwho are doing drug delivery that are interest-ed in bringing drugs into these probes,chemists who are interested in how to attacha sensitive molecule to a vehicle, and imagingpeople who are really interested in how totune their systems to be very, very sensitiveto these probes without disturbing them.”

Insana came here in 2005 after serving ashead of the graduate program in theBioengineering Department at California-Davis. He was drawn by the reputation of theU of I’s College of Engineering, the chance tohelp build a new department at Illinois, andby the opportunities offered for collaborationsand new research at Beckman.

“It’s the No. 4-ranked engineering collegeand the kinds of things that I do are reallyrelated to electrical engineering for imagingand biology,” Insana said. “More recently I’mmoving into materials science and mechanicalengineering, so it’s very, very interdiscipli-nary. When I saw what Beckman does, thefact they can take people from all these differ-ent disciplines and put them together, it wasjust a wonderful place and it’s been that wayfor me.”

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" We will be collaborating in strategic areas ... we will certainly be broader in terms of our imaging activities, particularly when it comes to neuroimaging."

-- Pierre Wiltzius, Director, Beckman Institute

HERSAMVALUESLESSONS LEARNEDAT BECKMANUp and Coming Researcher Touts

Interdisciplinary Approach

hat does a researcher with a Ph.D. in electri-cal engineering do when confronted with one of thebiggest challenges facing carbon nanotube technology?Mark Hersam's experience at the Beckman Institutetold him to look outside the materials science box andtry something from the biochemistry labs.

Carbon nanotubes have been touted for years as oneof the next great technological breakthroughs for every-thing from electronics to sensors, but their propertiesmake them difficult to control and, therefore, produceon a large scale.

“Carbon nanotubes, due to a lack of uniformity intheir physical and electronic structures, are not suit-able for large-scale production in most technologies,”said Hersam, a professor of Materials Science andEngineering at Northwestern University. “So we'verecently developed a strategy for sorting carbon nan-otubes by their diameter and electronic properties.”

Hersam used a technique in biochemistry calleddensity gradient ultracentrifugation, calling upon acentrifuge to sort the nanotubes by their diameter andelectronic properties.

“What we recognized is that carbon nanotubes, as afunction of their diameter, will have subtle differencesin their buoyant densities, that is their mass per vol-ume,” Hersam said. “As a result, if you can come upwith a way of sorting nanotubes by their density, thenyou should be able to sort them by their structure andproperties. As it turns out, there was already a strate-gy in biochemistry that allows separation by density.

“This work is an excellent example of how my inter-disciplinary training at Beckman taught me to lookoutside of my discipline when faced with a challengingproblem. In this case, when faced with a problem in

electronics and materials science, we went to biochem-istry to find a solution.”

Hersam is just six years removed from a Ph.D. inelectrical engineering from the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign, but he already has his ownresearch group at Northwestern, a solid line of papersin peer-reviewed journals, and two of the most covetedawards any young researcher can win. Last year,Hersam was given a Sloan Fellowship and in July of2006 he was honored at the White House with the 2005Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists andEngineers.

A native of Downers Grove, Hersam earned a B.S.in electrical engineering from the U. of I. and a Master'sin physics from Cambridge in England. As an under-graduate and as a graduate student, Hersam didresearch at Beckman, working with Joe Lyding in theMolecular and Electronic Nanostructures research ini-tiative. Lyding, who built the first scanning tunnelingmicroscope (STM) at Illinois, was a mentor for Hersam,and they collaborated on research projects and papersinvolving subjects such as atomic level manipulationand silicon-based molecular nanotechnology.

Hersam took his STM expertise and research inter-ests to Northwestern in 2000 when he joined the facul-ty there. He also brought along an approach to re-search that was ingrained during his time at Beckman.

“The number one thing that I learned at Beckmanis how to interact in an interdisciplinary environment,”Hersam said. “The idea of Beckman really works, allthe way down to the student level. At a lot of placesfaculty may interact with each other but students keepto their own research group.

“But at Beckman the students really interacted.That allowed me to understand how interdisciplinary

www.beckman.uiuc.edu

Mark HersamThis figure contains a scanning tunneling microscopy image of individual cyclopen-tene molecules on a silicon surface taken at a temperature of 80 K.

Reference: N. P. Guisinger, N. L. Yoder, and M. C. Hersam, “Probing charge transport at the single molecule level on silicon using cryogenic ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy,” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 102, 8838 (2005).

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research works and also learnmany of the skills and techniques not only in my field,but also in other fields. Sincebecoming a faculty member atNorthwestern, I've been successfulin establishing interdisciplinaryresearch programs as a directresult of my time at Beckman.”

At Northwestern, STM tech-nology has remained an importantpart of Hersam's work. He cur-rently is using scanning tunnelingmicroscopy to probe the electricalproperties of organic molecules onsilicon surfaces. Improving theperformance of electronics at thelevel of individual molecules is thelong-range goal. Hersam said thatIntel Corporation is currentlyworking on transistors at thescale of about 100 nanometers,but the ultimate goal is to getdown to the molecular scale, orabout one nanometer.

“We are exploring what couldhappen in future electronic tech-nologies,” Hersam said. “If youlook at the trends in microelec-tronics you're looking at 20 ormaybe even 30 years in the futurewhere, if things continue at thesame rate as today, you wouldhave devices made at the molecu-lar length scale in industry.

“That's a long way off; this isvery long-term research. But withthe scanning tunneling micro-scope we can begin to probe howsuch devices work and if it isworth continuing electronic minia-turization all the way down to thesingle molecule level. We may findthat electronics cannot be pursuedas we know it at this length scaleor that there are some fatal flawsto molecular electronic technology.However, at this point, it lookspromising enough to continue ourresearch.”

The work with carbon nan-otubes is another current focus forHersam. In the October issue ofNature Nanotechnology, Hersam and hiscollaborators reported original researchusing density gradient ultracentrifuga-tion for sorting nanotubes by their densi-ty.

“One advantage of this technique isthat it is fully scalable,” Hersam said. “Ifyou look at industry today, for examplethe pharmaceutical industry, you can findlarge-scale centrifuges that continuously

handle hundreds of liters of solution at atime. With this technology, we anticipatethat our process can be scaled up to pro-vide large quantities of purified carbonnanotubes.”

Hersam's research has already madean impact, as evidenced by the papersand awards. The Sloan ResearchFellowship from the Alfred P. SloanFoundation is the oldest and one of themost prestigious fellows program in the

country. He said the PresidentialEarly Career Achievement Awardwas special because researchers fromall the sciences are eligible for it.Hersam was also impressed thatPresident Bush took time out of hisbusy schedule to attend the event.

“President Bush made the time,which was surprising because onthat day he had to meet with theIraqi Prime Minister,” Hersam said.“I think it would have been easy andunderstandable for him not toattend. His attendance showed hissupport of scientific research andeducation.”

Hersam appreciates his Teacherof the Year Award from Northwest-ern's Department of MaterialsScience and Engineering as much as any of his honors.

“The teaching award is verymeaningful to me. I became a profes-sor first and foremost to educate andthe teaching award was granted bythe students,” Hersam said.

For anyone thinking about pursu-ing a career in academia, Hersamhas a couple of pieces of advice. Hesaid keeping an open mind is crucialfor any person interested in an academic career of teaching andresearch — and the BeckmanInstitute is an excellent place todevelop that mindset.

“Being in an environment likeBeckman is perfect because you canbe exposed to a wide range of topics,not just what is going on in your particular research group,” he said.“I think that's critical for many reasons, one being that most of theinteresting problems in researchtoday are at the boundaries betweendisciplines.”

Hersam added that having awider range of interests also helpswhen it comes to securing funding forresearch proposals.

“If you have a broad training,then you can diversify your researchprogram and be less sensitive to thewinds of change in Washington,”

Hersam said. “The second piece of advice,which is true not only in academia, buttrue for any career in science, is tobecome as efficient as possible in your work.

“Everyone at this level is putting inthe maximum number of hours, so there'sno way that you can outwork anyone. Theonly way you can be more productive is tobe more efficient and make good decisionsregarding how to spend your time.”

8 FALL NO. 3

This figure contains a three-dimensional rendering of an ultra-highvacuum scanning tunneling microscope image of individual cyclopen-tene molecules on a Si(100) surface. The foreground contains a balland stick model of the experimental data.

Reference: N. P. Guisinger, R. Basu, M. E. Greene, A. S. Baluch, and M. C. Hersam, “Observed suppression of room temperature negative differential resistance in organic monolayers on Si(100),”Nanotechnology, 15, S452 (2004).

This figure is an atomic resolution ultra-high vacuum scanning tun-neling microscopy image of one-dimensional styrene molecular chainson a hydrogen passivated Si(100) surface. The apparent width of thestyrene molecular chains is approximately 1 nanometer.

Reference: R. Basu, N. P. Guisinger, M. E. Greene, and M. C.Hersam, “Room temperature nanofabrication of atomically registeredheteromolecular organosilicon nanostructures using multi-step feed-back controlled lithography,” Appl. Phys. Lett., 85, 2619 (2004).

www.beckman.uiuc.edu

9

Fabiani, Federmeier honored by Society forPsychophysiological Research

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has long played an importantrole in the Society for PsychophysiologicalResearch, considered one of the top profes-sional organizations in the field of psychol-ogy, and researchers from the BeckmanInstitute are carrying on that tradition.Monica Fabiani, Co-chair of Beckman'sBiological Intelligence research initiative,was elected President of the Society forPsychophysiological Research at the orga-nization's meeting Oct. 25-29 inVancouver, Canada.

Fabiani joins a number of otherUniversity of Illinois faculty members whohave earned this distinction, includingBeckman researcher Gregory Miller.“Monica's election is particularly impres-sive because it has come at a relativelyyoung age, which reflects how widely rec-ognized and respected her work has been,”Miller said. “This is a great honor forMonica, the Department of Psychology, theNeuroscience Program, the BeckmanInstitute, including its Biomedical ImagingCenter, and the campus.”

Miller said Illinois has contributedmore presidents than any other universityto the 46-year-old Society, which he said is “the most prominent in the world in psychophysiology and highly respectedacross the whole range of psychology.”

Fabiani is co-director with GabrieleGratton of the Cognitive NeuroimagingLaboratory. Their research focuses on thecognitive neuroscience of human memoryand aging, while developing tools for thenon-invasive mapping of human brainfunction.

Earlier this year Kara Federmeierwas honored with the 2006 DistinguishedScientific Award for Early Career Contri-bution to Psychophysiology by the Society.Federmeier is director of the Cognition andBrain Laboratory at Beckman. Herresearch focuses on how people communi-cate meaning and comprehend language.

Fellow Beckman researcher DenisePark was the featured speaker at a paneldiscussion on women in science at theSociety for Psychophysiological Researchmeeting, discussing experiences unique towomen in science and academia based onthe research literature. Federmeier, Park,and Fabiani are all members of theInstitute's Cognitive Neuroscience group.

Huang earns IBM AwardBeckman researcherThomas Huang hasbeen chosen for an IBMFaculty Award for 2006.Huang is Co-chair of theHuman-ComputerIntelligent Interaction research initiative.

Dr. Huang received the IBM FacultyAward for a project titled “Audio-VisualRecognition of Human Emotional andCognitive States” which aims to providereal-time, robust algorithms for applica-tions such as computer-aided learning,smart kiosks, electronic games, and auto-mobiles.

The IBM faculty awards program hon-ors researchers worldwide in its goal of fos-tering collaboration between researchers atleading universities worldwide and thosein IBM research, development and servicesorganizations. It seeks to promote course-ware and curriculum innovation to stimu-late growth in disciplines and geographiesthat are strategic to IBM. Candidates forthe award must be nominated by an IBMemployee with common interests who will serve as a liaison for the collaboration.Huang's research interests at Beckmanfocus on topics such as multimodal human-computer interfaces, multimedia databas-es, and image processing.

Park Headlines Surgeon General's Workshop on Health LiteracyBeckman Institute researcher DenisePark was a featured panelist on theSurgeon General's Workshop on ImprovingHealth Literacy held Thursday at theNational Institutes of Health inSeptember.

Park was a panelist for a discussion on“Meeting the Health Literacy Needs ofSpecial Populations.”

Park, Co-director of the Center forHealthy Minds at the Beckman Institute,continues to be a resource for UnitedStates government officials concerned withthe nation's health. Last year Park testi-fied before a United States Senate commit-tee investigating fraud against the elderly,sharing her insights into why older adultsare more susceptible to scams. Recently,Park was awarded a 10-year, $5 millionMERIT award from the NIH's NationalInstitute on Aging for a landmark studythat will focus on cognition in middle-agedadults.

Nancy Sottos to be named SES FellowMolecular and Electronic NanostructuresCo-chair Nancy Sottos was named aFellow of the Society of EngineeringScience. The honor is for her distinction inthe field of Engineering Science and hercontributions to the Society.

Sottos will receive the award during the44th Annual Technical Meeting of theSociety of Engineering Science, October 21-24, 2007, at Texas A&M University,College Station, Texas.

Sottos, a member of Beckman'sAutonomous Materials Systems group, is aDonald Biggar Willett Professor ofEngineering in the Department ofMaterials Science and Engineering.

Her research focus at Beckman centerson development of autonomic materialssystems that have the ability to adapt toand respond in an independent and auto-matic fashion to cracks and other materialsfailures. Sottos is part of the Beckmanteam that was awarded a $5M grant last year from the Air Force Office ofScientific Research for the development of Microvascular Autonomic Composites.

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H O N O R S & A W A R D S

10 FALL NO. 3

Two ITG entries finalists in MRS Scientific Film FestivalBeckman's Imaging Technology Grouphas two out of the six finalists for top hon-ors in the inaugural Materials ResearchSociety “Scientific Film Festival.”

The Festival will take place at theMRS Fall 2006 meeting in Boston Nov.27-30. Conference attendees will get tovote for the top science films and a panelwill then choose from the top vote getters.Prizes will be awarded for the three bestfilms in both the professional and ama-teur categories and will be awarded dur-ing the Symposium X session of the con-ference.

One of the two ITG entries is aboutScott White's work with self-healingmaterials. The other was made withJohn Rogers for the Tech Museum inSan Jose about his research into stretch-able silicon. White and Rogers are members of Beckman's Molecular andElectronic Nanostructures research initiative.

Large grant awarded for new MEMS/NEMS CenterBeckman researcher AndreasCangellaris is the principal investigatoron a multi-university grant award of$4.5M toward the development of a newcenter advancing research in the area ofmicro-scale and nanoscale electromechan-ical systems (MEMS and NEMS). Theproposal is for the establishment ofIMPACT - Center for the Advancement ofMEMS/NEMS VLSI.

The multi-university proposal includeda lead group from the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign that fea-tures Cangellaris, and fellow Beckmanresearchers Narayana Aluru, PhilippeGeubelle, Ioannis Chasiotis, andUmberto Ravaioli. The other universi-ties involved in the award are Purdue,Georgia Institute of Technology, andLehigh, as well as industrial partnerMEMtronics. The $4.5M grant from theMicrosystems Technology Office (MTO) ofDARPA is for six years.

The goal of the Center is to developthe physics-based knowledge needed toenhance the lifetime performance andfunctionality of highly integratedMEMS/NEMS-based micro- and nano-sys-tems for commercial and military sys-tems.

Anderson named Boss of the YearBeckman InstituteAssociate Director Van Anderson has been named 2006 Boss of the Year bySecretariat, aUniversity of Illinoisorganization of supervisory level employees.

Anderson was nominated by CathyRix, assistant program administrator atBeckman.

A SAMPLING OF BECKMAN INSTITUTE RESEARCH

RECEIVING NATIONAL MEDIA ATTENTION:

DETECTING COCAINE

November 14, 2006 — Researchers at Illinoisled by Beckman researcher and U. of I. chem-istry professor Yi Lu, have developed a simple"dipstick" test for detecting cocaine and otherdrugs in saliva, urine or blood serum. The testis based upon DNA-gold nanoparticle technol-ogy, and can be packaged in user-friendly kitssimilar to those used for home pregnancytests.Nanotechwire.com

METALLIC SINGLE-WALLED CARBON

NANOTUBES

November 14, 2006 — Metallic single-walledcarbon nanotubes can be selectively etchedand eliminated from a substrate without dam-aging their semiconducting single-walled nan-otube neighbors, thanks to a finely tunedmethane plasma reaction process developed byscientists at Stanford University. "The tech-nique is important, in part, because it has thepotential to advance efforts that seek to usedense, aligned arrays of nanotubes as effectivethin-film semiconductors for scalable, ultra-high-performance electronics," says JohnRogers, Beckman researcher and chemistryprofessor at Illinois.Chemical & Engineering News

GLOWING SUGAR

November 09, 2006 — As reported in today'sissue of Nature (Nov. 9), Beckman researcherand U. of I. chemistry professor Kenneth S.Suslick and graduate student Nathan C.Eddingsaas have used high-intensity ultra-sound in liquid slurries of sugar and otherorganic crystals to create mechanolumines-cence up to 1,000 times more intense than canbe achieved by grinding.PhysicsWeb

Multitasking 20-Somethings November 06, 2006 — The best at switchingback and forth between tasks seem to be 20-somethings, based on research at Illinois.

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H O N O R S & A W A R D S

11

unique structures. "The world abounds withparticles that have traditionally been treatedas geometrically symmetric, chemicallyisotropic and electrically uniform," says SteveGranick, a Beckman affiliate and U. of I. pro-fessor of materials science and engineering,chemistry and physics. "We have muddied thewaters a bit by asking: 'What happens whenwe build clusters from particles that have anuneven distribution of electric charge?' "ScienceDaily

THE ECHO MAKER

October 13, 2006 — If the term "science fic-tion" had no prior meaning, it would describeall the novels of Richard Powers. TheMacArthur "genius"-grant winner, whoseninth novel, The Echo Maker, comes out thisfall (and is nominated for a National BookAward), does not just write about scientists,programmers, and engineers, though suchprofessions populate most of his books.Slate

BUGSCOPE

October 06, 2006 — Fourth grade students atDerby Academy in Hingham, Mass., are usingBugscope, a computer software created byIllinois's Beckman Institute that allows partic-ipants to communicate with an environmentalscanning electron microscope by means of aremote computer.The Hingham Journal

The Echo Maker October 02, 2006 — If you simply rely on thesuperficial in evaluating writer RichardPowers, you might be baffled by what appearto be contradictions. Powers, a Beckman affili-ate and the author of eight critically acclaim-ed novels that often examine how we respondto the soul-numbing technological changesthat surround us, rides a bicycle to his cam-pus office.Chicago Sun-Times

CELLULAR SCIENCE

September 29, 2006 — Klaus Schulten,Beckman researcher and head of the Theore-tical and Computational Biophysics group atIllinois, says the University of Texas's newsupercomputer will help researchers betterunderstand how cells work, how viruses infecthuman cells and how proteins fight obesitywithin cells.

29 issue of Physical Review Letters, U. of I.physics professor and Beckman affiliate AlexeyBezryadin and his research group have studiedthe effect of applying a magnetic field to ultra-narrow superconducting wires only a few hun-dred atoms across, and have used a microscopictheory proposed by physics professor PaulGoldbart and his team to explain the results.Technology News Daily

ENTOMOLOGY, AGRICULTURE AND

THE ENVIRONMENT

October 19, 2006 — American honeybees, whichpollinate more than 90 domestic commercialcrops, have declined by 30 percent in the last 20 years. U.S. farmers had to import honeybeeslast year for the first time since 1922, under-scoring the extent of the problem, says GeneRobinson, Beckman affiliate and a U. of I. pro-fessor of entomology. "The honeybee industry isat a critical juncture," Robinson said. "The timefor action is now."The Washington Post

PRESCRIBING EXERCISE

October 18, 2006 — A new study suggests thatprescribing exercise may be more effective thansimply recommending it. Commenting on thestudy, William Greenough, a professor at the U.of I.'s Beckman Institute, said vagueness aboutwhat exercises should be done limits doctorsand patients. With prescription medicines,there's no confusion. "Justice is not being doneby just suggesting exercise and not saying howto do it," he said.United Press International

EXERCISE AND AGING

October 16, 2006 — In terms of physical activi-ty, you don't need to be a triathlete to reap thebenefits of exercise, says Arthur Kramer,Beckman researcher and a professor of psychol-ogy at Illinois. Kramer and his colleagues havefound evidence that modest aerobic exercise inolder adults boosts the efficiency of the frontalcortex, a brain region important for multi-task-ing, planning and other high-level cognitive func-tions.Los Angeles Times

POLARIZED, SELF-ASSEMBLING

PARTICLES MADE

October 13, 2006 — U. of I. scientists have cre-ated polarized, spherical particles that self-assemble into clusters with specific shapes anddistributions of electric charge. The researcherssay the polarized particles can be used in thedirectional self-assembly of intricate shapes and

People ages 7 to 82 were asked to switchbetween two memory tasks in some simplenumeric experiments. Both ends of the agespectrum did poorly, with young kids faringworst, says Art Kramer, Beckman researcherand U. of I. professor of psychology.The Seattle Times

STUDENTS EXPERIENCE BUGSCOPE

November 02, 2006 — Researchers at theBeckman Institute for Advanced Science andTechnology at the University of Illinois areusing the latest technology to allow studentsin grades K-12 to explore the furriest, scaliestand slimiest details of those ever-popularcreatures: bugs. Bugscope brings kids togeth-er with both science and bugs.The Chattanoogan

FUEL-CELL ENGINEERING

November 02, 2006 — Paul Kenis, Beckmanresearcher and professor of chemical and bio-molecular engineering at Illinois, and col-leagues have designed and built ceramicmicroreactors for the on-site reforming ofhydrocarbon fuels, such as propane, intohydrogen for use in fuel cells and otherportable power sources.Chemistry World

ENTOMOLOGY AND GENETICS

October 31, 2006 — Using a new combinationof techniques, Jonathan Sweedler, Beckmanresearcher and U. of I. chemistry professorand director of the Biotechnology Center atIllinois, and colleagues in Belgium have iden-tified 36 genes that encode brain chemicalslikely to play a role in the complex behaviorsof the honey bee.National Science Foundation

SECRETS REVEALED IN SEQUENCING

OF HONEY BEE GENOME

October 26, 2006 — What do fruit flies, mos-quitoes, silk moths and honey bees have incommon? First, they are all insects. Second,they have all had their genomes sequenced, afeat that will make it much easier to discernboth similarities and differences.U of I News Bureau

SUPERCONDUCTIVITY

October 19, 2006 — U. of I. researchers notonly have discovered an unusual phenomenonin which ultra-narrow wires show enhancedsuperconductivity when exposed to strongmagnetic fields, they also have developed atheory to explain it. As reported in the Sept.

www.beckman.uiuc.edu

be computers made of materials, flexible andstrong, laced with microelectronics. That's thevision of two Illinois professors: OsmanAtaman, a UI architecture and design profes-sor, and John Rogers, a Beckman researcherand professor of materials science and engi-neering. "You're sort of living in a Pentium,"Rogers says.USA Today

EVOLUTIONARY SOFTWARE

September 18, 2006 — Software designed byIllinois chemist Zaida Luthey-Schulten andher research team at the Beckman Institute isallowing researchers to effectively analyze andcompare sequence and structure data of pro-teins and nucleic acids. "By placing bioinfor-matics in the context of evolution, we can alsoperform comparative dynamics studies of pro-teins from different domains of life," sheadded.UI News Bureau

ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY

September 15, 2006 — Jonathan Sweedler, aBeckman researcher and director of theBiotechnology Center at Illinois, is one of 12scientists who will be recognized by thePittsburgh Conference for significant contri-butions in the fields of analytical chemistryand applied spectroscopy. Sweedler willreceive the Pittsburgh Analytical ChemistryAward during Pittcon, a symposium held Feb.25 through March 2, 2007, in Chicago.Laboratory Talk.com

DETECTING BREAST CANCER

September 13, 2006 — Researchers at Illinoisare developing a near-infrared imaging tech-nique that could significantly affect the waysphysicians detect and treat breast cancer."Tissue removed during biopsy or surgerymust be microscopically examined by apathologist, which can sometimes result in alengthy and anxious wait for the patient,"says Stephen Boppart, a Beckman researcherand professor of electrical and computer engi-neering, bioengineering, and medicine. "Wewant to move the microscopic examination oftissue from the pathology lab to the patient'spoint of care and do the analysis in real time."United Press International

HEALING WOUNDS

September 13, 2006 — Scientists atNorthwestern University have found a way touse nanotechnology to speed wound healing, aprocess that could someday offer hope to mil-lions of victims of heart attacks and other

order to come up with a suitable cyberinfra-structure for biology. One of the five integrationmodels Jakobsson outlines is "integration ofalgorithmic development with computing archi-tecture design."HPC Wire

OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

September 22, 2006 — "In the past we wereconstantly going to telecoms firms to convincethem that their products could be useful forOCT (optical coherence tomography)," saidStephen Boppart of the U. of I. BeckmanInstitute for Advanced Science and Technology."However, today there has been a switch andphotonics companies are now making lightsources specifically for OCT."Optics.org

ONE PROTEIN, TWO CHANNELS: SCIENTISTS

EXPLAIN MECHANISM IN AQUAPORINS

September 21, 2006 — Using computer simula-tions and experimental results, researchers atthe University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaignand the University of Arizona have identified akey component of the gating mechanism inaquaporins that controls both the passage ofwater and the conduction of ions.U of I News Bureau

BIOENGINEERING

September 20, 2006 — Engineers and biologistshave developed the world's first functional arti-ficial hair cell to mimic one of nature's mostwidespread and versatile data-collecting sys-tems: the lateral lines of fish. In a paper pub-lished in an August issue of EURASIP Journalon Applied Signal Processing, engineer ChangLiu, a Beckman researcher and U. of I. profes-sor of electrical and computer engineering,describes how biologically inspired microstruc-tures enable a model fish to locate and track adipole source.Science Magazine

CERAMIC MICROREACTORS DEVELOPED FOR ON-SITE HYDROGEN PRODUCTION

September 20, 2006 — Scientists at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaignincluding Beckman researcher Paul Kenis havedesigned and built ceramic microreactors forthe on-site reforming of hydrocarbon fuels, suchas propane, into hydrogen for use in fuel cellsand other portable power sources.UI News Bureau

HABITABLE COMPUTER

September 19, 2006—In the houses of thefuture, the walls and windows will, in essence,

Austin American-StatesmanNANOLITHOGRAPHY

September 29, 2006 — NorthwesternUniversity scientists have created 55,000images of Thomas Jefferson and put theminto a space the size of a nickel. It demon-strates the commercial viability of dip pennanolithography, a technology discovered andpioneered at Northwestern. Beckmanresearcher and U. of I. electrical and comput-er engineering professor Chang Liu is amongthe authors of a paper presenting the work,which was published online Monday by thejournal Angewandte Chemie.Photonics.com

GAMES GET SERIOUS

September 25, 2006 — U. of I. molecularresearcher Klaus Schulten and his team gen-erate computer simulations of working com-ponents of human cells in a process thatstarts with an expensive supercomputercrunching data about millions of atoms.When it's time to view the resulting interac-tive molecules interacting, the researchersturn to PCs with relatively inexpensive videocards - the same Nvidia and ATI cards thatserious game players buy online or off theshelves of electronics stores. "It's been a godsend, a gift to science, to use this," saidSchulten, director of the Theoretical andComputational Biophysics group at theBeckman Institute.San Diego Union-Tribune

SCIENTISTS EXPLAIN MECHANISM IN

AQUAPORINS

Sepember 25, 2006 — Using computer simu-lations and experimental results, researchersat Illinois and the University of Arizona haveidentified a key component of the gatingmechanism in aquaporins that controls boththe passage of water and the conduction ofions. "Understanding the molecular mecha-nism behind gating in membrane channelscould lead to more effective protein engineer-ing," said Emad Tajkhorshid, a professor ofbiochemistry at Illinois and a researcher atthe Beckman Institute.Medical News Today

COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY

September 22, 2006 — In the quarterly publi-cation CTWatch, Eric Jakobsson, Beckmanresearcher and a U. of I. professor of molecu-lar and integrative biology, discusses the ini-tiatives that will be required between appli-cations scientists and system architects in

12 FALL NO. 3

DENISE PARK ON ORNERINESS AND SMARTS

August 16, 2006 — A recent study fromMorgan State University in Baltimore sug-gests that, after age 60, the most disagreeablepeople are the smartest. Although she saysshe doesn't doubt the findings, Beckmanresearcher and U. of I. psychology professorDenise Park says, "I doubt that being dis-agreeable is the reason for the higher intelli-gence." Better educated, wealthier adults, whogenerally have higher IQs, may not reactcheerfully to the patronizing treatment that isoften given to the elderly, says Park, an experton cognitive aging. Such people "have more ofa sense of mastery and entitlement. So it couldbe high ability that's causing their disagree-able quality and not vice versa."USAToday

EXERCISE MAY SLOW IMPACT OF AGING

August 11, 2006 — A review of 40 years ofdata by conducted by Beckman Instituteresearchers Arthur Kramer, Kirk Ericksonand Stanley Colcombe found evidence thatexercise may slow age's impact on brain func-tion, helping maintain whip-smart cognitiveability well into the senior years and prevent-ing dementia-like illness.Forbes HealthDay

LIFE CYCLE OF PROTEIN OBSERVED

August 11, 2006 — Using a sensitive, single-molecule measurement technique, U. of I.researchers led by Taekjip Ha, a professor ofphysics at Illinois and a Beckman Affiliate,have observed the life cycle of RecA, a proteinthat plays a major role in repairing damagedDNA.Physics.org

HIGHER FITNESS LEVELS BENEFIT

LONG-TERM HORMONE THERAPY

August 04, 2006 — A U. of I. study suggeststhat being physically fit offsets cognitivedeclines attributed to long-term hormone ther-apy in women. "We found that higher fitnesslevels enhance the effects of shorter durationsof hormone treatment and offset the declinesassociated with long-term use," said ArthurKramer, a professor of psychology andresearcher at the Beckman Institute.Xagena

FISH NAVIGATION

September 08, 2006 — In a paper published inan August issue of EURASIP Journal onApplied Signal Processing, Beckman Researcherand U. of I. engineering professor Chang Liudescribes how biologically inspired microstruc-tures enable a model fish to locate and track adipole source. Real fish use a linear swatch ofhair cells on their sides, known as the lateralline, to coordinate group movements, avoidpredators, and otherwise navigate.Science

HORMONE-REPLACEMENT THERAPY

August 31, 2006 — Women pondering hormone-replacement therapy also should consider regu-lar exercise. A new U. of I. study suggests thatbeing physically fit offsets cognitive declinesattributed to long-term therapy. "This study not only tells us that there is a benefit to beinghighly fit, it pinpoints where in the brain it mat-ters for postmenopausal women who have beenusing the two strategies," said lead author KirkI. Erickson, a postdoctoral researcher at theBeckman Institute for Advanced Science andTechnology at Illinois.NewsTarget

JAW-DROPPING SPEED

August 21, 2006 — A tiny ant has the fastestjaw in the animal kingdom - literally quickerthan the blink of an eye. The trap-jaw ant canclamp its mandibles shut at between 125 and233 kilometers per hour, according to a report inMonday's online edition of Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences. It can snap itsjaws shut with such force that it can propelitself backward out of danger, says co-authorAndrew Suarez, a Beckman affiliate and U. of I.entomology professor.USA Today

ERIC JAKOBSSON ON BIOINFORMATICS

August 17, 2006 — Eric Jakobsson, Beckmanresearcher, U. of I. engineering professor anddirector of the National Center for the Design ofBiomimetic Nanoconductors, spoke at StanfordUniversity this week about the difficulties relat-ed to biomedical computation. He discussed howbiomedical computing tools are difficult to useand fragile, and they also have limited dissemi-nation possibilities. However, he noted thattechnology is improving.The Stanford Daily

major injuries. The findings were reportedTuesday at a semiannual meeting of theAmerican Chemical Society in San Francisco."It looks like great stuff," says Steven Zimmer-man, a Beckman affiliate and chemist atIllinois who helped organize the symposium.One of the Northwestern researchers isSamuel Stupp, who was a chemistryprofessor at Illinois.Science

VISUALLY TASTING AND SMELLING

September 12, 2006 — Beckman researcherand U. of I. chemistry professor KennethSuslick has developed a technique that essen-tially tastes and smells a substance visually.Suslick, who founded the companyChemSensing Inc. in Champaign, Ill., hasworked on developing colorimetric arrays forseveral years. The company's emphasis is onearly-stage disease detection, but Suslick hasapplied the technology to other subjects,including volatile organic compounds and, now,beer. People can smell and taste the differencebetween beers, and Suslick noted that the col-orimetric approach has some advantages whenit comes to duplicating that feat.Photonics Spectra

BIO-INSPIRED SENSORS

September 12, 2006 — Beckman researcher U.of I. electrical and computer engineering pro-fessor Chang Liu and University of Virginiaprofessor Joseph Humphrey are collaboratingon a project funded by the U.S. DefenseAdvanced Research Projects Agency to buildnew bio-inspired sensors.Daily Progress

WALL STREET JOURNAL TECHNOLOGY

INNOVATION AWARD

September 11, 2006 — Semprius Inc., a start-up based in Chapel Hill, N.C., won a 2006 WallStreet Journal Technology Innovation Awardfor a process for making large-scale, high-per-formance electronic circuits that can be appliedto any surface. The technology, developed byBeckman researcher and U. of I. materials sci-ence and engineering professor John Rogers,the company's president and co-founder, alongwith a team of researchers at Illinois, does thisby using a two-step process: In the first, elec-tronic devices are formed on semiconductorwafer using conventional techniques. Then anextremely thin layer that contains the com-plete transistor is lifted from the wafer andprinted onto the desired material, which caninclude thin plastic sheets, fabric or rubberThe Wall Street Journal

www.beckman.uiuc.edu

13

Richard Sproat felt energized by theinterdisciplinary research environment hefound while working at Bell Labs and AT&TLabs. His desire to continue doing researchin that type of setting was one reason Sproatcame to the Beckman Institute and theUniversity of Illinois in 2003.

“One of the things that was always verynice about Bell Labs—which was quite dif-ferent from what I knew the case to be inacademia—was that I could walk down thehall and talk to an engineer, or a computerscientist or psychologist, all on the samehallway,” Sproat said. “You would never getthat in a typical academic environment. Soone of the things that was so appealingabout Beckman is you do have people withall kinds of backgrounds and we really dowork together. So it was really the interdis-ciplinary nature that was the pull here.”

What the business world did not quiteprepare him for was the juggling act thatoften comes with being a full-time professorand researcher at a place like Beckman.

“One of the things I have to admit is thatwhen I came to academia I didn't reallyknow what the term busy meant,” Sproatsaid with a laugh. “It's not so much theamount of work; the issue is the number ofthings that I have to keep juggling at thesame time.”

A member of Beckman's ArtificialIntelligence group who holds facultyappointments in both the Department of

Electrical and Computer Engineering andthe Department of Linguistics, Sproat hasmore than a half-dozen current researchprojects.

Sproat's research interests center onvarious aspects of speech processing, aswell as writing systems, and all of his workhas a computational component to it. Hisinterests include such topics as languagemodeling for colloquial Arabic speechrecognition, named entity detection andtransliteration for multiple languages, andprediction of prosody from text for affectivespeech synthesis.

Sproat said the named entity detectionproject is one of two he is currently spend-ing a lot of his time on. It involves creatingsoftware that can pick out the same wordsor phrases in streams of news texts fromvarying languages, including ones withcompletely different scripts such asChinese and English.

The other key project, funded by aCritical Research Initiative grant from theUniversity of Illinois, is for developingmethods for second-language fluencyassessment. That project is part of a collab-oration with Beckman colleagues ChilinShih, Kay Bock, Brian Ross, and MarkHasegawa-Johnson. They are looking atdeveloping ways to assess and improve sec-ond-language fluency, an important topicin our increasingly global economy. Thereis hope the project will lead to a new centeron campus for second language learning.

If it happens, the center would truly beinterdisciplinary, Sproat said. Bock is apsycholinguistic, Ross is a psychologist,while Hasegawa-Johnson tackles speechissues from an engineering perspective.Sproat said the second language projectand a future center would have bothresearch and practical implications thatcould lead to a quantitative measure of flu-ency and improve the teaching of secondlanguages.

“There's a whole bunch of issues outthere to be investigated,” Sproat said. “Thiscenter could serve as a test bed for develop-ing these kinds of ideas across the board.”

PROFILEFA

CU

LTY

Sproat's research path leads from industry to Beckman

www.beckman.uiuc.edu

RE-ENGINEERING MILK

August 04, 2006 — Beckman affiliate and U. of I. animal sciences professor Matt Wheelercomments on research at the University ofCalifornia at Davis involving engineering goat'smilk to be more similar to human breast milk.The re-engineered milk has reduced the amountof harmful bacteria in piglet guts. Wheeler saysthis demonstration of safety and efficacy is thefirst step before any scientific review boards orthe U.S. Food and Drug Administration willallow human consumption of the milk.ScienceNOW Daily News

NANO-TECHNIQUE ALLOWS

FOR REFINED PATTERNING

August 01, 2006 — In work at the U. of I.,researchers used nanoimprint lithography andcarbon nanotubes to replicate features withnanometer dimensions. "We were able todemonstrate reliable patterning at the 2nmscale, and even some capability down to 1nm,"said John Rogers, Beckman researcher and professor of materials science and engineeringat U of I.Semiconductor International

ANIMATION ASSISTS VICTIMIZED CHILDREN

August 01, 2006 — According to SharonTettegah, Beckman affiliate and a professor ofcurriculum and instruction at UIUC, some ofthe same qualities that make animation workfor comedy make it valuable, too, as an outlet forvictimized children and for a new researchmethod that tests the empathy of teachers whomay deal with them.Medgadget

14 FALL NO. 3

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!Beckman Institute Open House

March 9-10, 2007