Seminar: Inserting Life into Engineered Devices and Materials

Abstract:

Since time immemorial, mankind has crafted its world through the creative manipulation of a small number of fundamental machines. In the agricultural and mechanical ages, from the printing press to the first aeroplanes, all the trappings of civilization were crafted from the six fundamental machines of physics: the screw; the wheel and axle; the incline plane; the lever; the pulley; and the wedge. The modern electronic age was established through the addition of five fundamental machines to humankind’s toolbox: the diode; the transistor; the inductor; the resistor; and the capacitor. Our entire civilization is founded on the creative exploitation of the properties of only 11 different building blocks. Everything from smartphones to electric cars to global positioning satellites is crafted from systems built from this very small number of discrete functional pieces.But technological achievements pale in comparison to the complexity of biological achievements. The ability of living systems to transform matter and actively interact with the environment sets them apart from current systems made by man. This difference in complexity can be attributed to the fact that nature has thousands of building blocks to work with instead of the 11 used by man. Think of the extraordinary systems humans could engineer if we had access to this incredible selection of tools.

The ability to use machines to manipulate matter a single molecule at a time renders many things possible that were impossible before.  Living systems do this on a regular basis. The core challenge is how to transform a labile molecule that exists in a fragile living organism and to transfer that functionality into a stable system that is economically scalable. The most significant difficulties revolve around environmental stability and the inherent structural limitations of biological molecules.

Presented is a new technology that transitions additive manufacturing from 3D space to a four-dimensional, functional space. Through developments in stabilizing a very large set of fundamental biological building blocks, integral membrane proteins, the suite of tools available to engineer complex systems has been greatly expanded. A new class of printable inks is being produced that exploits this expanded set of tools to enable the incorporation of biological metabolism as an intrinsic property in the devices we assemble. This establishes the technology to incorporate subsets of metabolisms into a new class of engineered analytical devices and materials, the precision assembly of nucleotides, and the ability to synthesize complex metabolites with high efficiency and extraordinary purity.

About the Speaker:

Carlo Montemagno has been recognized with prestigious awards including the Feynman Prize (for creating single molecule biological motors with nano-scale silicon devices); the Earth Award Grand Prize (for cell-free artificial photosynthesis with over 95% efficiency); the CNBC Business Top 10 Green Innovator award (for Aquaporin Membrane water purification and desalination technology); and named a Bill & Melinda Gates Grand Challenge Winner (for a pH sensing active microcapsule oral vaccine delivery system which increased vaccine stability and demonstrated rapid uptake in the lower GI tract.)

He was Founding Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at University of Cincinnati; received a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture and Bio Engineering from Cornell University; a Master’s Degree  in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering from Penn State and a PhD in Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences from Notre Dame. He is now in Alberta as the Director of Ingenuity Lab, professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta, AITF Strategic Chair of Bionanotechnology, Program Lead of the Biomaterials Program at the National Institute for Nanotechnology and Canada Research Chair in Intelligent Nanosystems.

http://www.cme.engineering.ualberta.ca/FacultyStaff/FacultyAcademicStaff/Montemagno.aspx

Hosted by Professor Vishnu Baba Sundaresan