EpiForAll started as an idea in UW Engineering's Engineering Innovation in Health class and is now on the path toward commercialization -- and bringing down skyrocketing cost of life-saving medicine.

EpiForAll won a first-place prize in the UW Buerk Center’s Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge, which came with a $15,000 award. That gave the EpiForAll team a high profile, as well as money to keep the project working.

Bruce Hinds' research group is pioneering efforts in "active" membranes that selectively electro-pump target bio-molecules. During dialysis, this will allow recovery of important nutrients and proteins for chemical balance, and can be contained in a compact device. Read more »

Deniz Yucesoy, a graduate student in MSE's GEMSEC Labs, has been awarded an Amazon Catalyst grant for a project titled "Remineralizing Tooth Whitening Lozenges for Healthy Daily Use."

Current whitening products typically contain hydrogen peroxide as the active ingredient, which remove discoloration by dissolving stained minerals from the surface of teeth. Although this chemical-etching process reveals a fresh surface, it is often at the expense of removing healthy enamel — the fully mineralized crown of teeth which provides protection and cannot regenerate. As a consequence, the inner layer, dentin, becomes exposed — creating complications, such as hypersensitivity and increased susceptibility to caries (cavities), which, taken together, far outweigh the cosmetic benefits.

Newly developed tooth-whitening lozenges dissolve in saliva recruiting calcium and phosphate ions to the surface of teeth and create a new mineral layer through a restorative process thereby eliminating undesirable stains. When fully developed through the Catalyst Project, whitening lozenges will be used, clinically and over-the-counter product worldwide, for both therapeutic (remineralization) and cosmetic (whitening) purposes providing a safer alternative to the existing peroxide-containing corrosive treatments.

The Whitening Lozenge Team members (l to r): Sanaz Saadat (grad student, Oral Health Sciences), Sami Dogan (Assistant Professor and Clinician, Restorative Dentistry), Mehmet Sarikaya (Professor and PI, MSE), Deniz Yucesoy (MSE grad student and The Catalyst Lead, MSE), and Hanson Fong (Research Scientist, MSE).

Miqin Zhang, a professor in UW MSE, is looking for ways to help the body heal itself when injury, disease or surgery cause large-scale damage to one type of tissue in particular: skeletal muscle. Muscles have a limited ability to regenerate, repair and realign themselves properly after certain types of damage.

Zhang and her team are taking a synthetic approach to muscle regeneration. Their goal is to create a synthetic, porous, biologically compatible "scaffold" that mimics the normal extracellular environment of skeletal muscle &mdash' onto which human cells could migrate and grow new replacement fibers. Their research is published in the Nov. 16 issue of Advanced Materials.

Professor Kannan Krishnan’s textbook “Magnetism and Magnetic Materials” was formally released in the United States on October 18, 2016.

Krishnan’s book, twelve years in the making, has a unique multidisciplinary focus, tailored to a broad audience of physicists, materials scientists, engineers, chemists, biologists, and medical doctors.

“[He] has written what could become a new standard textbook in the field of magnetic materials,” said Urs Hafeli, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia.

On October 12, 2016, Devin MacKenzie and Christine Luscombe, Associate Professors of Materials Science & Engineering joined Clean Energy Institute Director Dan Schwarz for a research showcase and introduction to the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds (WCET) for Rep. Norma Smith.

Rep. Norma Smith is responsible for the bill that established the Joint Center for Deployment and Research in Earth Abundant Materials (JCDREAM) to provide the organizational framework to stimulate innovation in the use of earth abundant materials.

Devin MacKenzie, Dan Schwartz, and Rep. Norma Smith (left to right). Photos courtesy of UW State Relations.

Luscombe discussed how she is using earth abundant materials in her lab as well as her work as faculty adviser for Diversity in Clean Energy (DICE).

MacKenzie discussed his work in sustainable batteries and new methods and materials for solar energy.

MSE professor Mehmet Sarikaya leads research that has unveiled peptides that could improve results in how we treat disease, repair damaged tissue. and replace lost limbs. While implanted electrodes scar, wires overheat and our bodies struggle against ill-fitting pumps, pipes or valves, a paper published published Sept. 22 in Scientific Reports shows how a genetically engineered peptide can assemble into nanowires atop 2-D, solid surfaces that are just a single layer of atoms thick. These nanowire assemblages are critical because the peptides relay information across the bio/nano interface through molecular recognition — the same principles that underlie biochemical interactions such as an antibody binding to its specific antigen or protein binding to DNA.

Congratulations to Jim De Yoreo on receiving the very prestigious Materials Research Society’s (MRS) David Turnbull Lectureship Award for 2016! De Yoreo, an MSE affiliate professor, is being honored for helping shape the world's understanding of crystallization science. De Yoreo, who is also an affiliate professor in UW Chemistry and lead at the PNNL Materials Synthesis and Simulation Across Scales Initiative, will give a technical lecture at the MRS Fall Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts in November. The David Turnbull Lectureship Award recognizes the career of a scientist who has made outstanding contributions to understanding materials phenomena and properties through research, writing, and lecturing, as exemplified by the late David Turnbull of Harvard University.