Nanobiotechnology

NanoBio Collaboration

In October, scientists and engineers from the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS) and the Nanotechnology Center gathered with Rensselaer leadership to celebrate the newest research collaboration on
campus — nanobiotechnology. The two teams of researchers formally began a collaboration between the campus research centers by opening a new research laboratory on the third floor of CBIS devoted to the emerging area of scientific research.

The opening of the new NanoBio Cluster, as the lab will be called, was completed with a ribbon cutting by President Shirley Ann Jackson; Richard Siegel, director of the Nanotechnology Center and the Robert W. Hunt Professor of Materials Science and Engineering; and Robert Linhardt, acting director of the CBIS and the Ann and John H. Broadbent Jr. ’59 Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering.

CBIS has devoted $22.5 million from the Gen*NY*sis fund to improve research infrastructure and purchase cutting-edge equipment in the past two years. The equipment — particularly the new atomic force/TIRF microscope, the new optical tweezer/ molecular capture microscope, the fluorimeter, the analytical ultracentrifuge, and X-ray scattering devices — will be helpful for researchers looking to link the minuscule world of nanotechnology with the theories, techniques, and living cells of biotechnology.

An expanding field of study, nanobiotechnology brings together the synthetic, nanoscale structures of nanotechnology and the principles of living organisms studied in biotechnology to develop new technologies. These technologies can fuse actual living cells to nanodevices to create biosensors and biocomputers or mimic the unique aspects of living organisms to construct new, better performing nanotechnologies.