An experiment devised by researchers at UConn startup LambdaVision will be launched into space tomorrow. The company’s robotic system to manufacture films that could cure blindness will be brought to the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory by the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Launch is set for Dec. 5 at 1:15 p.m. EST from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. LambdaVision Inc. was based on research by Robert Birge, professor emeritus in UConn’s Department of Chemistry. He first considered using bacteriorhodopsin, a light-activated protein, more than 15 years ago to correct age-related blindness. Today, the company is commercializing its technology in the hopes of restoring vision for millions of patients suffering from retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.The experiment is one of a diverse group of research investigations intended to benefit life on Earth that the Dragon spacecraft will bring to the orbiting research platform. With more than 20 payloads, including the one from LambdaVision, the mission represents the largest number of payloads ever delivered to the ISS National Lab during a single launch. LambdaVision’s retinal implant is similar to a contact lens that is surgically placed in the back of the eye to convert light into energy. The implant doesn’t need hardware or electrodes …

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Akshayaa Chittibabu ’19 (CLAS) has been named a Marshall Scholar, one of the most prestigious honors available to undergraduate students in the U.S. She is one of 48 Marshall recipients nationwide this year, and the fifth UConn student to be so honored since the scholarship was established in 1953. Chittibabu, a resident of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, is also a STEM Scholar in UConn’s Honors Program, a 2018 Truman Scholar, a 2018 UN Foundation Global Health Fellow, a 2018 Washington Leadership Program Scholar, a 2017 Newman Civic Fellow, a 2016 Holster Scholar, and a UConn New England Scholar. She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior. She says a couple of different things were instrumental in her decision to apply for the Marshall Scholarship: “I am dedicated to being a public servant in the future, and I appreciate the public service history of the scholarship,” she says. The scholarship is named after former Secretary of State George C. Marshall, and was established as a gesture of gratitude to the people of the United States for the assistance that the U.S. provided after World War II under the Marshall Plan. “The Marshall Plan aligns with my belief system of helping others unconditionally with the intention …

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A recent study led by University of Maryland and University of Connecticut researchers found that streams and rivers across the United States have become saltier and more alkaline over the past 50 years, thanks to road deicers, fertilizers, and other salty compounds that humans indirectly release into waterways. The team named this effect “Freshwater Salinization Syndrome.” New research from the same group takes a closer look at the global, regional, and local consequences of Freshwater Salinization Syndrome. The group found that salty, alkaline freshwater can release a variety of chemicals, including toxic metals and harmful nitrogen-containing compounds, from stream beds and soils in drainage basins. The results further suggest that many of these chemicals travel together throughout watersheds, forming “chemical cocktails” that can have more devastating effects on drinking water supplies and ecosystems when compared with individual contaminants alone. “Given what we are finding, I continue to be surprised by the scope and magnitude of the recent degradation of Earth’s surface waters,” says study co-author Gene Likens, distinguished professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UConn, who is known for his pioneering work on acid rain. “The formation of novel chemical cocktails is causing deterioration far beyond my expectations.” The group’s latest work, …

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University of Connecticut students involved in a unique learning experience are getting their hands dirty — literally. Six UConn freshmen pursuing science-related majors enrolled in a brand-new course this semester titled “Virus Hunters.” The aim is to get an up-close perspective on working both in the field and in a laboratory. “I don’t think a lot of freshmen get that opportunity,” freshman Callie Burke says. “We have two professors and six students. Being at such a big school, that’s not something we’re going to get very often, especially as freshmen.” Led by Carolyn Teschke and Simon White, professors in the UConn Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, students were tasked with hunting for new viruses, according to Jessica McBride, manager of research communications for the UConn Office of the Vice President for Research. “They start out by simply digging in the dirt, then examine samples to find new viruses, and eventually progress to a variety of microbiology techniques, complex genome annotation, and bioinformatic analyses,” McBride says. Burke says different techniques, like direct isolation and enriched isolation, were used to see if there were any bacteriophages present in the collected samples. “We’re putting a concentration of the phages onto really tiny electron microscope (EM) grids, then putting …

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UConn Health patients in eastern Connecticut will now be able to get MRI scans done in Storrs just as if they were at UConn Health in Farmington, thanks to a collaboration between doctors and researchers at the two campuses. UConn’s Brain Imaging Research Center (BIRC) houses a powerful 3 Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner that was installed in 2015 and originally dedicated purely to research. The BIRC’s machine can take detailed pictures of fine structures in the brain. It can also do functional MRI, which shows subtle changes in blood flow in the brain as a person thinks. Medical details – tiny flecks of blood that might signal a concussion, or small injuries to the spine or extremities – also show up beautifully on the scanner. But the state had not previously licensed the BIRC’s machine to perform medical work. Doctors at UConn Health and researchers at the BIRC thought that should change. “Soon after I started as chair, it became clear we had a long history of our UConn Husky athletes having scans done on the outside. But then their docs would bring the scans to us for a second read because they trusted us,” says Dr. Leo Wolansky, head …

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Step into a fall 2018 class section of PHYS 1602: Fundamentals of Physics II, and you’ll find a scene that’s far from the large introductory science lectures common on most college campuses. To start, the class of 30 students sits at several triangular workspaces, which today are covered with wires, coils, magnets, and power supplies that the students are using to demonstrate electromagnetic induction. At the start of class, the instructors provided a short lecture before the students set off on their own problem-solving tutorials. Now, the instructors move from group to group, stopping to answer questions, as students shuttle back and forth to the whiteboards that line the classroom walls. It’s a scene that’s about to become common in UConn physics courses, thanks to renovations to the Edward V. Gant Science Complex, according to Barrett Wells, professor and head of the Department of Physics. “We’re rebuilding our classes from the ground up,” he says. “It’s the basis for what we’re going to spread across most of our introductory courses.” The curricular redesign, says Wells, will replace the typical large-lecture format with smaller classes, utilizing five new studio-style physics learning laboratories to be added to the Gant Science Complex in 2019. These changes will promote …

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Professor Nora Berrah of the Department of Physics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has been named a 2018 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Berrah, who was head of the physics department from 2014-2018, has been recognized for her distinguished contributions to the field of molecular dynamics, particularly for pioneering non-linear science using x-ray lasers and spectroscopy using synchrotron light sources. Using big lasers – like the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC National Laboratory on the campus of Stanford University, the most powerful x-ray laser in the world – Berrah’s research explores transformational changes occurring inside molecules when exposed to ultra-intense beams of light. In particular, they investigate physical molecular processes that occur at the femtosecond time scale: one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth, of a second. In some of her research, Berrah and her colleagues study thymine, a component of DNA that has an ultrafast self-protection mechanism to guard skin from sunburn. Using ultrafast table-top laser light, they excite the molecule and then probe its decay mechanism with femtosecond x-rays from the LCLS, allowing the team to measure directly the time scale of thymine’s natural sunscreen-like properties. Berrah has also been …

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The internet has been a right in Mexico since the nation’s constitution was amended in 2013 to guarantee universal online access. Yet just 47 percent of households there reported having internet in 2016, the most recent data available. To get more citizens online, the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto has invested nearly $1 billion in its “Mexico Conectado” initiative since 2013, adding broadband connections to libraries, schools, hospitals, and other public facilities nationwide, particularly in poor and rural areas. Ensuring that all Mexicans have access to the internet would do more than just making good on the Constitution’s unfulfilled promise – it would also give the country’s economy a boost, my research shows. Internet access helps people escape poverty Forty-three percent of Mexicans lived in poverty in 2016, according to the most recent data from the Mexican Institute of Statistics and Geography. That’s down just 3 percentage points from 2010. Poverty rates have changed relatively little in Mexico over the past 20 years, despite ambitious anti-poverty programs offering cash assistance, food, health care, and educational opportunities to the poorest families. With its digital inclusion strategy, Mexico hopes to nudge social mobility upward. That’s because internet access and poverty reduction are strongly connected, as my study of 92 developing countries, including Mexico, confirms. The internet is now all but essential to economic mobility …

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Biorasis, a life sciences company developing the smallest non-surgically implantable continuous glucose monitoring system, has received $3 million in non-dilutive funding from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. As part of the agreement, the Helmsley Trust will provide funding to support preclinical advancement of Biorasis’ technology. The partnership is structured as a program-related investment (PRI) in the form of a loan to Biorasis. Invented by UConn professors, Biorasis’ technology responds to significant clinical and societal needs. Diabetes affects 30 million Americans, or one in 10, and creates numerous secondary complications including blindness, heart disease, and stroke. With one in every four Americans being pre-diabetic, innovative solutions to combat the diabetes epidemic continue to represent a major challenge for the U.S. healthcare system. “We are excited and honored to be working with the Helmsley Charitable Trust, an organization dedicated to bringing new technologies and therapies to people with Type 1 diabetes,” says Fotis Papadimitrakopoulos, UConn professor of chemistry and co-founder of Biorasis. “We look forward to our combined efforts to improve the lives of many who suffer from this debilitating disease.” Type 1 diabetes (T1D) patients need a long-term, reliable, and cost-effective continuous glucose monitoring system to effectively manage their condition. Biorasis is …

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Wandering through a graveyard on a genealogical expedition with her father, a young Lisa Eaton noticed tombstone after tombstone of young mothers and their babies from centuries ago. Her father told her: “We’re just getting out of the dark ages of medicine.” These early adventures had a lasting impact on Eaton who has since dedicated her life as a researcher and professor of human development and family studies at the University of Connecticut to combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic among black gay/bisexual men in the southeastern United States. “The capacity for a scientist to impact public health was really awe-inspiring,” Eaton says. “I’ve always been captivated by how healthcare advances could be affected for social good.” Eaton began her career studying maternal health issues in South Africa, but shifted her focus onto the HIV crisis among black gay/bisexual men in the US upon realizing the scope of the epidemic. In her early work, the HIV epidemic among gay/bisexual black men appeared unbelievable, to the point that Eaton was sure her data were wrong. She found 30 to 40 percent of the black gay/bisexual men in Atlanta reported living with HIV. This is compared to the national average of less than one percent of all adults. “It was …

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