Engineering Biology & Materials Science
Health & Medicine Challenge:

Promote equitable access to healthcare, patient representation in research, democratization of medicine, and the development of personalized medicines.

Materials that monitor and report patient vitals, particularly those vitals that otherwise require complex/expensive machinery (e.g., magnetic resonance imaging) to monitor.

  • Technical Achievement: Engineer stimuli-responsive materials that create sufficient contrast for high-resolution, noninvasive visualization of tissues (e.g., ultrasound).
  • Technical Achievement: Develop nanoscale materials that recognize specific biomarkers for detection and/or tagging of tissues for surgical intervention.

Cell-free systems for democratizing access to medicines, materials, and diagnostics.

  • Technical Achievement: Develop low-cost, portable, on-demand cell-free synthesis platforms to make vaccines and therapeutics in freeze-dried lysates.
  • Technical Achievement: Develop low-cost, portable, on-demand cell-free diagnostic platforms to monitor patient vitals, viral load, or environmental exposures.
Last updated: January 19, 2021 Back