This year’s recipients of the notable College of Arts and Sciences’ award are especially distinct, the chair of the award committee notes

Seventeen exceptional undergraduates are this year’s recipients of the Jacob Van Ek scholarship, one of the College of Arts and Sciences’ highest honors. 

The award recognizes faculty-nominated students who display superior academic achievement and service to the University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, the Denver and Boulder communities, or larger national and international communities. A five-person faculty committee selects the winners, who receive a $250 award and a certificate of recognition.

“The Van Ek Award is one of the most distinctive undergraduate awards on the Boulder campus,” says Nina L. Molinaro, professor of Spanish and chair of the award committee. 

“The Van Ek Selection Committee takes into consideration the GPAs and academic honors of the nominees, along with the range and depth of service contributions with which the nominees are associated. These include unpaid and paid community service activities, unpaid and paid extracurricular department and university activities and work experience.”

The winners of the Van Ek Scholar Awards for 2021 managed, under very difficult circumstances, to excel academically and to contribute enormous service to incredibly diverse groups."

The award is named for Jacob Van Ek (1896-1994), who was among a generation of faculty who shaped ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder in the 20th century. Called “the boy dean” by students for his relative youth, for academic excellence, intellectual freedom and tolerance. 

He established programs for academically talented students, creating one of the nation’s first honors programs, and vigorously defended members of untenured faculty who were fired for holding unpopular views.

Molinaro notes that the achievements of this year’s winners are especially distinct, given the challenges of the past year.

“The winners of the Van Ek Scholar Awards for 2021 managed, under very difficult circumstances, to excel academically and to contribute enormous service to incredibly diverse groups, and among them university organizations, professional organizations, nonprofit groups, national organizations and many more.”

The following students are this year’s Jacob Van Ek Scholar Award recipients:

• Ava Begun, speech, language and hearing sciences
• Taylor Fahey, speech, language and hearing sciences
• Skylar Fendrick, speech, language and hearing sciences
• Margaret Friesen, women and gender studies
• Taylor Hirschberg, sociology
• Kavya Kannan, economics, political science and international affairs
• Emily Majluf, astrophysical and planetary sciences
• Elizabeth Mather, political science and international affairs
• Izi Moss, molecular, cellular and developmental biology
• Maisa Nammari, linguistics
• Kiar Rickert, sociology and women and gender studies
• Sarah Schleifer, English
• Gaby Solano Serna, Spanish
• Nadyah Spahn, international affairs
• Elizabeth Stanton, environmental studies and international affairs
• Luke Walther, chemistry and mathematics
• Zhiyu (Philippe) Yao, astrophysical and planetary sciences

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The grant will also help the university upgrade its electron microscopy and tomography facility

The University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder will be one of four national centers designed to advance the application of cryoelectron tomography (cryoET), which helps visualize in 3-D the fine-structure of intact cells and tissues, the National Institutes of Health announced (NIH) today.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder scientists, who have been at the forefront of this technology, have won a six-year, $7 million grant for the center.  

Cryo-electron tomography is a method in which vitrified specimens are imaged at different tilt angles in an electron microscope to construct high-resolution three-dimensional images.  

The principal investigators of the new service center are Andreas Hoenger and Michael Stowell from the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Karolin Luger from the Department of Biochemistry.

 

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder scientists, who have been at the forefront of this technology, have won a four-year, $7 million grant for the center."

Through this grant (), researchers from around the country will receive remote and on-site training and technical assistance in sample preparation for cryoelectron tomography from ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder experts.  

The grant will also help the university upgrade its electron microscopy and tomography facility, especially with a new scanning electron microscope, supplemented with a focused ion beam miller (FIB-SEM). This instrument will produce vitrified lamellae of cells and tissues, which will then be imaged with cryoET. 

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder has five decades of leadership in electron microscopy.  The founding chair of the MCDB Department, Keith Porter (after whom Porter Biosciences is named), followed by J. Richard McIntosh, was one of the pioneers of cellular electron microscopy.  

Through the work of Professor Emeritus Andrew Staehelin and McIntosh, MCDB also pioneered the subfields of electron microscopy, high-pressure freezing, freeze-etch and freeze-fracture EM.  And for many years, MCDB hosted one of a handful of High Voltage Electron Microscope National Centers and the Boulder Laboratory for 3D Electron Microscopy of Cells. 

More recently, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder acquired a $5 Million Krios cryo-electron microscope, spearheaded by Luger and other contributors, which places Boulder at the forefront of cryo-EM based cellular and macro-molecular research. 

For more information, visit the .

BioKEM—or Biochemistry Krios Electron Microscopy—is now open and available to ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder researchers and occasional external or industry use.

Learn more about the BioKEM facility

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What’s the big idea?

Current industrialized food systems were optimized for a single goal – growing the maximum amount of food for the least amount of money. But when room and supplies are limited – like during space travel – you need to optimize for a different set of goals to meet the needs of the people you are trying to feed.

NASA and the Translational Research Institute for Space Health asked my lab to figure out how to grow an edible plant for long-term space missions where fresh, nutritious food must be produced in tight quarters and with limited resources. To do this, we turned to a plant called duckweed.

Duckweed grows just as fast under energy-efficient low-intensity light (top left) as it does under bright lights (bottom right). , 

Duckweed is a small floating plant that grows on the surface of ponds. It is commonly eaten in Asia but is mostly considered a pest plant in the U.S. as it can quickly take over ponds. But duckweed is a remarkable plant. It is one of the , is the most and also produces an . Two of these micronutrients are the inflammation-fighting antioxidants zeaxanthin and lutein. Zeaxanthin is the more potent of the two, but is hard to get from most leafy greens since fast-growing plants accumulate zeaxanthin only under extremely bright lights.

I proposed to the Translational Research Institute for Space Health that in addition to maximizing nutritional, space and resource efficiency, we also try to optimize the production of these antioxidants.

With just a little bit of experimentation, our team determined that under relatively low-intensity light – less than half as intense as midday sun on a clear summer day – duckweed accumulates while still maintaining the same incredible growth rate and other nutritional attributes that make it the perfect plant for a space farm.

We are also testing another strategy that would grow duckweed in even lower-intensity light but would supplement those light levels with a . In other plants, my team discovered that this can trigger high amounts of zeaxanthin accumulation and fast growth and, relevant to a spaceship, would cost less energy.

From these experiments, we are planning several customized growth conditions to optimize zeaxanthin production for a variety of different applications – whether it be a spaceship a greenhouse or even outdoors.

Why does it matter?

Due to the ionizing radiation in space, astronauts are susceptible to . Zeaxanthin and lutein have been shown to as well as , another common health problem that astronauts experience.

 

With the right know-how, it is possible to make small changes to a few variables in how plants are grown and get them ,"

Many essential micronutrients have a finite shelf life – often . As astronauts begin going on longer missions, the only way they will be able to get these antioxidants is to grow them on board.

What still isn’t known?

While we know that intense light makes duckweed and other plants produce zeaxanthin, plants quickly remove it from their leaves when light levels drop. To meet the specific challenge of producing large amounts of zeaxanthin, more work is needed on how to coax leafy greens to .

What’s next?

Our project used duckweed grown in sterile environments – we used plants stripped of the microbes that normally occur in the water on which duckweeds float. Since researchers know that , our next goal will be to explore opportunities to further enhance duckweed productivity by experimenting with beneficial microbial communities.

Duckweed is already grown for many uses on Earth, and duckweed salad might be a high-protein staple in the diets of many future space explorers. But this work is also proof that win-win solutions to food production are possible.

With the right know-how, it is possible to make small changes to a few variables in how plants are grown and get them . Similar approaches taken with other crops could benefit people across the world, not just astronauts. On Earth, slight changes in how people grow food, backed by scientific research like ours, offer opportunities to greatly improve food production systems such that they need less, produce more and keep people healthier.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

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Leslie Leinwand and Chris Bowman named fellows of the National Academy of Inventors 

University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder Distinguished Professors Leslie Leinwand and Chris Bowman have been named fellows of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Leinwand is chief scientific officer of the BioFrontiers Institute and professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and Chris Bowman is the James and Catherine Patten endowed chair of the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department.

A nonprofit organization founded in 2010, the National Academy of Inventors  aims to acknowledge academic innovators who hold U.S. patents that benefit society.

Election to NAI fellow status is “the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and welfare of society,” the NAI states.

Bowman and Leinwand’s research and innovations do just that.

Leslie Leinwand

She made progress toward this goal with her first patent, which outlined a new way for scientists to secure a fundamental protein found in muscles. With this ability, they could then make progress toward understanding how mutations in the protein, and others it interacts with, might lead to disease.

“My first patent was quite special to me,” she says. “We were trying to develop some assays that are now translating to therapies.”

Since then, she has been awarded three other patents and co-founded two biotech companies based on technologies developed in her lab, including a mouse model of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic heart disease that is a common cause of sudden death in athletes.

Leinwand presented these mice to the scientific community as a test bed for drugs that might treat the disease. One of the companies she co-founded, MyoKardia, now develops small molecules and uses these mice to test the effectiveness of compounds that are now in clinical trials to treat the disease.

“It’s flattering to be named a fellow,” says Leinwand. “It’s nice for ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ, and I’m happy about it.”

Bowman, who’s been awarded close to a dozen patents, is likewise flattered to be named to this year’s NAI fellows class.“It’s a very big honor,” he says. “To be recognized in that way, particularly by your peers, is incredibly nice.”

Bowman’s research combines engineering and material science with organic chemistry “to address problems that couldn’t be addressed otherwise.”

“We try to design new materials that enable properties or capabilities that the material wouldn’t have otherwise,” says Bowman.

Chris Bowman

Many of these new materials are dental restoratives, like cavity fillings and teeth sealants. His lab also works on so-called “smart” materials that respond when exposed to light or when heated up as well as on developing materials that solidify faster or are stronger than existing materials. These innovations could prove useful for micro- and nanotechnology applications in wound healing.

Although, he says he’s not sure he deserves the recognition, he’s grateful for the work the NAI does.

“Having the NAI advocating on behalf of creativity and invention and helping our government to understand the various issues [of licensing technology] will be valuable,” says Bowman.

Others are happy to laud his work for him.

"Chris has had enormous impact in polymer science research, as a department chair, for his outstanding teaching and mentorship, for starting and leading the Materials Science and Engineering Program, in starting new companies and in inventing and developing new technologies," department chair Charles Musgrave said in a press release.

"His election to the NAI specifically recognizes Chris as a world leader among academic inventors."

Bowman and Leinwand join 175 leaders of academic invention named 2016 fellows in December and will be inducted as part of the Sixth Annual Conference of the NAI at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Mass. on April 6.

Assembled each year, a selection committee evaluates fellows for election. This year’s committee included 19 members, encompassing NAI fellows, recipients of U.S. national medals, National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees, members of the National Academies and senior officials from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, among others.

The National Academy of Inventors Fellows program includes 757 fellows worldwide. Together, the fellows hold “more than 26,000 issued U.S. patents and have generated more than 8,500 licensed technologies and companies, and created more than 1.1 million jobs with more than $100 billion in revenue generated based on their discoveries,” according to the 2016 NAI Activities Report.

Leinwand and Bowman join chemical and biological engineering Professor Kristi Anseth, elected in 2015, and former electrical and computer engineering Professor Kristina Johnson as NAI fellows.

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