Laurel Hind is studying the signals that regulate the immune system and contribute to disease, supported by a major grant awarded to promising early-career faculty.

Hind, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, has received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award. This highly competitive program supports faculty with potential to become leaders in research and education.

The $646,000, five-year grant will support Hind's research on how the tissue environment directs the innate immune response. It will also fund outreach efforts to improve scientific literacy in immunology through a new program, “Immunology in our Everyday Lives."

“I am grateful for this award because it recognizes and builds on the work my students have done to understand how the tissue environment regulates innate immunity while also opening a completely new research area for my lab, which is very exciting," Hind said. "I am happy that the field recognizes the importance of understanding how physical cues regulate cell function.”

The innate immune response acts as the body's first line of defense against harmful invaders like bacteria or viruses, injuries and disease, and plays a critical role in maintaining health. However, an imbalance in the immune system can lead to inappropriate responses which are increasingly linked to diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic infections and fibrosis, and aging, Hind said. Understanding the signals that control this response and how they become dysregulated in disease could help develop new treatments. 

The award will support Hind and her team in exploring how physical changes in tissues affect immune function and contribute to worsened disease outcomes as diseases affected by immune system problems often involve changes in the physical properties of tissues. For example, tissues become stiffer in cancer and fibrotic diseases, but lose structure during the aging process. While the chemical signals that influence the immune system in these processes are well studied, how the physical properties of tissues impact immunity is not yet fully understood.

Using novel biomaterials in an innovative “inflammation-on-a-chip” device, Hind and her team will examine how properties such as stiffness, elasticity and the dynamics of tissue stiffening affect innate immune cell function. Importantly, it will identify the genes and proteins that drive these changes, providing targets for future therapeutic development.

The award will also support the development of a curriculum to improve scientific literacy in immunology to encourage public health initiatives through community-engaged outreach. This curriculum will use games and hands-on activities to explain how antibiotics and antibodies work and demonstrate the importance of herd immunity. It will also help retain and recruit women and historically excluded students in science and engineering by involving them in research and curriculum development.

“Public health initiatives like broad participation in vaccination and reducing the overuse of antibiotics are so important for the health of our communities, yet many people don’t understand why, which can lead to resistance," Hind said. "I am excited to share our knowledge in an accessible way with students and families in our community.”

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Polymer thin films can extend the lifespan of everyday products, such as food packaging for preserving freshness and protective coatings for electronics. Advancing their design to be even thinner and more durable could expand their applications further.

Kōnane Bay, an assistant professor based in the University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, recently received a prestigious  Award, a $675,000, five-year grant from the . The funding will advance her work in polymer characterization and support the development of high school and summer program curricula that integrate materials science and engineering lessons with traditional Indigenous knowledge.

“It feels great to be recognized by the polymer community for both the scientific and outreach work that we are doing,” Bay said.

The award will support Bay and her team at the Huli Materials Lab in investigating how the mechanical properties of polymer films evolve as their thickness is reduced to less than 100 nanometers—about a thousand times thinner than a human hair or cling wrap. Many industrial applications depend on the mechanical performance and stability of these films. The difficulty, Bay said, lies in the fact that when polymer materials are processed into thinner films, their mechanical strength changes in ways that are not yet fully understood.

Using a custom-built instrument, researchers in the Huli Lab will study how variables like thickness, temperature and surface interactions affect the strength of these films. The findings will provide valuable insights for designing more reliable adhesives, coatings and membranes while reducing material costs, energy use and environmental waste.

The project will fund a PhD student for five years to study the mechanics of ultrathin polymer films.

In addition to supporting research, the funding will enable the development of high school and summer program curricula that integrate materials science and engineering with traditional Indigenous knowledge. Growing up in Hawaiʻi, Bay draws from her heritage to shape this initiative, which aims to increase STEM recruitment and retention among women and historically excluded students, particularly Native Hawaiians, through curriculum development, outreach and mentoring to inspire the next generation of diverse STEM leaders.

“The curriculum will be designed to inspire high school students across ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ and Hawaiʻi to explore and pursue advanced degrees and careers in STEM disciplines,” Bay said.

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Kristi Anseth, a Distinguished Professor and Tisone Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, has been awarded the prestigious  in recognition of her pioneering research in tissue engineering. Winners were selected from nearly 1,500 scientific nominations spanning more than 80 countries and territories worldwide.

Anseth, also the associate faculty director of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute, said she was deeply honored to receive the recognition.

“It is one that I will cherish for years to come,” said Anseth after being presented with the award Dec. 6 at the 2024 VinFuture Prize Award Ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam. “I thank the VinFuture Foundation for sponsoring this award to highlight the innovation of women in science and engineering.”

Anseth designs biomaterials that interact with living tissues to promote repair and regeneration, aiding in healing injuries and diseases. Her lab works with hydrogels—a degradable biomaterial—to deliver molecules at the right time and sequence to accelerate the healing process. Her team is also growing miniaturized versions of heart cells and tissues, known as organoids, to better understand disease mechanisms and explore new types of heart disease treatments, such as to repair heart muscles after heart attacks.

Anseth said she has been fortunate to work in the dynamic and evolving field of biomaterials and to be working at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder.

“The translation of bioengineering across biology and medicine remains a frontier with many opportunities to explore,” she said. "I believe that many of the major breakthroughs in the next decade will continue at this interface and lead to improvements in healthcare for people everywhere.

“ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder has provided an amazing environment for a nearly 30-year career. I started as a faculty member in 1996, and the community of faculty and students has been an amazing environment to support my own learning and creativity. What’s the phrase—'minds to match our mountains’? I feel fortunate to be surrounded by exceptional people.”

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Laurel Hind, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, has been recognized with the Rising Star Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society - Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Special Interest Group. 

CMBE’s Rising Star awards are presented annually to a distinguished group of exceptional junior principal investigators each year. In recognition of her accomplishments, Hind was invited to present her research findings in January at the 2025 BMES-CMBE conference in Carlsbad, California.  

"I am very excited to accept this award," Hind said. "It highlights the innovative research the students in my laboratory are conducting to better understand the fundamental mechanisms of immune cell signaling and their potential impacts on human health."

Hind’s work focuses on using engineering principles to better understand the immune response to diseases. Her lab studies how inflammation, cell-cell interactions and the surrounding tissues influence the immune response, with the long-term goal of finding new drug targets to help treat diseases.

For five years Hind's laboratory has been investigating the fundamental mechanisms that regulate the innate immune response to inflammation, with a focus on bacterial infections. The research aims to understand how cells integrate the myriads of signals in an inflammatory environment into an efficient and effective response. During an innate immune response, innate immune cells receive signals from pathogens, blood vessels and tissue cells and react within minutes to protect against infection. 

"This award honors our work investigating how this response fails following sepsis, leading to an increased risk of infection," she said. "This could have profound applications for the way in which we treat patients who recover from sepsis.”

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Assistant Professor Ankur Gupta has been selected as the winner of the inaugural Johannes Lyklema Early Career Award in Electrokinetics, given by the International Electrokinetics Society. 

Electrokinetics, which focuses on the study of the movement of particles, ions, or fluids under the influence of an electric field or chemical gradients, has applications in energy storage, environmental technologies and microfluidic devices.

Gupta was given the award for his contribution towards "new insights in diffusiophoresis, including links to Turing patterns, and charge transport in porous energy systems."

"I am honored to receive this award," Gupta said. "It is heartening to be recognized by the electrokinetics community. I would like to thank all the students and postdocs in the group for their hard work, which made this award possible, and extend my gratitude to the mentors and colleagues who nominated me for the award."

The award will be presented on Sept. 18 at the ELKIN meeting in Sevilla, Spain, and as part of that honor, Gupta will give a lecture. In addition to the honorary talk, Gupta will deliver a lecture about the research developed by his ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder group, the Laboratory of Interfaces, Flow and Electrokinectics.  

Johannes Lyklema, the award's namesake, was a passionate supporter of young scientists in the electrokinetics field.

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Assistant Professor Wyatt Shields presents at the 2023 Packard Fellows retreat.

Wyatt Shields has been honored with a 2024 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award for his contributions to teaching and research on medical microrobots, self-propelled miniature robots that one day might deliver prescription drugs to hard-to-reach places inside the human body.

PhD Student Nicole Day presents her research to Northglenn High School Students at the "Reverse Science Fair," held on Nov. 27, 2023. Credit: Byron Reed, 9News.

Microrobot seen under a scanning electron microscope.
(Credit: Shields Lab)

Eighteen Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars were selected for 2024, and each awardee will receive an unrestricted grant of $100,000.

"I am honored to join an impressive community of scholars who are committed to research excellence and teaching at the highest levels, reflecting the core values we share at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder,” said Shields, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder.

According to the foundation, award recipients “are within the first five years of their academic careers, have each created an outstanding independent body of scholarship and are deeply committed to education.”

Funds from this award will support new trainees in the Shields Lab to advance work on synthetic and living microrobots that are capable of performing next-generation medical tasks. Synthetic microrobots are manufactured from biocompatible materials to move or change shape in response to stimulation from ultrasound or magnetic fields. In contrast, living microrobots comprise nanoparticles that attach to—and co-opt—immune cells for enhanced delivery to diseased tissues for medical treatments.

The microrobots may one day enhance the delivery of drugs to diseased tissues within the body or inform treatment decisions; instead of cutting into the patient, the robots could enter the body through a pill or an injection and undergo remote stimulation.

Shields added that teaching takes many forms, including classroom pedagogy, mentoring undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the lab and engaging in community outreach.

“The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation value all of these dimensions of teaching,” he said.

Shields plans to use this award to connect academic research to classroom teaching and to engage the broader public. To this end, Shields and Alex Rose from ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Science Discovery created the first annual "" last year. This event challenges graduate students to effectively communicate their research to local high school students in an engaging and understandable manner.

“The earlier we offer these opportunities for high school students to discover the diversity of scientific fields and careers out there, the better,” Rose said.

Shields has won numerous awards, including a Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering, a Pew Biomedical Scholar award, an NSF CAREER award, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program award​ and a National Institute of Health Maximizing Investigators' Research award.

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Photo caption:  The Schwartz lab discovered that molecules move around on surfaces via a complex type of motion involving crawling, hopping and flying.

           Professor Dan Schwartz

Professor Daniel K. Schwartz has been honored with the prestigious American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry 2024 Langmuir Lectureship award. He was nominated by his colleagues for significant contributions to the field of colloid and interface science.

Colloids are mixtures in which one substance is finely dispersed in another substance. Interface science refers to the boundaries between different phases of matter, such as between two unmixable liquids, or between a liquid and a solid. 

Schwartz, a professor in ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, said the award was significant for several reasons. 

“Most importantly, it recognizes the excellence of research performed by my PhD students and postdocs, past and present,” he said. “The recognition is also special because it is sponsored jointly by the ACS Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry and the ACS journal Langmuir, both of which are very close to my heart. The namesake of the award, Irving Langmuir, a Nobel laureate and the foundational figure of surface science, is a long-time scientific hero of mine.”

Schwartz will receive a commemorative plaque, complimentary registration and reimbursement for travel expenses to the ACS fall 2024 meeting and a $3,000 award. He  will also deliver a special lecture at the ACS fall 2024 symposium.

Single molecule/nanoparticle tracking microscopy is
used to study transport in the liquid-filled void spaces of
porous materials.

Schwartz’s colloid and interface science research carries significant practical implications for various fields. These include membrane-separation processes and biocatalysis applications such as water purification, wastewater treatment, food and beverage processing and pharmaceutical manufacturing. His work also extends to chemical production as well as environmental remediation and biofuel synthesis.

“Dan’s contributions to fundamental understanding of dynamic interfacial phenomena are extraordinary,” the nominators said in a letter to the selection committee. “He has provided new windows into monolayers at interfaces, on solid boundaries and new approaches to understanding fundamental transport of confined molecules, nanoparticles and active particles in porous media. This work is of extraordinary scope and rigor.”

The award also entails an expectation that Schwartz will submit a feature article for publication in Langmuir within six months following his lectureship presentation.

“It is incredibly satisfying to share the award with my PhDs and postdocs,” Schwartz said. “I’m eagerly looking forward to the opportunity to describe their work to the award lecture audience in August.”

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Associate Professor Jerome Fox

Jerome Fox, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, has been named a senior member of the . NAI senior membership recognizes faculty, scientists and administrators for their contributions to innovation, including patents, licensing, commercialization and technologies aimed at benefiting society.

“It is a wonderful honor,” said Fox, who has one issued patent and two patents pending. “Translating our academic work into technology that has the potential to change lives—namely, to yield new medicines for patients who need them—has been a team effort. I am thankful to the wonderful group of scientists and engineers who have worked, and who are still working, to make this happen.”

At ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, Fox’s research group is engineering microbes to facilitate the discovery of biologically active compounds, paving the way to develop novel drugs and therapeutic agents to address unmet medical needs. The group is also developing innovative methods for measuring and manipulating cell signaling using light, which could lead to new therapies for complex diseases. Their broad interests also include the development of sustainable and efficient methods to produce oleochemicals to help meet the rising demands for renewable fuels.

Fox’s research group has uncovered novel inhibitors of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B)—an elusive target for treating diabetes, obesity and cancer—and provided a new framework for using synthetic biology to address challenging drug targets.

In 2021, Fox commercialized his work by founding Think Bioscience, which licensed his intellectual property from ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder to develop new medicines. The company, which has raised more than $25 million, is developing drugs to treat Rett Syndrome, a neurological disorder that affects one in 10,000 women; researchers there are also developing a cancer medicine for patients who do not respond to traditional immuno-oncology therapies.  

NAI senior membership also recognizes faculty mentorship of young inventors. Fox received the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Faculty Award from his department twice, and in 2023, he was honored with the Dean’s Performance Award for Teaching, an annual recognition given to one faculty member in the college.

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Hendrik Heinz, professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ 

Boulder, has been awarded an International Association for Advanced Materials (IAAM), in recognition of his contributions to advanced materials, engineering and technology. 

The prestigious award was given to Heinz for creating powerful computational simulation tools that accurately model inorganic-biological systems, ranging from tiny atoms to a larger micrometer scale, Heinz said. The tools have greatly improved the accuracy of material design, making it possible to predict and create catalysts, composites and structural materials more efficiently. The increased accuracy allows researchers to speed up the design process and test new materials, leading to the development of improved materials, he added.

As part of the honor, Heinz was invited to deliver the IAAM Scientist Medal Lecture at the American Fellow Summit, held on March 1 in Miami, Florida. Following the lecture, he was presented with the IAAM Scientist Medal citation. 

In 2020, Heinz was elected as a Fellow of the IAAM. 

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