CBE - Research

Biomolecular Engineering

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Under the umbrella of Biomolecular Engineering, many research groups within CBE are pioneering research in areas such as:

• Synthetic Biology
• Systems Biology
• Biomedical Research and Biotechnology
• Biochemistry and Biophysics of Biological Systems

Much of the research conducted in these areas has direct applications in:

• Human disease: design and engineering of therapeutic antibodies and proteins, cell and tissue engineering, delivery of vaccines and therapeutics, discovery of cancer targets, treatment of brain tumors.
• Fundamental processes of living systems: artificial trees, bioseparations, cell-cell and virus-cell interactions, cellular and subcellular organization, protein biogenesis, regulation and control of networks.

The Role of Chemical Engineers

The advent of molecular biology, genomics, proteomics, and related technology has spawned a revolution in biology and offers numerous opportunities for new commercial developments. Increasingly, the biotechnology industry is turning to chemical engineers to bring promising research to market. To bridge this gap, a subset of chemical engineering known as biomolecular engineering has emerged that reflects the interface between biology and chemical engineering. Biomolecular engineering focuses on the molecular length scale, and seeks to convert molecular-level knowledge of biological phenomena into potentially useful biochemical and chemical products and processes that are derived from living cells or their components. Further, biomolecular engineers are adept at integrating descriptions of molecular-level events into a systems-level understanding of complex biological systems and at creating the next generation of tools necessary for rapid, accurate, and cost-effective analysis of biomolecules.

Armed with this training, faculty members at Cornell are transforming the basic insights from an emerging understanding of biology into useful processes, diagnostics, therapies, and devices that will be of broad benefit to human kind. For instance, we are creating new medicines and systems for their delivery, building artificial proteins, tissues, organs and whole organisms, engineering “super-organisms” that produce human drugs, manufacture biofuels or degrade harmful or toxic wastes, developing better analytical and computational tools for understanding and diagnosing human disease and improving our understanding of a myriad of important and fundamental biological processes ranging from the decoration of cellular proteins with a sugary coat, so-called glycosylation, to the fusion of viruses to cell membranes as occurs in the earliest stages of influenza infection.

Typical Projects

• Studying the fusion of viruses to cell membranes to understand and prevent influenza infection, to develop drug delivery strategies that mimic viral entry, and as a patterning technique to interface biological species with inorganic substrates for sensor development.
• Employing microfluidic devices for separating and aggregating membrane-bound species that will aid in studying transmembrane proteins and membrane biophysics.
• Merging cell culture with microfabrication technologies to create “lab-on-a-chip” analogue devices that mimic the human body or biomaterials that exploit microfluidic structure as a vascular system for applications in tissue engineering and wound healing.
• Developing detailed mechanistic mathematical models of cellular differentiation and proliferation to unlock the mysteries of stem cell biology as well as many cancers and cardiovascular disorders.
• Using the fundamental aspects of quality control mechanisms that regulate the synthesis and modification of cellular proteins for the creation of high-performance protein therapeutics and vaccines that may be used to treat human disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.
• Reprogramming bacteria to produce and stabilize new protein therapeutics, vaccines and adjuvants.
• Designing functional biomaterials to facilitate, target, and control the delivery of protein- and nucleic acid-based drugs that may one day help to treat cancers or infectious diseases.

Research Area Faculty

	Name	Department	Contact
	Daniel, Susan Assistant Professor	Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	256 Olin Hall 607 255-4675
	DeLisa, Matthew Associate Professor	Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	254 Olin Hall 607 254-8560
	Jin, Moonsoo M. Adjunct Associate Professor	Biomedical Engineering	607 255-7271
	Lucks, Julius B. James C. and Rebecca Q. Morgan Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow	Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	214 Olin Hall 607 255-3601
	Stroock, Abraham Duncan Associate Professor	Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	260 Olin Hall 607 255-4276
	Varner, Jeffrey D. Associate Professor	Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	244 Olin Hall 607 255-4258