Recognizing Bioengineering Excellence

By Anonymous

Several leaders in the biological engineering field were honored at AIChE’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City last month. As previously announced (CEP, Oct. 2007, p. 36), George Georgiou, the Cockrell Chair in Engineering at the Univ. of Texas at Austin, received SBE’s James E. Bailey Award. His presentation, “Engineering the Next Generation of Therapeutic Proteins,” addressed some of the challenges faced by chemical engineers involved in the development of human tiierapeutic enzymes, including: identifying tiierapeutic targets; engineering enzymes that can catalyze the desired reactions at the required rate and with the required selectivity; eliminating adverse immune responses; ensuring stability in vivo; and understanding pharmacokinetics.

Gregory Stephanopoulos

Stephanopoulos, the W. H. Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received the AIChE Founders Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Chemical Engineering. He was singled out for his contributions to the technical, educational and professional advancement of chemical engineering, especially for extending the chemical engineering paradigm in the field of the life sciences, as well as his service to AIChE, as a national director, and a leader and founder of the Society for Biological Engineering.

Stephanopoulos is the principal founder of the field of metabolic engineering. Applying sophisticated methods from control theory and dynamics of reaction networks, he led the way for chemical engineers to make major advances in the use of cell-based technologies for the biological production of oils, biopolymers, solvents, pharmaceuticals, and many other specialty and commodity chemicals.

His groundbreaking book, “Metabolic Engineering: Principles and Methodologies” (co-authored with A. A. Aristidou and J. Nielsen), established the educational foundations for the field, and opened a new forum of interaction between chemical engineering and the life sciences. He also helped launch the new journal Metabolic Engineering and establish a series of conferences devoted to the topic.

Stephanopoulos has also been an innovative teacher. “His way of thinking about, and teaching in, the field has enriched the chemical engineering discipline and established the field of systems biology as we know it,” said AIChE President Larry Evans.

Antonios Mikos

The John W. Cox Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering at Rice Univ., Mikos received the Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Research. He is internationally recognized for his research on tissue engineering, and his work has become the paradigm for soft-tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. He is a leader in the field of orthopedic tissue engineering, with a focus on bone.

Mikos is also doing pioneering work in the fields of drug delivery, including the use of biodegradable polymers, and biomaterials, where his research has become the standard for the design of novel biomaterials structures.

Mikos has earned the recognition of his peers, as indicated by his election as President of the U.S. branch of the International Tissue Society and his editorship of the field’s premier journal, Tissue Engineering. His innovative and seminal contributions to tissue engineering, biomaterials and drug delivery were heralded when he was selected as the recipient of the 2007 Distinguished Scientist and Lecturer Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society.

Jay D. Keasling

Professor of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, Keasling received the Professional Progress Award for Outstanding Progress in Chemical Engineering. His vision and achievements have captured world attention, and have led to a greater appreciation of the potential of chemical engineering to help cure diseases, make healtiicare more affordable, and address the energy crisis.

Keasling is a driving force behind the new area of syntiietic biology, which uses environmentally benign biological routes to replace chemical synthesis. He first developed the necessary molecular biology tools that enable microorganisms to be used as cellular factories to produce compounds ranging from pharmaceuticals to specialty and commodity chemicals.

He used cell biology to produce the antimalarial drug artemisinin, a complex double-ring molecule normally, and expensively, derived from plants. His group inserted more than a dozen genes into E. coli and yeast, setting up a molecular assembly line that allows the bacteria to produce the drug – and boosting artemisinin output ten-million-fold. Keasling hopes that further improvements will make the drug economical enough to be widely affordable in developing countries, potentially saving millions of lives.

Copyright American Institute of Chemical Engineers Dec 2007

(c) 2007 Chemical Engineering Progress. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.