Recent Lab News

2/2010 Professor Banta gave a research seminar entitled "Protein Engineering for Biosensors and Biofuel Cells" as part of the Science at the Edge Seminar series in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

1/2010 A paper entitled "High affinity peptides for the recognition of the heart disease biomarker troponin I identified using phage display " by Park, Cropek, and Banta was published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering.

1/2010 Dr. Matthew Lluis from the University of Texas has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Welcome aboard Matthew!

12/2009 The Banta Lab is pleased to welcome two new graduate student into the lab group. Kevin Dooley and Tushar Patel both joined the research group this semester. Tushar will be co-advised by Professor Sanat Kumar.

12/2009 Dr. Yang Hee Kim from Seoul National University has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Welcome aboard Yang Hee!

11/2009 A paper entitled "A FRET-based method for probing the calcium-dependent conformational behavior of an intrinsically disordered beta roll domain from the Bordetella pertussis adenylate cyclase" by Szilvay, Blenner, Shur, Cropek, and Banta was published in the journal Biochemistry.

11/2009 Professor Banta gave an oral presentation at the Chemical and Biological Defense Science and Technology Conference in Dallas, TX. The talk was entitled "Beta Roll Peptide Structures for Allosterically Controlled Biomolecular Recogonition and Decontamination".

11/2009 Six platform presentations were delivered by members of the Banta group at the 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting in Nashville, TN. Professor Banta gave a talk entitled "Identification of Troponin I Binding Peptides Using Phage Display for Biosensor Development". Elliot Campbell gave a talk entitled "Cofactor Engineering of a Thermostable Aldo-Keto Reductase Enzyme: Altering Cofactor Specificity and Development of a Novel Directed Evolution Selection Platform". Shan Gao gave a talk entitled "Directed Evolution of Novel Cell Penetrating Peptides for Delivery to the Brain". Oren Shur gave two talks at the meeting. The first was entitled "Directed Evolution of Allosterically Regulated Beta Roll Subdomains for Biomolecular Recognition" and the second was entitled "Engineering Tools for Analysis of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins: Entropic Stabilization Enables a Type I Secretion Calcium Switch". Our collaborators at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave a talk entitled "On Chip Electrochemical Detection of Biomarkers From Cell Cultures On Microfluidic Reactors".

11/2009 Research in the Banta Lab has been featured in the latest edition of Engineering News from the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Scineces. Follow this link to see the full article: http://engineering.columbia.edu/web/newsletter/fall_2009/delivering_drugs_faster

9/2009 Shan Gao successfully defended her PhD thesis, the fourth from the Banta group. Her thesis was entitled "Characterization of the TAT cell penetrating peptide and directed evolution of new cell penetrating peptides for protein and nucleotide delivery to neuronal-like cells". Congratulations Dr. Gao!

8/2009 A paper entitled "A chimeric fusion protein engineered with disparate functionalities— enzymatic activity and self assembly" by Wheeldon, Campbell, and Banta was published in the Journal of Molecular Biology.

8/2009 The Banta Lab was well-represented at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington D.C. Professor Banta served as a chair for the two Advances in Metabolic Engineering sessions. He also gave two platform presentations. The first was entitled “Engineering of Targeted Cell Penetrating Peptides for Delivery to the Brain” and the second was entitled “Engineering Enzymes to Self-Assemble into Hydrogels for Bioelectrocatalysis”. Geza Szilvay gave a platform presentation entitled “The Beta Roll Peptide as a Novel Allosterically-Regulated Scaffold for Biomolecular Recognition”. And Elliot Campbell gave a platform presentation entitled “Towards a general dehydrogenase enzymatic platform: Engineering an alcohol dehydrogenase for self-assembly and for activity with alternative substrates”

7/2009 Mark Blenner successfully defended his PhD thesis, the third from the Banta group. His thesis was entitled "Tools for the Design and Engineering of Stimulus-Responsive Peptides and Intrinsically Disordered Protein Scaffolds". Congratulations Dr. Blenner!

7/2009 Four posters from the Banta group were presented at the 23rd Annual Symposium of the Protein Society in Boston, MA. Geza Szilvay presented a poster entitled "Structural studies of the calcium-dependent conformational behavior of a beta roll peptide". Professor Banta presented posters entitled "Towards a general dehydrogenase enzymatic platform: Engineering an alcohol dehydrogenase for self-assembly and for activity with alternative substrates", "The Beta-Roll Peptide as a Novel Allosterically-Regulated Scaffold for Biomolecular Recognition', and "Engineering Enzymes to Self-Assemble into Hydrogels".

7/2009 The Banta and Morrison Lab Groups had their third annual lunch and afternoon whiffleball game in Riverside Park.

7/2009 A paper entitled "TAT-mediated intracellular protein delivery to primary brain cells is dependent on glycosaminoglycan expression" by Simon, Gao, Kang, Banta, and Morrison III was published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering.

7/2009 Professor Banta presented both an oral and a poster presentation at the Biochemical Engineering XVI meeeting in Burlington, VT. The talk was entitled "The Beta Roll Peptide as a Novel Allosterially-Regulated Scaffold for Biomolecular Recognition". The poster was entitled "Engineering Enzymes to Self-Assemble into Hydrogels".

7/2009 Dr. Jun Wu from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Case Western Reserve University has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Welcome aboard Jun!

7/2009 Professor Scott Banta has been promoted to Associate Professor

6/2009 Professor Banta has been awarded a new 1 year research grant from the National Science Foundation. The title of the project is: "Catalytic Hydrogels from Bifunctional Enzymatic Building Blocks".

6/2009 Professor Banta and his collaborator Professor Barclay Morrison III in the department of Biomedical Engineering have been awarded a new 3 year research grant from the National Science Foundation. The title of the project is: "Directed Evolution of Specific Cell Penetrating Peptides".

6/2009 Shan Gao and Oren Shur both presented poster presentations at the 3rd Annual Advances in Biomolecular Engineering: Protein Design Symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences.

6/2009 Mark Blenner gave a talk entitled "Intrinsically Disordered RTX Motifs as Scaffolds for Engineering Allosterically Controlled Biomolecular Recognition" at the Chemical Biology:Year End Discussion Meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences.

5/2009 Doris Glykys successfully defended her PhD thesis, the second from the Banta group. Her thesis was entitled "Modeling and engineering of oxidoreductase proteins for miniaturized energy applications". Congratulations Dr. Glykys!

5/2009 Professor Banta gave a research seminar entitled "Protein Engineering for Biosensors and Biofuel Cells" in the Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM.

4/2009 Oren Shur and Flora Felsovalyi both successfully defended their thesis proposals. And, Asli Sahin passed her qualifying exam. Congratulations guys!

4/2009 A paper entitled "Development of a bacteriophage-based system for the selection of structured peptides" by Chockalingam, Lu and Banta was published in Analytical Biochemistry.

3/2009 Professor Banta has been awarded a Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for a new state-of-the-art Fast Performance Liquid Chromatography (FPLC) system.

3/2009 A paper entitled "Bifunctional chimeric fusion proteins engineered for DNA delivery: Optimization of the protein to DNA ratio" by Gao, Simon, Morrison III and Banta was published in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - General Subjects.

2/2009 A paper entitled "Metabolic Control Analysis of an Enzymatic Biofuel Cell" by Glykys and Banta was published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering.

2/2009 Ian Wheeldon successfully defended his PhD thesis, the first from the Banta group. The thesis was entitled "Bifunctional protein building blocks for functional hydrogel assembly" and Ian was awarded a Dissertation with Distinction. Congratulations Dr. Wheeldon!

1/2009 A platform talk and two posters from the Banta Lab were presented at the Society for Biological Engineers Second International Conference on Biomolecular Engineering in Santa Barbara, CA. The talk, given by Professor Banta was entitled "Enzymatic and Bioactive Hydrogels from Proteinaceous Bifunctional Building Blocks ". Mark Blenner presented a poster entitled "The Beta Roll Peptide as a Reversible, Calcium Sensitive, and Modular Scaffold for Engineering Allosteric Control of Biomolecular Recognition " and Professor Banta presented the second poster entitled "Protein Engineering of a Thermostable Alcohol Dehydrogenase to Alter Cofactor and Substrate Specificities "

12/2008 The Banta Lab is pleased to welcome a new graduate student into the lab group. Asli Sahin joined the research group this semester and will be co-advised by Professor Alan West.

12/2008 A paper entitled "Detection of the superoxide radical anion using various alkanethiol monolayers and immobilized cytochrome c" by Chen, West, Cropek and Banta was published in Analytical Chemistry.

11/2008 Don Cropek gave a presentation at the 2008 Chemical and Biological Defense Physical Science and Technology Conference in New Orleans, LA entitled "Beta Roll Peptide Structures for Allosterically Controlled Biomolecular Recognition and Decontamination"

11/2008 Five platform presentations and a poster presentation were delivered by members of the Banta group at the 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA. Elliot Campbell gave a talk entitled "Protein Engineering of a Thermostable Alcohol Dehydrogenase to Alter Cofactor and Substrate Specificities" Shan Gao gave a talk entitled "DNA Delivery to Neuronal-Like Cells Using Designed Recombinant Fusion Proteins". Doris Glykys gave a talk entitled "Expression and Characterization of a Computationally Designed Laccase-Like Enzyme". Ian Wheeldon gave two talks entitled "Enzymatic Hydrogels from Proteinaceous Bifunctional Building Blocks" and "Self-Assembling Bi-functional Proteins for Bioelectrocatalytic Hydrogels: A Protein Engineering Approach to Advanced Materials Design". And Mark Blenner presented a poster entitled "The Beta Roll as a Reversible, Calcium Sensitive, and Modular Scaffold for the Engineering of Biomolecular Recognition"

11/2008 Professor Banta chaired the "Protein Engineering I: Therapeutics" session and he co-chaired the "Advaces in Biocatalysis I" and "Advances in Biocatalysis II" sessions at the 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

10/2008 A paper entitled " Bioelectrocatalytic hydrogels from electron-conducting metallopolypeptides coassembled with bifunctional enzymatic building blocks " by Wheeldon, Gallaway, Calabrese Barton and Banta was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

9/2008 Professor Banta gave a seminar entiteld "Self-assembling enzymatic and bioactive hydrogels from bifunctional building blocks" in the Department of Biochemistry at The Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Piscataway, NJ.

8/2008 Two members of Banta lab gave presentations at the 236th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia, PA. Ian Wheeldon gave a talk entitled "Hydrogel forming enzymes: Bifunctional proteins with enzymatic and cross-linking functionalities" and Shan Gao presented a poster entitled "Engineering a plasmid display system for the directed evolution of targeted cell penetrating peptides".

7/2008 Geza Szilvay presented a poster at the 22nd Annual Symposium of the Protein Society in San Diego, CA. The posters was entitled "Expression and characterization of a computationally designed laccase-like protein"

7/2008 Another new member has joined the lab. Max Henry Banta was born on July 12, 2008.

6/2008 Dr. Jong Pil Park from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Northwestern University has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Welcome aboard Jong Pil!

6/2008 Ian Wheeldon, Shan Gao, and Mark Blenner presented poster presentations at the 2nd Annual Advances in Biomolecular Engineering: Protein Design Symposium at City College, sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences. Ian Wheeldon's poster won a student award. Congratulations Ian!

6/2008 Professor Banta gave a seminar entiteld "Self-assembling enzymatic and bioactive protein-based hydrogels" at the New York State pavilion of BIO 2008 International Meeting in San Diego, CA.

6/2008 The Banta and Morrison Lab Groups had their second annual lunch and afternoon party in Riverside Park to celebrate the end of the Spring semester.

6/2008 Mark Blenner and Ian Wheeldon presented poster presentations at the Bioactive Systems Symposium at Brooklyn Polytechnic, sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences.

5/2008 A paper entitled "Site-directed mutagenesis of the hinge peptide from the hemagglutinin protein: enhancement of the pH-responsive conformational change " by Casali, Banta, Zambonelli, Megeed, and Yarmush was published in Protein Engineering, Design and Selection.

5/2008 Three members of the Banta gave platform presentations at the 2008 Electrochemical Society Meeting in Phoenix, AZ. Professor Banta gave a talk entitled "Enzymatic and bioactive proteinaceous hydrogels from bifunctional building blocks". Dr. Todd Holland gave a talk entitled "Improving Glucose Oxidase Function in Fuel Cells". And, Ian Wheeldon gave a talk entitled "Electron-conducting hydrogels from a bifunctional metallo-polypeptide"

5/2008 Professor Scott Banta and his collaborator Professor Barclay Morrison III in the department of Biomedical Engineering presented a seminar at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals entitled "Development of Methods to enable the Directed Evolution of Cell Penetrating Peptides for Targeted Brain Cell Delivery".

4/2008 Elliot Campbell and Ruel McKenzie both successfully defended their thesis proposals. And, Oren Shur passed his qualifying exam. Congratulations guys!

3/2008 Professor Banta and his collaborator Professor Barclay Morrison III in the department of Biomedical Engineering have been awarded a Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) Award from the Army Research Office (ARO) for a new state-of-the-art Flow Cytometer.

3/2008 A paper entitled "Oxygen-reducing enzyme cathodes produced from SLAC, a small laccase from Streptomyces coelicolor" by Gallaway, Wheeldon, Rincon, Atanassov, Banta, and Calabrese Barton was published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

2/2008 A paper entitled "Characterization of the 4D5Flu single-chain antibody with a stimulus-responsive elastin-like peptide linker: A potential reporter of peptide linker conformation " by Blenner and Banta was published in Protein Science.

1/2008 Dr. Geza Szilvay from the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland and the University of Helsinki has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Welcome aboard Geza!

12/2007 The Banta Lab is pleased to welcome a new graduate student into the lab group. Oren Shur (from Columbia) joined the research group this semester.

11/2007 Five members of the Banta gave platform presentations at the 2007 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, UT. Dr. Karu Chockalingam gave a talk entitled "Directed Evolution of Structured Peptides". Shan Gao gave a talk entitled "Engineering Of Peptides For The Targeted Delivery Of Proteins And DNA Into Brain Cells". Doris Glykys gave a talk entitled "Metabolic Control Analysis For The Optimization Of Biofuel Cell Kinetic Performance". Ian Wheeldon gave a talk entitled "Self-Assembling Bioactive Protein-Based Hydrogels With Tunable Structural Properties". And Mark Blenner gave a talk entitled "Single-Chain Antibody Based Peptide Conformational Change Sensor: A Tool For The Directed Evolution Of Stimulus Responsive Peptides"

11/2007 Professor Banta chaired sessions entitled "In honor of Ed Leonard on the occasion of his 75th Birthday I" and "In honor of Ed Leonard on the occasion of his 75th Birthday II" at the 2007 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, UT

10/2007 The Banta Lab is pleased to welcome a graduate student into the lab group. Flora Felsovalyi from Becton Dickinson joined the research group this semester.

10/2007 Professor Banta and his collaborator Dr. Donald Cropek at the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been awarded a 3 year basic research grant for combating weapons of mass destruction entitled "Beta-roll Peptide Structures for Allosterically Controlled Biomolecular Recognition and Decontamination " from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. We will be hiring a postdoctoral fellow to work on this project. See the Job Openings for more information.

10/2007 A paper entitled "Bioactive Proteinaceous Hydrogels from Designed Bi-Functional Building Blocks" by Wheeldon, Calabrese Barton and Banta was published in Biomacromolecules.

9/2007 Professor Banta and his collaborator Dr. Donald Cropek at the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been awarded a 3 year basic research grant entitled "Directed evolution of allosteric binding peptides" from the U.S. Army. We will be hiring a postdoctoral fellow to work on this project. See the Job Openings for more information.

9/2007 Professor Banta gave a seminar in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at University of Tennessee entitled "Engineering of Stimulus-Responsive Peptides: Applications in Bioelectrocatalysis and Biosensing".

8/2007 Professor Banta's involvement in the AFOSR MURI program for enzymatic biofuel cells was featured in The Electrochemical Society's Summer 2007 issue of Interface.

8/2007 The Banta lab was well represented at the 234th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Boston MA. Professor Banta gave a talk entitled "Directed evolution of conformational changes in peptides" and he presented a poster entitled "Bioactive protein-based hydrogels for functional bioelectrode construction". Shan Gao presented her poster entitled "Directed evolution of targeted cell penetrating peptides for trans-BBB delivery".

7/2007 Professor Banta presented 3 posters at the 21st Annual Symposium of the Protein Society in Boston, MA. The posters were entitled "Bioactive protein-based hydrogels for functional bioelectrode construction", "Directed evolution of targeted cell penetrating peptides for trans-BBB delivery", and "Directed evolution of conformational changes in peptides".

7/2007 Professor Banta presented 3 posters at the Biochemical Engineering XV meeting in Quebec City, Canada. The posters were entitled "Bioactive protein-based hydrogels for functional bioelectrode construction", "Directed evolution of targeted cell penetrating peptides for trans-BBB delivery", and "Directed evolution of conformational changes in peptides".

6/2007 Professor Banta gave a seminar at Ecole Polytechnique in France entitled "Peptide Engineering: Applications in Nanotechnology, Bioelectrocatalysis, and Drug Delivery". He was hosted by Professor Alfonso Jaramillo as part of their 2005 Alliance Call for Joint Project Award.

6/2007 Dr. J. Todd Holland from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Todd will predominantly work in Dr. Susan Brozik's lab at predominantly at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque New Mexico. Welcome Aboard Todd!

5/2007 The Banta and Morrison Lab Groups held a spring cookout in Riverside Park to celebrate the end of the Spring semester. Check out the Pictures section for some shots from the afternoon.

5/2007 A paper entitled "Design and Application of Stimulus-Responsive Peptide Systems" by Chockalingam, Blenner and Banta was published in Protein Engineering, Design and Selection.

4/2007 Mark Blenner, Shan Gao, Doris Glykys and Ian Wheeldon all gave excellent third year graduate student seminars to the department. Nice Job!

4/2007 Elliot Campbell and Ruel McKenzie both passed their qualifying exams. Congratulations guys!

4/2007 Professor Scott Banta and his collaborator Professor Barclay Morrison III in the department of Biomedical Engineering have been awarded a 2 year R21 research grant from the National Institutes of Health. The title of the project is: "Delivery systems for precision brain cell targeting".

4/2007 Professor Banta presented a talk entitled "Directed Evolution of Cell Penetrating Peptides for Therapeutic Delivery Across the Blood Brain Barrier to Specific Cellular Targets" at the 7th Annual Symposium of the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research in Baltimore, MD.

4/2007 Dr. Xiaojun Chen from Nanyang Technological University has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Welcome aboard Xiaojun!

3/2007 A new paper entitled "Contribution of gene expression to metabolic fluxes in hypermetabolic livers induced through burn injury and cecal ligation and puncture in rats" by Banta et al was published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering. The paper is featured in the Editor's Spotlight.

3/2007 Professor Banta and his collaborators Professor Sanat Kumar and Professor Nina Shapley have been awarded a Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for a new state-of-the-art Circular Dichroism Spectrometer.

3/2007 Professor Banta gave a seminar in the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical and Biological Engineering at Colorado State University entitled "Engineering of Stimulus-Responsive Peptides: Applications in Bioelectrocatalysis and Biosensing".

3/2007 Professor Banta gave a seminar in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at University of Wyoming entitled "Peptide Engineering: Applications in Nanotechnology, Bioelectrocatalysis, and Drug Delivery".

2/2007 A new paper entitled "Engineering Protein and Peptide Building Blocks for Nanotechnology" by Banta et al was published in the Journal of Nanoscience Nanotechnology.

1/2007 Two posters from the Banta Lab were presented at the Society for Biological Engineers First International Conference on Biomolecular Engineering in San Diego, CA. The posters were entitled "Directed Evolution of Peptide Conformational Changes" and "Directed Evolution of Targeted Cell Penetrating Peptides for Trans-BBB Delivery"

12/2006 The Banta Lab is pleased to welcome two new graduate students into the lab group. Elliot Campbell (from RPI) and Ruel McKenzie (from Brooklyn Poly) joined the research group this semester.

12/2006 Professor Banta's involvement in the AFOSR MURI program for enzymatic biofuel cells was featured in the Fall 2006 issue of Engineering News of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Columbia.

11/2006 Professor Banta served as Co-chair for the Protein Engineering I and Protein Engineering II sessions and the Intracellular Processes session at the 2006 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA. Members of the Banta group also presented a poster at the meeting entitled "Directed Evolution of Peptide Conformational Changes"

11/2006 Alfonso Jaramillo from the Ecole Polytechinque gave a talk at Columbia entitled: "Computational design of proteins with enzymatic function". Alfonso visited Professor Banta at Columbia to discuss the most recent progress on their 2005 Alliance Call for Joint Project Award. Professor Banta plans to visit Alfonso in Paris early next summer.

9/2006 Professor Banta served as Co-chair for the Metabolic Engineering and Analysis of Tissue Function session at the 2006 IEEE International Conference of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in New York, NY.

8/2006 Professor Banta gave a seminar in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute entitled "Directed Evolution of Peptides: Applications in Nanotechnology and Bioelectrocatalysis".

8/2006 A new member has joined the lab. Zoe Alexandra Banta was born on August 9, 2006.

8/2006 Professor Banta will teach his graduate elective course this fall entitled "CHEN E4800 Protein Engineering". This year it will be recorded so that it will be available around the world on the Columbia Video Network.

7/2006 Dr. Karu Chockalingam from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Welcome aboard Karu!

5/2006 The 2005 Alliance Call for Joint Project Award was given to Professor Banta and his collaborator Alfonso Jaramillo at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. The joint project is entitled "Improved Biofuel Cells through Protein Engineering and Computational Physics".

4/2006 Mark Blenner, Shan Gao, Doris Glykys and Ian Wheeldon all successfully defended their thesis proposals. Congratulations!

4/2006 Professor Banta presented a talk entitled "Directed Evolution of Cell Penetrating Peptides for Therapeutic Delivery Across the Blood Brain Barrier to Specific Cellular Targets" at the 6th Annual Symposium of the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research in Baltimore, MD.

3/2006 Professor Scott Banta and his collaborators have been awarded a 5 year $3.5 million dollar Multi University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and the Department of Defense. The title of the grant is: "Fundamentals and Bioengineering of Enzymatic Fuel Cells". The Principle Investigator is Plamen Atanassov at the University of New Mexico. Here is a Press Release from U.S. Senator Domenici from New Mexico. Other collaborators on the MURI grant are from Sandia National Labs, Saint Louis University, and Michigan State University.

3/2006 Two book chapters written by Professor Banta are being published this month in the Third Edition of The Biomedical Engineering Handbook (CRC Press). The chapters are entitled "Protein Engineering" and "Metabolic Engineering".

11/2005 Professor Scott Banta was named a James D. Watson Investigator Award winner for 2005 by the New York State Office of Science, Technology, and Academic Research (NYSTAR). The title of the winning proposal was "Peptide Conformational Change Sensors for Nanotechnology and the Study of Neurodegeneration".

11/2005 The recent research project funded by the Brain Trust was featured in ALS Alert, which is the newsletter of the Robert Packard Center for ALS research at Johns Hopkins.

11/2005 Professor Banta served as a CoChair for the Systems Engineering Approaches in Biology session at the 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Annual Meeting in Cincinnati, OH.

9/2005 Professor Banta presented a research seminar entitled "Applications of Protein Engineering and Metabolic Engineering: Vitamin C, Hepatic Metabolism, and Biofuel Cells" at the University of New Mexico and Sandia National Labs, Albuquerque, NM.

08/2005 Professor Scott Banta and his collaborator Professor Barclay Morrison III in the department of Biomedical Engineering have been awarded a project grant from the Brain Trust. The title of the research project is: "Directed Evolution of Cell Penetrating Peptides for Therapeutic Delivery Across the Blood Brain Barrier to Specific Cellular Targets."