NESM Fall Symposium
December 5-6 2024
Please join us on December 5-6th for our Fall Symposium at the Harvard Science and Engineering Complex in Allston, Boston MA.
We have an exciting program of workshops available as well as invited speakers from across the life and physical sciences. There will also be a poster session and vendor fair. If you are interested in giving an oral presentation please submit an abstract by November 19th.
Time & Location
Dec 05, 2024, 12:00 PM – Dec 06, 2024, 5:00 PM
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Harvard University
150 Western Ave, Boston, MA 02134, USA
Registration
Registration is now open for NESM members below. Not a member yet? Join here.
Limited on-site registration will also be available. Please contact us if you are interested in on-site registration for workshops or the meeting to ensure we reserve space.
Speakers
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Boston University
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Tufts
University of Maine
Harvard University
Tescan
Boston University
Workshops
We are pleased to offer the following workshops on Day 1 at this year's Fall Symposium:
Xi Ling
Boston University
Bio​
Xi Ling is an associate professor of Chemistry and Materials Science & Engineering at Boston University (BU). She earned a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at Peking University under the guidance of Jin Zhang and Zhongfan Liu in 2012. Following her doctoral work, she was a postdoctoral associate with Mildred Dresselhaus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2012-2016. Dr. Ling leads an interdisciplinary research group focused on the fundamental science and applications of nanomaterials and their hybrid structures. The group specialized in the synthesis of two-dimensional (2D) materials, their characterization through spectroscopy, and their implementation to develop novel nanodevices. Ling has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications with a citation of >15000 and a h-index of 49. Her work has been recognized through the reception of awards including the NSF CAREER (2020), the University Provost’s Career Development Professorship Award (2017), and the EECS rising star from MIT (2015).
Abstract
Atomically thin materials often exhibit extraordinary chemical, optical, electronic, and magnetic properties compared with their bulk 3D counterparts, enabling a variety of applications for next generation electronics and quantum information technologies. While extensive research has been conducted on 2D van der Waals (vdW) materials such as graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), little attention has been given to non-vdW materials, which make up the majority of materials in nature. One significant challenge is the lack of an effective synthesis method to access them. In this talk, I will introduce an atomic substitution approach that we have developed to convert vdW layered materials to ultrathin non-vdW materials. This approach is universal, enabling the synthesis of diverse unconventional 2D materials with tunable thicknesses, desired dimensions, and properties for fundamental physics investigations and nanodevices. As a model system, we will demonstrate the conversion of MoS2 to MoNx, investigate the conversion process and dynamics, and discuss the stacking order dependent reactivity. We will particularly highlight the power of electron transmission microscope (TEM) in advancing our study.
Samuel Hess
University of Maine
Bio​
Sam Hess is currently a professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Maine. Sam earned a B.S. from Yale University in 1995, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2002, where he was advised by Prof. Watt W. Webb. Sam dove into the world of biological membranes and infectious disease during a postdoc with Dr. Joshua Zimmerberg at the National Institutes of Health from 2002-2004. He then returned to Maine, starting as an assistant professor of physics at UMaine in 2004. In 2006, Dr. Hess published the method Fluorescence Photoactivation Localization Microscopy (FPALM), which broke the diffraction limit using single molecule fluorescence microscopy (S.T. Hess et al. Biophysical Journal 2006). This work and that of two competing labs led to an explosion of activity in fluorescence microscopy, development of live-cell, 3-dimensional, multicolor, and polarization-sensitive versions of localization microscopy, and mentions in Science as a “Top Ten Scientific Breakthrough of 2006,” as “Method of the Year” in Nature Methods in 2008, and in Nature Milestones in 2009. Dr. Hess is currently using FPALM to understand and stop muscular dystrophy, immune system dysregulation by environmental toxicants, and virus infection.
Abstract
Viruses cause considerable human morbidity and mortality. Strategies which circumvent frequent mutations in viral proteins can help identify robust antiviral therapies. We recently discovered that influenza virus exploits host cell phosphoinositides for assembly through
interactions between its spike protein hemagglutinin (HA) and PIP2, revealed by super resolution microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations. The mechanism involves electrostatic interactions between the head group of the PIP2 and the cytoplasmic tail of the HA, and interactions between acylated cysteines on the HA and the PIP2 tails. Interactions between HA and PIP2 also modulate the ability of HA to form highly dense clusters, which are necessary for viral entry through membrane fusion. We recently showed that similar features, which we propose to serve as phosphoinositide-interacting domains, are highly conserved across many strains of influenza A and B, Ebola, coronaviruses, HIV, RSV, and measles.
Focusing on influenza, technological advances in super resolution microscopy allowed us to observe that interactions between HA, M1, and phosphoinositides are highly dynamic and spatially heterogeneous. Because the interactions between HA and PIP2 mediate a necessary function for viral infection, strategies which disrupt interactions could be robust against mutations which occur in viral spike proteins over time. Results also relate to several existing models of plasma membrane phosphoinositide organization.
Wesley de Boever
Tescan
Bio​
Wesley De Boever is currently working at TESCAN and holds a Ph.D. in Geology from Ghent University (Belgium). During his research at the Ghent University Centre for Tomography, he used micro-CT to study geomaterials at micro- to millimeter scale, and how that micro-structure influenced weathering processes in natural building stones in modern and historical use. He has 15 years of experience in micro-CT, both in academia as in various micro-CT manufacturing companies, working on making the technology available for research in various fields of application around the globe.
Abstract
Natural history museums around the world hold large collections of valuable specimens from life sciences and earth science. Animals from these collections can be used to provide insights in comparative anatomy, taxonomy, genetics and many more. However, in order to get the information, these samples need to be studied, often leading to loss of the sample, since many analysis techniques are destructive. That is why in recent years, the importance of non-destructive methods such as X-ray imaging and MRI grew, as they allow to study samples without damaging them.
In this talk, we describe the use of micro-computed tomography for natural history specimens, and how the method can reveal secrets in samples like the Dana Platypus and the Tollund man, with unprecedented speed and accuracy.
Fiorenzo Omenetto
Tufts
Bio​
Fiorenzo G. Omenetto is the Frank C. Doble Professor of Engineering, and a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University. He also holds appointments in the Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical Engineering.
His research interests are in the convergence of technology, biologically inspired materials, and the natural sciences with an emphasis on new, transformative approaches for sustainable materials for high-technology applications and solutions for global health and sustainability.
He has proposed and pioneered the use of silk as a material platform for advanced technology with uses in photonics, optoelectronics, and nanotechnology applications, is co-inventor on several disclosures on the subject. His technologies are licensed by major corporations and he has co-founded multiple companies.
Prof. Omenetto was formerly a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratories, a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the National Academy of Inventors, and of the American Physical Society and a recipient of the a Tällberg global leadership prize. His research has been featured extensively in the press with coverage in the most important media outlets worldwide.
Abstract
Natural materials offer new avenues for innovation across fields, bringing together, like never before, natural sciences and high technology.
Significant opportunity exists in reinventing naturally-derived materials, such as structural proteins, and applying advanced material processing, prototyping, and manufacturing techniques to these ubiquitously present substances. This unusual combination of designed structures with designed functions help us imagine and realize fundamental and applied discoveries at the interface between the biological and the technological worlds.
Tomas Kirchhausen
Harvard University
Bio​
TBD
Abstract
TBD
Martin Thunemann
Boston University
Bio​
Martin Thunemann is research assistant professor in the Neurovascular Imaging Laboratory at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and member of the Neurophotonics Center at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Tübingen, Germany in 2012. During his research at the University of Tübingen, he developed optical as well as PET imaging methods to study vascular physiology and pathophysiology in transgenic mice and received several awards for his work. He then joined Anna Devor’s laboratory at the University of California, San Diego as postdoctoral fellow (2015-19) and project scientist (2019-2020). He joined Boston University in 2020, where he is leading interdisciplinary projects combining optical imaging methods and electrophysiology to study cerebral blood flow regulation in mice. He further co-developed a multimodal imaging and electrophysiology platform to characterize human stem cell-derived brain organoids implanted into mouse cortex to study neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders. This work, published in 2022, was listed as Top25 Health Science Articles of 2022 by Nature Communications.
Abstract
Advances in imaging technology, genetic engineering, and stem cell biology enable us to study brain function at an exceptional level of detail. For instance, multiphoton microscopy became key to visualize structure and function in the brain of awake behaving animals. Synthetic and genetically encoded optical probes allow visualization of signaling events with unprecedented specificity and versatility.
My research focuses on the application of neurophotonics to study brain function under physiological or pathological conditions. We developed and refined optical, i.e., single- and multiphoton imaging technology to measure, e.g., membrane potential, calcium, neuromodulation, cerebral hemodynamics, and tissue oxygen tension. We combine optical imaging and optogenetics with extracellular electrophysiology to estimate the hemodynamic, metabolic, and electrical profile of defined neuronal populations, such as subclasses of cortical inhibitory interneurons. We established imaging and recording protocols using transparent microelectrode arrays and merge optical imaging and electrode array technology with stem cell biology to facilitate studies of complex neurological disorders in patient-derived cells (organoids) under in vivo conditions.
We envision that these technologies will provide better mechanistic insights into brain function in health and disease and into the physiological underpinning of human neuroimaging signals.