Five MCBB Faculty Receive 2024 Rajen Kilachand Fund for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering Awards

Five MCBB Faculty are part of three groups to win 2024 Rajen Kilachand Fund for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering Awards. The Fund, launched in 2017, has awarded $14 million to support projects that have advanced science, built collaborative structures for interdisciplinary research, and expanded funding opportunities. Learn about their projects below.

Photo: A group of men standing side by side in an open area, smiling for the camera.
From left: Alexander Green, Florian Douam, Wilson Wong, Ahmad (Mo) Khalil, and Mark Grinstaff. Photo by Eric Haynes.

 

Dr. Wilson Wong and Dr. Florian Douam (BU School of Medicine), along with Dr. Alexander Green, Dr. Mark Grinstaff (BU College of Engineering), and Dr. Ahmad Khalil hope to to pioneer a new tool for fighting future pandemics.

About a year ago, Dr. Wong and Dr. Grinstaff discovered a novel way to modify saRNA, a breakthrough they’ve since used to create a more effective COVID-19 vaccine in collaboration with Dr. Douam. Combining this breakthrough with Dr. Khalil’s nanobody discovery platform and computational tools designed by Dr. Green, the team aims to create scalable, cost-effective, and rapidly deployable solutions for viral prevention and treatment.

Dr. Wong is leading the project with Dr. Douam; Dr. Green, Dr. Grinstaff, and Dr. Khalil are coinvestigators.

 

The BU award winning science team from (l-r) Mary Dunlop, Douglas Holmes, Joseph Larkin, and Harold Park are proposing to understand Mobile Genetic Elements and how microbes exchange genetic DNA
From left: Mary Dunlop, Douglas Holmes, Joseph Larkin, and Harold Park. Photo by Jake Belcher.

 

Dr. Joe Larkin and Dr. Mary Dunlop, along with Dr. Douglas Holmes and Dr. Harold Park, are leading innovative efforts to address the urgent global challenge of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance poses a serious global health threat, with bacteria evolving faster than new drugs can be developed.

The team’s project focuses on horizontal gene transfer and the single-cell level events that are involved in making an individual bacterium transition from being drug-susceptible to drug-resistant. Using optogenetics, they aim to trigger and observe this process in real time, offering novel insights into how bacteria transition from drug-susceptible to drug-resistant. Their innovative work could lead to groundbreaking strategies to combat the spread of antibiotic resistance.

Read the full announcement here.

Congratulations, everyone!

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