Lee Bassett and Andrew Tsourkas Awarded Grainger Foundation Grant for Interdisciplinary Research
By Lauren Salig
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has awarded two Penn Engineers with The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Grant for Advancement of Interdisciplinary Research. Lee Bassett, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, and Andrew Tsourkas, professor in the Department of Bioengineering, will be using the $30,000 award to kick-start their research collaboration.
The NAE describes the Frontiers of Engineering program as one that “brings together outstanding early-career engineers from industry, academia, and government to discuss pioneering technical work and leading-edge research in various engineering fields and industry sectors. The goal is to facilitate interactions and exchange of techniques and approaches across fields and facilitate networking among the next generation of engineering leaders.”
Bassett and Tsourkas fit the grant’s description, as their proposed research requires them to combine their different areas of expertise to push the state of the art in engineering. The pair plans to engineer a new class of nanoparticles that can sense and differentially react to particular chemicals in their biochemical environment. This new class of nanoparticles could allow scientists to better study cellular processes and could eventually have important applications in medicine, potentially allowing for more personalized diagnoses and targeted treatment of disease.
To design and create this type of nanoparticle is no small task. The research demands Bassett’s background in engineering quantum-mechanical systems for use as environmental sensors, and Tsourkas’ ability to apply these properties to nanoscale “theranostic” agents, which are designed to target treatments based on a patient’s specific diagnostic test results.
By combining forces, Bassett and Tsourkas hope to introduce a new nanoparticle tool into their fields and to connect even more people in their different areas to promote future interdisciplinary work.