Today is Physical and Life Sciences Day during LAS Week. Check out a few highlights of related faculty research in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences!
Building confidence, diversity and opportunity
Javier Vela is the kind of chemistry professor every college student wishes they had.
When Adam Kaminski did not have the machinery he needed to pursue his research, he designed and built it himself.
Iowa State University’s Robbyn Annand is studying how a hybrid of electrochemical and microfluidic technologies could be used to improve the dialysis equipment that cleans salt, waste and water from blood. That technology could enable a wearable, artificial kidney. And that could benefit her brother, who depends on today’s big and heavy dialysis equipment.
ISU researchers have built a prototype biomimetic tree that generates electricity when wind blows through its artificial leaves. The researchers think such technology may help people charge household appliances without the need for large wind turbines.
Iowa State’s Neal Iverson, who has studied glaciers in Iceland and Norway, is working with an international team on two projects that aim to build more realistic computer models of glacier flow. The researchers hope to understand how glaciers will speed up over the next century as the climate warms. They say that could help them predict how much glaciers will contribute to the rise of sea levels.
(Christopher Gannon/Iowa State University)
Don Sakaguchi, a professor in genetics, development and cell biology, has given more than 150 undergraduate students the chance to fall in love with basic biomedical research. The lab investigates experimental strategies to repair the damaged nervous system through engineering stem cells.
A cellular pathway being studied in plants by Diane Bassham, Loomis Professor of Plant Physiology and professor of genetics, development and cell biology, and Gustavo MacIntosh, associate professor of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology, has surprising connections to encephalopathy in humans.