By Annelise Barron
The symposium “Cutting-Edge Research at the Bio/Nano Interface” was well-attended throughout the afternoon, and included a series of 8 Californian academic superstars: Eric Appel from Stanford, Rachel Rosenzweig from UC Irvine, Ali Khademhosseini from UCLA, Sanjay Kumar from UC Berkeley, Maxim Prigozhin at Stanford, and Joel Finbloom from UCSF, all highlighting incredible research advances at the interface between nanotechnology and biological / biomedical systems. Dr. Xiaoxi Wei, CEO of X-Therma Inc., a startup company that incubated at the Foundry, showed that for the first time ever, they have developed a biomimetic technology (antifreeze peptoids) to safely freeze hearts for transplantation, a new technology that will save countless lives. LBL scientist Dr. Jianfang Liu finished the symposium with his team’s tour-de-force of nano-bio imaging, of perfect and lovely 2D crystals of DNA origami octahedra, a stunning technical accomplishment.
