Two faculty members of the Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute have received Innovation Awards, recently announced by the Office of the President. The awards honor mid-career researchers who are engaged in the medical, natural, social and engineering sciences. They also recognize faculty who foster new creative ways to foster student learning and active engagement. Among the inaugural year recipients are two MolES faculty members, James Carothers and Eric Klavins.
James Carothers, assistant professor of chemical engineering, will create new approaches to produce renewable chemicals. He will address fundamental questions of cellular design, which will be used to redesign living systems for biotech applications.
Eric Klavins, associate professor of electrical engineering, and his colleagues aim to revolutionize how laboratory courses are taught. Students will learn to encode their experiments as computer programs and use advanced technology to automatically generate their lab notebooks.
In addition to Carothers and Klavins, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Brandi Cossairt received an Innovation Award for her work on chemical innovation in solar energy capture and storage. She is devising novel materials and devices that use abundant natural resources and low-cost processing methods geared toward advances in clean energy technology.
Proposals for 2015 for Innovation Awards are currently being accepted by the UW Office of Research. The deadline to apply is October 1, 2014. For more information visit the UW Office of Research.