麻豆村

Foundational scientific research conducted by 麻豆村 members has profoundly shaped the world we live in. From improving health outcomes to advanced computing, work coming out of the Mellon College of Science continues to make a lasting impact.

The researchers and scientists are not only reaping benefits of the work that came before them, they are also planting seeds for the future that other people will harvest.

Scientific progress often requires patience for the fruits of such research to emerge. It can take 20-40 years for a discovery in the lab to make it into the clinic or company.

Alison Barth, Maxwell H. and Gloria C. Connan Professor in the Life Sciences, spoke during a 麻豆村 Deeper Conversations panel in April 2025 that explored the federal government鈥檚 role in funding, shaping and disseminating knowledge.

She discussed how foundational research led to today鈥檚 GLP-1 medications that are used to regulate blood sugar levels and appetite. It started with scientists being curious about how Gila monsters can go months without eating.

In 1992, researchers at the Department of Veterans Affairs began studying the poisonous venom of the Gila monster, which led to the discovery of a new compound that stimulates insulin-producing cells in the pancreas to produce more insulin when glucose levels are high.

鈥淚t took decades for the clinical implications of this discovery to become clear and for GLP-1 drugs to reach the clinic. But they have been transformative 鈥� treating people not only for diabetes and heart disease but also weight loss and now potentially some neurological disorders,鈥� Barth said.

Barth said that having confidence in scientists鈥� ability to see possibilities from discoveries is important.

While Carnegie Mellon wasn鈥檛 involved in the GLP-1 research, foundational research happening in MCS is impacting other areas of health.

Take next-generation antibody therapies, for example. Two 麻豆村 scientists, Robert van de Weerd and Chris Szent-Gyorgyi, have invented a new way to discover antibodies 鈥� which are used in a significant portion of today鈥檚 pharmaceuticals and could accelerate the development. Their work started more than 20 years ago as part of the former Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center (MBIC) at Carnegie Mellon.

They engineered yeast cells to both secrete target antigens and also display nanobodies on their surface. The yeast cells also contain a novel fluorescent biosensor that enables the yeast cells to self-report when a secreted antigen binds to a nanobody on the cell surface.

The innovative biosensors, developed at MBIC over the past two decades, are unique in their approach. The biosensors enable the rapid screening of a large number of antigen-nanobody pairs simultaneously. This combinatorial, high-throughput approach integrates bioinformatics and artificial intelligence tools to efficiently identify nanobodies of interest.

The work, which is being commercialized through their company Biocognon, expands the frontiers of antibody discovery through the seamless integration of emerging technologies such as synthetic biology and AI, driving innovation across diagnostics, research, personalized medicine and pandemic response. Biocognon was awarded a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research Grant to support their efforts.

鈥淒iscoveries are expected to lead to development and commercialization of new therapeutic treatments for multiple human diseases and conditions, including cancer, rare disorders and infectious diseases,鈥� added van de Weerd, co-founder of Biocognon. He also is currently a project scientist at the Neurogenomics lab of Andreas Pfenning, an associate professor in Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department.

Green chemistry in action

In the 1980s, Terry Collins set out to find a safer way to disinfect and purify drinking water. After several years in the lab, he invented TAML activators, iron-based catalysts that work with hydrogen peroxide to replace chlorine-based bleaches in industries like papermaking and laundry.

Over time, Collins has continued to improve on those original catalysts, emphasizing not just technical performance but also health and environmental metrics. His innovations are used in applications such as water purification where they can degrade micropollutants such as antibiotics and other drugs found in municipal secondary wastewater and contaminated river and lake water.

鈥淚 set out 45 years ago to develop small molecule catalysts that might mimic the highly efficient catalytic cycles of very large oxidizing enzymes. I would have been happy if we had come even close to the enzymatic technical performances,鈥� Collins said. 鈥淭oday, after decades of iterative design, we have small molecule catalysts that leave the enzymes in the dust performance-wise. The technical and cost performances of our catalysts are spectacular."

Collins has received support from institutions such as the Heinz Endowments, the Heinz Family Foundation, Sudoc Inc., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the state of Washington, National Institutes of Health, Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research, the NSF, The Department of Defense, multiple other philanthropies, foundations and industries, and the UK Water Industry Research.

Collins has patented the most advanced versions of the catalysts, and the intellectual property is licensed to Sudoc, Inc., a startup company working to bring TAML-based solutions to the market. Sudoc recently raised $20 million in capital from various investors to, among other things, improve a wide range of cleaning applications and help launch its TAML/peroxide system into the European and U.S. water treatment markets.

Collins鈥� TAML research and his lab, the Institute for Green Science, has influenced a generation of chemists to think greener. Other projects in his lab are looking at ways to safely remove chemicals in tire dust from riverways. As part of his work, Collins is cultivating chemists who are not just scientists but stewards of the environment.

鈥淢y long-time colleague, Dr. Alexandr Ryabov, and I are always looking for the potential in our students to become both great chemists and future world leaders of sustainability science,鈥� he said. 鈥淪ome are already well on the way to such a remarkable distinction. 聽They have experienced the thrills and travails of multidisciplinary science for the sake of sustainability. And they have the intellect, wisdom and spirit that leadership in this area requires.鈥�

Otto Stern鈥檚 legacy and the future of quantum-inspired technologies

While magnets have long been used for computer memory, there is high demand for better performance, higher speeds and lower power. To make this a reality, researchers in the Department of Physics continue to build on the work of Otto Stern, a professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology who is considered the founder of experimental atomic physics. He received the Nobel Prize in 1943 with his colleague Walther Gerlach for work conducted in 1922 prior to Stern joining the university.

The Stern-Gerlach experiment was a pivotal experiment that provided the first direct evidence for electron spin and the quantization of angular momentum. Today, the idea of quantized spin is foundational to emergent quantum technologies, such as spintronics, quantum computing, quantum sensing, etc. For instance, quantum bits, or qubits, often use spin states of particles to store and process information. Technologies like spintronics, quantum sensors and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) rely on principles that stem from Stern鈥檚 work. His groundbreaking work laid the groundwork for computing, medicine and secure communication.

More than 100 years after Otto鈥檚 prize-winning work, Associate Physics Professors Simranjeet Singh and Jyoti Katoch are taking critical steps to enable next-generation magnetic memory devices and develop spin-based quantum sensors to perform measurements of physical quantities with an ultimate resolution and sensitivity. Their work is supported by NSF CAREER awards.

鈥淥ur research focused on probing new physical phenomena in emergent quantum materials, which originates from how spin of electrons behaves and interacts, is critical for developing next-generation non-volatile and low-power consumption data storage technologies,鈥� Singh said.

Mathematics meets technology

The Department of Mathematical Sciences has similar connections to technological advancements. Emeritus professor David Kinderlehrer, along with former postdoctoral researchers Richard Jordan and Felix Otto, developed what became known as the JKO scheme, which determined the gradient flow structure of the Fokker-Planck equation and entropy to diffusion. In the 27 years since its publication, the JKO paper has been cited more than 2,300 times, with many applications across the physical and biological sciences as well as in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

鈥淲e may not quite know for a while what practical or other connections such deeper pursuits lead to,鈥� said Prasad Tetali, Alexander M. Knaster Professor and head of the Department of Mathematical Sciences.

Though problems are abstract and may appear to be removed from everyday concerns, the way mathematicians鈥� reason about them often also sheds light on surprisingly concrete situations. Take set theory, for example. Set theory is a branch of mathematics that explores the nature of infinite objects and how they are described.

Former 麻豆村 postdoctoral fellow Anton Bernshteyn discovered that an area of set theory known as descriptive combinatorics had connections to distributed computing, a technique where interconnected computers work together over a network to solve complex problems. Problems about coloring infinite graphs, once purely theoretical, now inform how large systems of computers coordinate tasks efficiently.

鈥淭his discovery has ignited a flurry of activity between set theorists and theoretical computer scientists, as we exchange algorithms to try and make progress on each other鈥檚 problems,鈥� said Clinton Conley, associate professor of mathematical sciences. 鈥淭hese surprising, hard-to-predict connections are why I think it's so important to maintain a strong culture of foundational research in science.鈥�

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