University Research Council

April 17, 2008

Meeting Summary

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Multidisciplinary Small Grant Program Report

David Waldeck, Professor in the Department of Chemistry, discussed his multidisciplinary small grant program project, which is entitled Development of New Pallet Arrays for High-throughput Screening of Nanoparticle Cytotoxicity. Professor Waldeck and his colleagues are studying the health effects of nanoparticles on the human body and the environment. Nanoparticles offer considerable promise for applications that involve imaging and chemical sensing, among others. However, issues of toxicity must be addressed before nanoparticles can be widely used. These issues include:

• properties of nanoparticles that may influence their toxicity, such as their size, shape and surface chemistry.
• reactive by-products caused by illumination of nanoparticles, such as free radicals and reactive oxygen species.
• the distribution of nanoparticles in the body following exposure through various routes (ingestion, breathing, injection, etc.)
• the effect of nanoparticles on cellular processes and chemical transformations of nanoparticles by chemical or biochemical processes.

Professor Waldeck is collaborating with Valerian Kagan, Hong-Koo Kim, and Stephen G. Weber on the project. They are faculty members in the Departments of Environmental and Occupational Health, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Chemistry respectively.

Report from the Office of Research

Debra Evansky, from the Office of Research, discussed several issues:

• Conflict of Interest forms
• Online MTA submission forms
• Grants.gov training sessions

Miscellaneous

Council members also discussed:

• Central Research Development Fund
• Multidisciplinary Small Grant Program