California NanoSystems Institute at UCSB

We are delighted to congratulate 2021 American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Fellows: CNSI Co-Director, Megan Valentine, and CNSI Members Sumita Pennathur, Linda Petzold and Dennis Clegg.

Among the highest professional distinction conveyed to a medical or biological engineer, membership to the AIMBE College of Fellows honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering and medicine research, practice, or education” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of medical and biological engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to bioengineering education.”

For more information: https://aimbe.org/2021-aimbe-fellows/

We are pleased to congratulate C-Zero, a CNSI Technology Incubator Program Alumni, on raising $11.5M in Series A funding, led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), to produce clean hydrogen from natural gas. For more information click the link below!

C-Zero Raises $11.5M Series A to Produce Clean Hydrogen from Natural Gas | UCSB Innovation + Entrepreneurship This funding round was co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Eni Next, with participation from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and AP Ventures

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. CNSI is excited to announce that Professors Craig Hawker and Rachel Segalman have been elected to the 2021 class of the National Academy of Engineers. Dr. Hawker and Dr. Segalman are two of UC Santa Barbara's engineers among the 129 new members worldwide elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for 2021.

Craig Hawker, CNSI Co-Director, and BioPACIFIC Co-PI have been recognized "for contributions to polymer chemistry through synthetic organic chemistry concepts and the advancement of molecular engineering principles.”

Rachel Segalman, a key member of CNSI and BioPACIFIC, was elected "for contributions to semiconducting block polymers, polymeric ionic liquids, and hybrid thermoelectric materials.” Dr. Segalman also serves as the Associate Director of the Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems and Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara.

Prof. Megan Valentine appointed CNSI Co-Director

We are delighted to announce that Professor Megan Valentine will serve as Co-Director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCSB.

Dr. Megan T. Valentine directs an interdisciplinary research group focused on understanding and enhancing biological and bioinspired materials' mechanical performance, with applications to adhesion, 3D printing and soft robotics. She received her B.S from Lehigh University, M.S. from UPenn, and Ph.D. from Harvard, all in Physics. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford in the Department of Biological Sciences, where she was the recipient of a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface.

In 2008, she joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she now serves as the Co-Director of the California NanoSystems Institute and a co-leader of an IRG on Resilient Multiphase Soft Materials within the UC Santa Barbara Materials Research Laboratory, an NSF MRSEC. Her major awards include an NSF CAREER Award for her work on neuron mechanics and the Fulbright Scholar Award to study adhesion mechanics in Paris, France. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Please click the link for more information: https://www.cnsi.ucsb.edu/news/valentine-codirector

CNSI is pleased to announce:

The National Science Foundation awards UCSB, UCLA $23.7 million for collaboration focused on using natural building blocks to make new materials.

With leading efforts from Prof Javier Red de Alaniz, UCSB; and Heather Maynard, UCLA, BioPACIFIC MIP merges advances in synthetic biology and synthetic chemistry by providing access to scientific expertise, multiscale computation and simulation for materials design, and advanced instrumentation capabilities to enable data-driven discovery and scalable production of bio-
derived building blocks and polymers from yeast, fungi, and bacteria, and the conversion of these blocks into next-generation polymers with properties and performance far exceeding those currently available in materials produced through traditional petrochemical-based methods.