[Editors] New biomaterials feaured in MIT lab tours May 18

[Patti Richards]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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**MEDIA ADVISORY FOR MAY 18**
DuPont MIT Research Alliance:
Invitation to view next generation biomaterials
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For Immediate Release
THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2005
Contact: Patti Richards, MIT News Office
Phone: 617-253-8923
Email: prichards at mit.edu
--or--
Michelle Reardon, DuPont, US
Phone: 302-774-7447
michelle.s.reardon at usa.dupont.com

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WHAT: DuPont MIT Research Alliance lab tours and a major announcement. Details below.

WHEN: Wednesday, May 18, 2005, from 2:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

WHERE:  MIT Stata Center, Building 32, Room 155, at the corner of Main and Vassar Streets.  
For a map, go to: http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?mapterms=stata+center&mapsearch=go.

WHO: 
--Susan Hockfield, president of MIT
--Thomas M. Connelly, Jr., chief technology officer, DuPont
--Robert Brown, provost of MIT
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>From the articulated spikes of a sea urchin skeleton to the water-repellant surface of a lotus leaf, nature has devised solutions to critical problems in bioengineering, chemistry, and materials science.  Guided by the form, function and process of the natural world, scientists within the DuPont MIT Alliance are developing biosensors, bio-process manufacturing, electronics, bio-medical materials and drug delivery systems that will enhance our security, our communications and our welfare.  

The DuPont MIT Research Alliance invites you to lab tours of four of the program's top research projects by MIT faculty, including: 
 
1. Professor Linda Griffith, director of the Biotechnology Process Engineering Center: LiverChip, a device for tissue-like culturing of liver cells, designed to provide early assessment of the toxicity of new pharmaceuticals;

2. Professor Mriganka Sur, head of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Dept.: a novel biopolymer-based nervous system implant to replace nonfunctional brain tissue resulting from traumatic brain injury;

3. Professor Michael Rubner, director of the Center for Material Science and Engineering: a novel material similar to the lotus leaf's naturally hydrophobic surface that is naturally water repellent.  Potential applications include self-cleaning fabrics, water-repellant windshields, or plumbing that resists the growth of harmful bacteria by preventing water from accumulating on its surface;

4. Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos: next-generation advances in metabolic engineering, including genome-wide analyses and modeling for the production of chemicals and intermediates from renewable bio-feedstocks.

The Alliance couples MIT's expertise in science, engineering, and business with DuPont's strengths in materials, biology, manufacturing and marketing.  Founded as a 5-year, $35 million program, the DuPont MIT Alliance is one of the largest research programs in the United States today.  

If you will be able to attend, please call Marie Beletti at 302-774-4805 by May 17, 2005.

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