Alumni

ABSTRACT:  The current drug development process is both very slow (15 year average) and costly ($1.5B/drug average). Despite this hefty investment, inefficiencies in the drug screening process routinely result in the withdrawal of drugs from the market due to serious toxicities and adverse cardiovascular effects. Safety screen assessments performed on cell cultures and animal models do not always correlate with clinical risk.

Waterloo Undergraduate Nanotechnolgy Conference

ABSTRACT:  Truly rational design has been a major goal of bioengineering for some time. And while certain aspects of genetic engineering have become more predictable, the need for information about cellular behaviour has only continued to grow. The availability of genomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic data has opened the door to the synthesis of multiple levels of information in biological research.

ABSTRACT:  While we have isolated and regenerated celluloses for textile applications since the turn of the century (e.g. viscose), nature continues to offer new insights into how we could reintegrate biodiversity and heterogeneity into cellulose-based materials as a means of modulating its physico-chemical properties. Cellulose is one of the most abundant organic polymers on earth and serves as an important structural component of the cell walls of plants.