TheScienceCoalition

Proteins are the fabric of our lives. The human body and its microbiota potentially produce millions of proteins. With time, these proteins get modified, inactivated, damaged, or under- or over- produced. Therein lies the hazards and hopes. Deepak Vashishth, PhD is Director of the Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in recognition of his groundbreaking bone research. His work, and that of the CBIS, has received support from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy.

Whether your idea of the future leans more toward flying cars or flying to Mars, you’ll want to hear from Science 2034 Live panelists who believe, as result of research being performed today, that the next 20 years will bring some amazing changes. From nanoparticles patrolling our bodies to warn us of health risks to driverless solar-powered cars and a pill to treat Alzheimer’s, these scientists have big ideas and are pursuing research that just might transform our lives.

Science 2034 Podcast: MIT's Timothy L. Grove by The Science Coalition

Science 2034 Podcast: MIT's Mary Gehring by The Science Coalition

Our guest is Chris Kaiser, the chair of MIT's biology department, to talk about the future of fighting infectious diseases, and the importance of basic scientific research in this area. His essay appears in his MIT's new report, "THE FUTURE POSTPONED: Why Declining Investment in Basic Research Threatens a U.S. Innovation Deficit."

By the year 2034, we will be able to produce biofuels efficiently, economically and on a scale such that they make up a meaningful portion of liquid transportation fuels and chemical products in the United States. We will do this by using biomass, the parts of plants that are ineffectively used today. The impact that this will have on our environment, national security, economic security and even our food security is significant. Biofuels are created when plant material is broken down into simple sugars and those sugars are converted by microbes into fuels. While ethanol and some other biofuels are being produced today, the process is not particularly efficient. In the case of ethanol, the current process for converting plant sugars into fuel is only about 80 percent efficient. So an additional 25 percent more ethanol could potentially be produced. Additionally, most microbes prefer glucose, but there are other sugars present in plants that can be converted to fuel. We just need to figure out how to get the microbes to eat these less desirable sugars. It’s a little bit like when you serve your children a plate of food and they gobble up their French fries, but leave the broccoli and tomatoes.

Maxine D. Brown is Director of the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory, responsible for fundraising, outreach, documentation, and promotion of its research activities. Her research interests include computer graphics, scientific visualization, collaboration, human-computer interfaces, and high-performance computing and international network infrastructure. EVL receives funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, NASA, the U.S. Air Force Surgeon General’s Office, and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Leo M. Chalupa, Ph.D. is the Vice President for Research at the George Washington University. He is a neurobiologist and researcher on the retina, visual pathways and development of vision. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Fogarty Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, Human Frontier Science Foundation, and other funding agencies.

Mung Chiang is a leading researcher in Internet and wireless networks. He is the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering, the Director of the Keller Center, and the Chair of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Advisory Committee at Princeton University. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U. S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, the Army Research Office and the Office of Naval Research, as well as by many leading companies in the networking industry.

Stephen Dewhurst, Ph.D., is Vice Dean for Research at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry, and Associate Vice President for Health Sciences Research, Dean’s Professor & Chair, Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Rochester. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Brett D. DePaola is a professor in the Department of Physics at Kansas State University. His work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Matthew Tirrell is the Pritzker Director, Professor and Dean of the Faculty at the University of Chicago Institute for Molecular Engineering and a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. His work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Energy, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Science Foundation.

In 2034, new battery materials with significantly increased storage capacity will transform the automotive market, massively reducing gasoline consumption and eliminating a major source of urban pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.