Managing Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Innovations - World Technology ...

Converging Technologies for Human Progress 355
5. “Fabrication of Reversible Microarray Sensors using
Thermally Responsive Biopolymers” (0330451, Wilfred Chen,
University of California at Riverside). The aim is “to develop a
potentially reliable and economical technique for the fabrication of
reversible microarray sensors” that could analyze enzymes,
antibodies, proteins, or genetic material.
6. “The Computer Science of Biologically Embedded Systems”
(0113679, Michael Black, Brown University). Using “mathematical
and computational techniques from computer vision, image
processing, and machine learning,” this project develops methods for
designing sensors embedded in the brain to detect meaningful signals
from neurons, with the ultimate goals of helping severely disabled
people and understanding better how the neurons of the human brain
encode information.
7. “Algorithms for Machine Perception based on Visual Cortex
Models” (0082119, Irina Gorodnitsky, University of California – San
Diego). Research, which employs scalp electrodes to monitor the
behavior of the visual cortex of the human brain, seeks to provide an
improved foundation for neuromorphic design of machine vision.
8. “Technologies for Sensor-based Wireless Networks of Toys
for Smart Developmental Problem-solving Environments” (0085773,
Mani Srivastava, University of California at Los Angeles). The
rapidly advancing miniaturization of computing technologies now
permits many ordinary household artifacts to become networked,
including children’s toys designed to enhance the cognitive
“developmental process by providing a problem-solving
environment that is individualized, context adaptive, and coordinated
among multiple children.”
Nanoscale Bioinformatics
Determining the structure and behavior of nanoscale biological molecules,
such as proteins, presents very difficult challenges for computer and
information science. Successful approaches rely upon computation-intensive
simulations, data analysis and manipulation techniques, and methods for
visualizing dynamic structure. Bioinformatics is a broad field, including the
comparison of species and study of large-scale organic and environmental
systems, but many of its greatest challenges exist at the nanoscale.
1. “Subnanometer Structure Based Fold Determination of
Biological Complexes” (0325004, Wah Chiu, Baylor College of
Medicine; 0324645, Andrej Sali, University of California at San
Francisco; 0325550, Chandrajit Bajaj, University of Texas at
Austin). This multi-institution team is developing visualization and