SearchLife @ CPI - 2007
Here are some of the things that happened during 2007. Some are just funny, others are loosely or more strongly related to science. Newer stuff shows up first, so you essentially scroll backward through the year. If that confuses you - well, it also confused me when I put this page together ;-)
>> The archives: 2007 - 2006 - before 2006 <<
Christmas Party 2007
This year's christmas party again started out with a very enjoyable dinner at the Solar Casino across the street from the lab and then continued with some celebrations "at home". A quick review of the year reminded everybody of the highlights: PhD defenses, new projects, winter school and more produced a quite impressive number of annoying pictures! This review was followed by our traditional "Wichteln" game which unfortunately led to the detention of an innocent looking plastic rabbit. Stay tuned as this exciting story develops (or not - actually, most likely not).
2007 also was a good year for us in terms of science: work published by CPI has been honored on a more then daily basis as shown by about 450 citations.
Some pictures taken at the christmas party. Love and Peace!
Svetlana Santer wraps up her habilitation
Svetlana Santer, leader of the AFM group at CPI, recently finished up her habilitation. Svetlana joined our group in 2000 first as postdoc and later on as group leader. To learn more about her work please visit her webpages. Her are some pics from her presentation that marked the successful completion of the habilitation process. Svetlana is the first woman to receive the venia legendi at the IMTEK.
Congratulations Svetlana!
Jürgen Rühe appointed as Director of the School of Soft Matter Sccience at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS)
Following up on the success of the University of Freiburg in the German Excellence Initiative Jürgen Rühe has been appointed as the Director of the School on Soft Matter Science of the newly founded Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS). FRIAS offers distinct senior researcher from within the university but also from outside a special extended window for research e.g. by excempting them from their obligations at their respective institutes. Consequently, Markus Biesalski will take over Jürgen Rühe's teaching responsibilities at the IMTEK.
More information: www.exzellenz.uni-freiburg.de/
CPI at the MST congress in Dresden
We were quite a crowd at the Dresden congress! Some pics:
Sidar Loschonsky finishes PhD work
Sidar Loschonsky wrapped up her PhD studies at CPI by successfully defending her work a little while ago. Sidar was a member of Markus Biesalski's peptide group and her work dealt with combining cyclic peptide materials with polymer chemistry. The title of her thesis is somewhat lengthy: "Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization using Initiator-Modified Peptides: Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Bioactive and Shape-Defined Soft Materials."
Dear Sidar, it was a pleasure to hyve you in our group. All the best for your future!
Here are some pics from her defense:
CPI activities at the IMTEK Open House event
Our group added some significant experiments and activities to the 2007 IMTEK Open House. Biochips could be printed, an AFM was set-up both in real dimensions but also as a lego model and a chemistry parcours with experiments on the wetting of surfaces, on acids and bases, on color change reactions and on paper chromatography were very much enjoyed by hundreds of visitors of almost all ages. Two talks on some of our research activities were also delivered to quite a crowd!
The entire event was very successful and we all enjoyed the show a lot despite some odd weather. Without more words we let some pictures speak:
"Internationale Experimente" (from the Humboldt lab)
Within the framework of the university's Zukunftskongress we have organized a workshop called "Internationale Experimente" that dealt with the relations of the University with foreign countries. The goal of this workshop has been summarized in the announcement for the congress:
"Im Workshop "Internationale Experimente" geht es darum, Denkanstöße zu geben zur konkreten Ausgestaltung der internationalen Beziehungen der Universität im Spannungsfeld zwischen Mobilität in einer globalisierten Welt und einer individuellen Ausgestaltung von Lehr- und Forschungsprogrammen, zwischen internationaler Exzellenz und Völkerverständigung."
More than 20 participants from various areas - among them the vice secretary general of the DAAD, Dr. Dorothea Rüland, and Ministerialdirigent Rolf-Dieter Schnelle from the Foreign Ministry - discussed issues of how the Universtiy should build its international relations and programmes accommodating possible areas of conflict auch as mobility in a globalized world and and the need for individual study programmes and incentives or between international understanding and excellency in science.
The results were documented in a new and interesting way using a pictorial language and a tablet-PC (german only).
Here are some impressions of these exciting two days:
More PhDs: Daniel Mädge and Anye Ciphen
Some pictures from the defenses of Daniel Mädge and Anye Ciphen who recently graduated. Congratulations and all the best for the future!
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Meike Moschallski finishes up her PhD thesis
Meike Moschallski successfully defended her PhD thesis on May 16. As the head of her commitee, Prof. Zappe, pointed out Meike is "true IMTEK grown" engineer as she got both her diploma and now her doctorate degree from the Department of Microsystems Engineering.
Her thesis dealt with the development of protein chips based on a "skyscraper approach" in which the sensing antibodies are immobilized within a little tower of a surface-attached hydrogel. Meike showed that the concept is a valuable approach towards robust surface-bound immunoassays with an increased sensitivity as compared to strictly two-dimensional chip architectures.
Here are some pics from her defense and more so from her celebrating with "friends and family":
New BMBF project on nano adhesion pads
CPI and the IMTEK Laboratory for Assembly and Packaging Technology (Prof. Wilde) were recently awarded a grant for the development of "nanopads" based on a bio-inspired approach.
For enhanced assembly processes in the micro-nano-integration novel adhesion pads will be designed at solid surfaces. Microstructures that consist of precisely defined small adhesive pads will be prepared on surfaces by lithography (top-down). Complementary, bio-inspired adhesive nanopads will be prepared and self-assembled on solid surfaces with bottom-up processes that mimic the adhesion of seashells to solid surfaces. The research project will further focus on the use of these micro- and nanopads for self-organized assembly process. Principles for micro-positioning using pad structures for self-assembly and for adaptive assembly will comprise surface energy and electrostatic forces.
CPI research in the news
The CPI research on the control of the adhesion of cells on microstructured surfaces was recently covered in two articles on bio-pro.de.
The Biotech portal of the state of Baden-Württemberg www.bio-pro.de published two articles in this regard. One deals with the work of Dr. Markus Biesalski on polymer-peptide hybrid materials to direct cells on surfaces. The second article features research carried out within the framework of the Bernstein Center in Computational neurosciences (BCCN) Freiburg, and describes work directed towards the generation of neuronal networks on multielectrode arrays.
- bio-pro.de article on polymer-peptide hybrid materials
German version - English version
- bio-pro.de article on neuronal network chips
German version - English version
Fellowship for CPI PhD student Christian Schuh
Christian Schuh, Ph.D. student at CPI, recently won a fellowship through a program of the state of Baden-Württemberg ("Landesgraduiertenförderung"). His successful application proposed novel pathways for the generation of micro and nanostructured polymer layers combining surface-initiated polymerization techniques and interference lithography. Furthermore, Christian will incorporate means to switch the topography between different states by various means (photochemically, thermally or by solvent vapor treatment).
Christian "Chrishan" Schuh
This work is part of the CPI research program that aims at the use of polymer coatings to move nanoobjects on surfaces. The mechanisms that are to be developed by "Chrishan" will help to provide means for a directed motion of the objects.
Congratulations, Chrishan!
CPI research covered in Swiss newspaper
CPI research sparked the attention of the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung a little while ago. Their review article on recent cell chip activities also contains an description of the work done towards the control of cell adhesion on lab-on-a-chip platforms:
Unfortunately, the article is only available in German language.
7th MPIP-CPI Joint Seminar
Since 2000 the group of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Knoll from the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and the CPI folks gather more or less every year for a Joint Seminar to discuss research going on in both groups.
April 18th & 19th marked the days for the (approximately, we don't know exactly) 7th meeting in this series and these two days were packed with talks and posters on topics ranging all the way from long-range surface plasmons to hydrogel layers to various biosensor formats.
Due to the highly complementary nature of the science in the both groups, Wolfgang Knoll and Jürgen Rühe created what is now called "The MPIP-CPI Virtual Travel Grant" (Wolfgang) that miraculously comes with "real money" to encourage student exchange between Mainz and Freiburg. We'll see how this goes ;-)
Here is some more information:
- Check out the program & abstracts (pdf).
- Knoll group on the web: http://www.mpip-mainz.mpg.de/groups/knoll
Some impressions from the meeting:
Kamlesh Shroff wraps up his PhD
Kamlesh Shroff successfully defended his PhD thesis on Mar. 19.
Kamlesh synthesized polymerizable peptide-amphiphiles, and prepared bioresponsive surfaces that promote the attachment and growth of living cells. Mixing peptide-amphiphiles with further matrix amphiphiles, he was able to fine-tune the apparent surface-exposed peptide concentration on polymer-supported polymerized peptide-amphiphile monolayers, and he studied the influence of the latter on the extend of endothelial cell adhesion and spreading. In addition, he developed a simple technique to "print" polymerized vesicles onto polymeric surfaces in order to design so-called "cell-chips".
Kamlesh recently moved on to the University of Minnessota at Minneapolis for a postdoctoral appointment in the Department of Chemical Engineering. We wish him all the best for his future.
Here are some pics from his defense:
CPI at the ACS Spring Meeting
It was quite a crowd from CPI that joined the ACS Spring Meeting 2007 in Chicago at the end of march. Six members with a total of seven contributions showed up in several symposia. The topics of the talks and posters ranged from polymer brushes and surface-attached hydrogels all the way to ultrahydrophobic surfaces, polymer-peptide hybrid materials, and planar-patch-clamp chip architectures.
The ACS meetings are a "must go" for us and we are already looking forward to next years spring meeting in New Orleans. Here are some impressions from Chicago:
New FTIR microscope at CPI
CPI was able to enhance its surface analytical capabilities with the addition of a FTIR microscope to the existing Excalibur spectroscope. The instrument (Varian UMA 600) is able to take spectra from spots down to about 20 µm in size. We will use it for the investigation of microstructures on surfaces, e.g. of patterned polymer layers. Other applications are the spatially resolved determination of contaminants.
We are happy that we are now able to gather compositional and even structural data from surfaces for samples that are not suited for our XPS. Here are some pictures of the new instrument:
New DFG funded project on DNA chip platform
The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) recently granted funds for a collaborative effort towards the development of a robust DNA chip technology for routine DNA analysis. The project is entitled:
Development of a biochip technology platform for simultaneous gene expression and mutation analysis
The project is headed by CPI (Prof. J. Rühe and Dr. T. Brandstetter), collaborators are Prof. H. Wieland, PD Dr. E. Stickeler and Prof. A. Zur Hausen (all at University Hospital Freiburg).
The basis of the platform is a combination of surface chemistries for the generation of DNA microarrays on plastic chips developed at CPI with a novel ATR based chip read-out system. The partners from the University hospital will provide samples for analysis and are responsible for reliability tests and cross checks. As a first analytical problem we will work on the development of a chip system for the determination of breast cancer.
Our picture shows a DNA chip mounted to a ATR cell prototype:
Further information can be obtained from:
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rühe or Dr. Thomas Brandstetter