Stephen Turner from Pacific Biosciences spoke as an invited speaker in the Biomolecular Probes as Diagnostic and Therapeutic Reagents Session. His company has developed single-molecule, real-time (SMRT) technology to visually watch DNA polymerase enzyme activity during replication.

There’s no such thing as starting at the top for most people. Learn how some of today’s prominent chemical engineers got their start in the working world in this weekly series of personal profiles. This week, we feature John Tao, VP of Open Innovation at Weyerhaeuser and 2010 AIChE board member.

To be a good networker, you've got to first deal with the Credibility Threshold. In other words, to discuss the business you are both there to discuss, you have to first (a) indicate how experienced you are, and (b) show that you understand the industry.

2011 AIChE President Dr. Maria Burka will speak about two passions of hers, research and innovation, at the Inaugural Virtual Section Meeting. Dr. Maria K. Burka is the program director of the Process and Reaction Engineering (PRE) program in the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET) Division of the National Science Foundation.

Costas Maranas from Pennsylvania State University and Herbert Sauro from the University of Washington each spoke about their research efforts to simplify and standardize genomic models. Metabolic models are continually being developed to describe natural biotransformations by different groups around the world, which creates a great need for a reconciled database.

Chemical Engineering Progress (CEP) for January, 2011 is entitled Flange Reliability. Features include Computational Science: Enabling Technology Development, Improve Flange Joint Reliability, Capital Spending in the Chemical Industry, and Avoid Natural Gas Piping Hazards.

Dr. Lee Hood explained his P4 model of informational wellness science, which has the potential to completely revolutionize health care and medicine in the next few years. Instead of continuing with the current, expensive and failing reactive medicine, the Institute for Systems Biology is paving the way to developing a system based on capturing biological information and integrating the knowledge into diagnostic tools. P4 medicine is based on predictive, personalized, preventive, and participatory science.

When the ball dropped in Times Square December 31 a few seconds before midnight, it marked the beginning of a new year—a year to “celebrate the achievements of chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind.”

The second session of ICBE 2011 focused on how recent advances in synthetic biology have expanded the field of biology, and the potential of the research to engineer new organisms. The first speaker, Michael Elowitz from the California Institute of Technology, set up the session by explaining how rewiring excitable gene circuits can allow control over differentiation.

In Making Stuff, NOVA's new four-part series, technology reporter David Pogue takes viewers on a tour of scientific innovations that are ushering in a new generation of materials.

The first session of ICBE continued with the theme of last night’s keynote speaker, focusing on evolutionary engineering, this time with proteins. The session started with a presentation from Georges Belfort of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he spoke on his research’s effort to learn more about protein fibrils which induce amyloid diseases.

The 2011 ICBE—International Conference on Biomolecular Engineering—started with a fantastic keynote speaker. Frances Arnold, from the California Institute of Technology, gave a great look into her career focusing on evolutionary design of proteins and biological systems, and her research groups’ success with cytochrome P450 enzymes.