ICB Bio-Enabled Materials project leader and MIT professor of Biological Engineering, Mark Bathe and his colleague, MIT Professor Darrell Irvine are senior authors of the study, which appears today in Nature Nanotechnology, Role of nanoscale antigen organization on B-cell activation probed using DNA origami. By using a technique known as DNA origami to fold DNA into a virus-like structure, MIT researchers have designed HIV-like particles coated with HIV antigens in precise patterns, which may eventually be used as an HIV vaccine and potentially applied to other types of viruses.

As ICB Co-Director Professor Scott Grafton steps down, we are pleased to announce that Professor Barry Giesbrecht has been appointed to succeed Grafton as new ICB Co-Director. Giesbrecht has been leading research projects with the ICB for more than a dozen years and has been co-leader, alongside Grafton, of the ICB research focus area—Cognitive Neuroscience.

ICB Project Leader Enoch Yeung and his UCSB colleague Omar Saleh have won a three-year, $1 million award from the W.M. Keck Foundation to develop a synthetic, autonomous, gene-regulated 'cell'. With this award, the researchers will not only be able to investigate some of the fundamental aspects of cellular processes, but also to develop a synthetic system that exploits genetic feedback to create dramatic structural outputs, phase transformations and perhaps even movement.

Two ICB researchers launch a new Mellichamp Academic Initiative, Mind & Machine Intelligence. William Wang and Miguel Eckstein are bringing together computational scientists studying the human mind with computer scientists and engineers to create new ways of looking at fundamental problems in science, engineering, and humanities that are highly relevant to modern society.

ICB co-director and co-leader of the ICB research focus area Cognitive Neuroscience, Scott Grafton has written a new book: Physical Intelligence: The Science of How the Body and the Mind Guide Each Other Through Life. While Grafton's passion for neuroscience is well known and can be seen in his many titles, he is also a passionate outdoorsman. In this work, Grafton elegantly weaves these two together as he thoughtfully explains the findings of this intriguing research.

Michael Chabinyc, Project Leader in the ICB’s Bio-Enabled Materials focus area and UCSB Materials Department Chair, has been elected as fellow of the NAI for demonstrating "a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development and welfare of society.”

Frances Arnold, ICB Project Leader, Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at Caltech, has been named to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a scientific academy under the auspices of the pope and based in Vatican City. The announcement was made by the Vatican on October 24, 2019.

New research published in Nature Microbiology shows one of mucus’s unexpected beneficial properties: mucus contains sugars that can interfere with bacteria’s communication and behavior, effectively stopping the formation of dangerous, tough biofilms and making them harmless.

On September 19, 2019, both Megan Valentine and Michael Chabinyc were elected fellows of the American Physical Society. They have been recognized by their peers for their “exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise in physics research, important applications of physics, leadership in or service to physics, or significant contributions to physics education,” they join 166 fellow scientists and engineers “selected and recognized for their contributions to science.”