The National Science Foundation awarded a $200,000 Project Grant to the University of Missouri at Kansas City under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) for the period of June 1, 2023 through May 31, 2025. The grant funding will support research investigating reconfigurable highly-ordered microlayers between liquid interfaces through surfactant self-assembly systems. Specifically, the university researchers will study spontaneous emulsification mechanisms to control kinetic rates, tune...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems award of $234,000 to the University of Illinois will support collaborative research on developing an active lipid vesicle-based drug delivery system. The project aims to accomplish three key objectives: 1) examine the directed motion of lipid vesicles driven by encapsulated self-propelled particles, 2) develop a non-contact photoreaction mechanism to induce rupture and controlled...
This Project Grant award of $424,389, provided by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Materials Research under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), will fund research to develop a novel modular injectable hydrogel system using polymeric micelles. The key objectives are to: Establish design criteria for polymeric micelles with thermosensitive "patchy" domains that can assemble into hydrogels with controllable mechanical properties. Control the...
The University of California, Davis received a $439,105 federal Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to develop new models and simulations to characterize the collective hydrodynamic behavior of microscopic particles embedded in viscous interfaces. The goal is to establish a rigorous platform to understand and engineer complex membrane-like assemblies, which has applications in areas like drug delivery, respiratory health, and cell biology. The...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Program project grant awarded to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) provides $429,384 in funding to study how drug nanoparticles adhered to leukocyte (white blood cell) surfaces influence their mechanical properties and movement through microscale blood vessel networks. The 5-year research effort, from March 2024 to February 2029, will use a combination of biophysical models and microfluidic experiments to generate fundamental...
The National Science Foundation awarded a $386,959 Project Grant to the University of Missouri System under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) for the period of October 1, 2022 through March 31, 2026. The grant funds research into microplastics fate and contaminant transport in storm runoff using an interdisciplinary approach integrating material science and environmental engineering. Specifically, the grantee will investigate the roles of intrinsic and extrinsic material properties on...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award under the NSF Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $459,461 in funding to Lehigh University to conduct research on artificial microswimmers modeled after microorganisms. The overarching goal is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the emergent behavior in finite microswimmer clusters in Newtonian and complex fluids, leveraging a framework combining experimental, numerical, and machine learning methods. The project will...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering (CFDA 47.041) Project Grant award to Lehigh University, in the amount of $199,999, aims to investigate the use of charged polymer complexes as a novel platform for dual drug delivery. The key objectives are: (1) complexing a charged degradable polymer with an oppositely charged peptide or protein; (2) monitoring the kinetics of the degradable polymer breakdown both as part of the complex and free in solution; and (3) incorporating a third...
This $450,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to Purdue University will support research to characterize the motion and orientation of non-spherical particles in viscoelastic fluids. The research will involve microfluidic experiments, simulations, and theoretical modeling to quantify the interplay between lift forces and particle orientation for different flow rates, particle geometries, fluid properties, and channel confinement....
This federal Project Grant award of $250,000 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) aims to investigate the motion and self-propulsion of Marangoni surfers on spherical interfaces, such as levitating water droplets in microgravity aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The principal objective is to establish a computational-experimental framework to study the complex interactions between active particle motion, released species transport, and the...