Emory's Rolosense wins bronze in Collegiate Inventors Competition

Emory graduate student Aaron Blanchard, left, and Kevin Yehl, who recently received his PhD in chemistry from Emory, were awarded bronze medals at the recent Collegiate Inventors Competition in Washington D.C. (Photo by the National Inventors Hall of Fame.)

By Carol Clark

Emory University’s Rolosense – the first rolling DNA motor – took the bronze medal in the graduate division of the 2016 Collegiate Inventors Competition, held recently in Washington D.C.

The Rolosense, and its application as a chemical sensor, was developed in the lab of Emory chemist Khalid Salaita by his students Aaron Blanchard and Kevin Yehl. Blanchard is a PhD student in Emory’s Laney Graduate School and the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Georgia Tech and Emory, while Yehl recently received his PhD in chemistry from Emory.

The Rolosense is the biological equivalent of the invention of the wheel for the field of DNA machines. “It’s a completely new approach at using DNA motors for sensing and diagnostics,” Yehl says. “We now hope to keep broadening the scope of the technology and really prove it out in the field.”

The Rolosense is 1,000 times faster than other synthetic DNA motors. Its speed, which is powered by ribonuclease H, means a simple smart phone microscope can capture its motion through video.

Watch a video to learn more about the rolling DNA motor:


The researchers have filed an invention disclosure patent for the concept of using the particle motion of the rolling molecular motor as a sensor for everything from a single DNA mutation in a biological sample to heavy metals in water. It offers a way of doing low-cost, low-tech diagnostics for researchers working in settings with limited resources, or for consumers themselves.

Yehl and Blanchard were one of six teams of graduate students that competed in early November in the finals at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Washington D.C. The Collegiate Inventors Competition is considered the foremost program in the country encouraging invention and creativity in undergraduate and graduate students. The entries of the elite student teams represent the most promising inventions from U.S. universities.

The judges included inductees to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, officials from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and scientists from the global healthcare firm AbbVie.

“It was really cool to meet students from the other teams, and also the judges, to get their feedback,” Yehl says.

His main takeaway message: Keep on inventing.

Yehl is taking that advice to heart. In his new position as a post-doctoral associate in a synthetic biology lab at MIT, he’s now working on novel therapeutics to target drug resistant bacteria.

Blanchard agrees that a highlight of the competition was networking with the other competitors and the judges. “Several of the judges encouraged me to focus on areas of research that I’m passionate about, and not just choose things to pad my resume,” he says. “The judges are inventors themselves and, in some cases, they’ve had an impact on millions of people, so their input is important to me. I really took a lot away from the competition besides a bronze medal.”

The National Inventors Hall of Fame does outreach around the country. Blanchard says he hopes to get involved in future outreach projects in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. “It’s an amazing city,” he says, because it’s in the United States but is predominantly Hispanic. You encounter many different types of people and that helps drive adaptability and creativity. Unfortunately, it’s also geographically and culturally isolated so it’s harder for students to obtain exposure to scientific research. El Paso produces some great minds with great potential to make a difference in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines. I think it’s important to give kids there more exposure to STEM fields so they have an idea of the possibilities.”

Meanwhile, Blanchard and Yehl will continue developing the Rolosense with Salaita.

“We have this phenomenal technology that can make a difference in the world and we want to keep moving forward with it,” Blanchard says.

Related:
Emory's 'Rolosense' rolling to finals of Collegiate Inventors Competition
Nano-walkers take speedy leap forward with first rolling DNA motor

The White House celebrates math and mentorship

By Carol Clark

“It’s not every day that the White House invites you to a reception in honor of what you do for a living,” said Emory mathematician Ken Ono.

He was a featured speaker at “Math and the Movies,” recently hosted by the White House Office of Science, Technology and Policy (OTSP) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The evening included a screening of the film “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” the true story of how the genius of an obscure Indian clerk, named Srinivasa Ramanujan, was discovered and nurtured by G. H. Hardy, a leading mathematician at Cambridge University. Their unusual collaboration changed the field of math and science forever.

Ono served as an associate producer and math advisor for the film, and afterwards helped found “The Spirit of Ramanujan Math Talent Initiative,” which aims to find exceptional mathematicians around the world and match them with advancement opportunities in the field.

France Cordova, director of the NSF, was among the speakers during the evening at the White House, which was focused on the importance of inspiring and mentoring students of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Ken Ono (center), accompanied by U.S. chief Data Scientist D. J. Patil (left) and actor Jeremy Irons, presents a math problem to the nation while at the White House: What is the smallest number that is the sum of two cubes in two different ways? Click here for the answer.

“Tonight’s event addresses issues that we at NSF believe are critical for the nation,” Cordova said. “There is widespread recognition of the need to open up STEM opportunities for everyone. We’re looking for ways to broaden opportunities and include those who are underrepresented. That includes working with partners in museums, in social media and the entertainment industry to do a better job of telling the diverse stories of science and scientists.”

Hannah Larsen, a senior majoring in math at Harvard University, thanked the NSF for funding the Research Experience for Undergraduates program at Emory, where she spent three summers doing number theory research with Ono. The steadfast support of Ono and other mentors “deepened my love of mathematics,” Larson said, and was key to her decision to apply to graduate school and pursue a career in math research. Larsen recently won the Alice T. Schaefer Prize, given annually to the top undergraduate woman in math in the United States.

Following are highlights of remarks by other speakers.

Ken Ono: “Every few months you’ll hear about breakthroughs in black hole physics. Or solutions to ancient mathematical mysteries. Or even applications that help drive the Internet. I can tell you that the work of Ramanujan plays a role in all of those. If you want a role model for young students, if you want to help create world-class scientists, I think we should all do our part to make Ramanujan a household name.”

Andrea Hariston, applied research mathematician at the National Security Agency (NSA): “Exposure is a big, big deal for students who may not know what their options are. I had a mathematical curiosity growing up but I saw it as a hobby – solving puzzles – not as a career. A fellowship obligated me to do an internship at the NSA. That’s when I got mentors who opened up mathematics for me. They showed me you can do really interesting things with mathematics, really important things for the nation, using mathematics.”

D.J. Patil, chief data scientist for the OTSP: “People don’t always appreciate how much president Obama has done to return science to its rightful place, at the forefront of the nation, in leading and driving innovation. … What gets a kid excited about math? There are lots of different paths, but one of them is inspiration. I had really excellent coaches, people who were there to inspire, shape and mold me.”

Actor Jeremy Irons, who plays Hardy in the film: “Pure mathematics is rather similar to poetry and art. It’s something about which you can become passionate. It’s something that requires a mind that is really open and free to allow whatever to come to you. I thought, I know about that because that’s the state I try to get into when I’m acting.”

Related:
The beauty of math and Pi: Ken Ono chats with Neil deGrasse Tyson
Mathematicians find 'magic key' to drive Ramanujan's taxi-cab number

Could you pass the scream test?

Halloween is a time to celebrate primal instincts, including our fascination with screams. Emory psychologist Harold Gouzoules, who researches how we perceive and interpret screams, says humans scream in five different contexts: Aggression, fear, pain, excitement and startle.

In the above CNN video, Gouzoules gives reporter Elizabeth Cohen an informal "scream test," to see if she can tell the difference.

Related:
The psychology of screams

BRAIN grant to fund study of how the mind learns

Biophysicist Ilya Nemenman, left, is developing theories about the brain that can be tested in the lab of biologist Sam Sober, right. (Emory Photo/Video).

By Carol Clark

How does the brain correct mistakes and guide the process of learning a skill? Why do some individuals learn faster than others?

Two Emory researchers – biophysicist Ilya Nemenman and biologist Sam Sober – recently received a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative to explore these questions through a theoretical-experimental framework. Their research into how the sensory-motor loop controls and optimizes learning could lead to better protocols to help those dealing with major disruptions to their learned behaviors, such as when recovering from a stroke.

The BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) was launched by President Obama in 2014 as part of a widespread effort to gain fundamental insights for treating a range of brain disorders.

Emory has received other grants from the BRAIN Initiative: In 2015, a $1.7 million award went to neuroscientists Dieter Jaeger (Department of Biology) and Garrett Stanley (Emory-Georgia Tech’s Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering). They will use the award to explore neural circuits related to sensing and physical action. In 2016, neurosurgeon Robert Gross in the School of Medicine received a $5 million grant to focus on optimizing neurostimulation therapies for epilepsy.

The grant received by Nemenman and Sober is part of a new cohort, opening another phase of the BRAIN Initiative: The development of theoretical, computational and statistical tools.

“Big data by itself is not useful,” Nemenman says. “We also need to come up with methods for understanding such data.”

Nemenman is working on a theory to help explain how the brain learns. “If you are learning something similar to something that you already know, it’s easier than if you are learning something entirely new,” he says. “We see this effect across the animal kingdom, including in humans. And this ability to learn something new changes with age.”

He gives the example that he will always speak English with an accent, since he is a native of Belarus and did not move to an English-speaking country until shortly before he became a student at Princeton. His children, however, will speak English without an accent since they were born in the United States and immersed in English from birth.

Nemenman is collaborating with Sober, who conducts experiments with Bengalese finches. “These songbirds are one of the best model systems available for studying how the brain learns to communicate,” Sober says.

The male songbirds sing to attract a mate, but they are not born with this ability, Sober explains. Instead, the young males learn to sing by memorizing, and then imitating, the singing of their fathers. When a young bird sings the wrong note, it tries to correct its mistake to match the memorized “target” sound.

In experiments, the Sober lab places tiny earphones on a songbird. When the bird sings, the researchers distort some of the notes slightly and play back the sound through the earphones. The bird is tricked into thinking it has sung a note incorrectly and tries to correct it.

Through this method, the lab has found that the birds are able to correct small distortions of sound, but they cannot correct large distortions.

“Many errors are distributed as a bell-shaped curve, but the distribution of singing errors in the birds is not bell-shaped,” Nemenman says. He is developing theories to explain how the difficulty of learning and correcting for large disturbances is related to this peculiar shape of the distribution of errors produced by the brain during learning.

“We can test the theories through experiments and learn more about the process,” he says. “The ultimate goal is to develop predictive models of how individuals learn from their errors that can be extended to other organisms, including humans.”

Nemenman also recently received a grant from the Kavli Foundation, to support workshops, symposiums and journal clubs that foster interdisciplinary theoretical and computational approaches to neuroscience, and bridge researchers at Emory and Georgia Tech.

It is important for physicists to share their expertise and collaborate with other scientists focused on understanding the brain, Nemenman says. As chair of the American Physical Society’s division of biological physics, he strives to establish programs that attract young physicists to neuroscience.

“Physicists are well posed to have a dramatic impact in this area,” he says. “We are trained to do science by combining theory and experiments. We can apply the same techniques to study the brain that we use to study other mysteries of the universe. Many graduate students in physics who came in intending to work on string theory, like I did, are coming out with a PhD focused on theoretical neuroscience.”

Related:
How songbirds learn to sing 
Biology may not be so complex after all

The beauty of math and Pi: Ken Ono chats with Neil deGrasse Tyson on 'StarTalk'

StarTalk formula: What do you get when you add an astrophysicist and a number theorist to a comedian? A fun conversation when those variables are (from left) National Geographic Channel's Neil deGrasse Tyson, Emory mathematician Ken Ono and stand-up comic and writer Eugene Mirman.

“Math is one of the most feared subjects in school,” says astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of the National Geographic Channel’s “StarTalk,” to kick off an upcoming episode with Emory number theorist Ken Ono. “The phrase, ‘I was never good at math’ is probably uttered more than ‘I was never good’ at any other subject. What gives there?”

“Think of it this way,” Ono responds. “If you were an athlete, training for a marathon, you wouldn’t just expect to be fast at it. You’d have to practice. I think the reason people say they’re not good at math is because there’s this belief that if you’re good at math you’re just born with it. And that’s just so untrue.”

You can see a clip from the episode, to air Monday, November 7 at 11 pm, in the video below.

Ono and deGrasse, who are also joined by comedian Eugene Mirman, discuss everything from serial killers to the beauty in hidden patterns and how the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan tamed Pi.

The episode, which is devoted to Ramanujan, will also feature actor Jeremy Irons. He will discuss his role as the mathematician G. H. Hardy, Ramanujan's mentor, in the film "The Man Who Knew Infinity." Ono served as an associate producer and the mathematical consultant for the film.

Ono and Irons will also be featured in a White House panel discussion as part of an event entitled "Math and the Movies" on Friday, October 28. You can watch the event live, starting at 5:30 pm, via this link.

Related:
Celebrating math, movies and a miracle