Proposed Rackham Certificate Program in Nanobiology

Our Institute will need institutional as well as sponsor and donor partners to develop a truly integrated interdisciplinary approach for graduate students in the physical sciences to learn and contribute to the revolution that is occurring in the biological and medical fields.

As a research entity, M–NIMBS provides many opportunities for interdisciplinary studies to be performed by graduate students. We have faculty, post-docs, and graduate students from Applied Physics, Chemistry, Biophysics, Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and the Medical School working on our projects. This wide range of backgrounds gives us a unique approach to and perspective on the problems we are attacking. It is very appropriate for us to partner with these departments and programs to provide a new approach for the education of graduate students.

We provide here a specific example that illustrates the need for a new interdisciplinary graduate training program. This involves Dr. Almut Mecke, a former physics student who originally intended to do "string theory." After several years of course work and preliminary research, Almut decided that she wanted to work in a group environment rather than alone and, wanting to have an impact on the quality of human life, chose to work with the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology. We were starting our program on targeted cancer therapeutics, and Almut originally joined, thinking that she would perform molecular dynamics simulations of nanoparticle-membrane interaction. In the end, her Ph.D. thesis (2004) contained not only these simulations, but also a wealth of experimental atomic force microscopy data on aqueous particle-lipid layer interactions. She produced a statistical mechanical model that points to the physical mechanism by which these nanoparticles interact with lipid layers, and her studies opened up an entire new area of research for us in nanoparticle toxicity. Her thesis committee was composed of Professors from Applied Physics (Bradford Orr, Ph.D., her advisor), Chemistry, Biophysics, Chemical Engineering, and the Medical School. After graduation, her research was selected as the best graduate thesis in the Physics department for 2005.

Ms. Mecke not only exemplifies the kind of interdisciplinary research that we do at M-NIMBS; she also illustrates the need for a new interdisciplinary graduate training program. Although Almut was ultimately successful in her research, there were numerous hurdles to overcome before this could be approved by the relevant units. An established certificate program in nanobiology will provide a smoother path for future students who choose to explore this sort of interdisciplinary training. The new courses will assist in getting students up to speed in the range of skills needed to make their measurements and interpret their results.