Research | College of Science

New Tyrannosaurus Species

February 5, 2024

^ Mark Loewen. ^^ Banner image above: An artist's reconstruction of the newly identified dinosaur species Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis, based on a partial skull fossil collected in New Mexico, U.S. Sergei Krasinski/Handout via REUTERS

Subtle differences from Tyrannosaurus rex observed in the skull merit recognizing the dinosaur as a separate species called Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis that lived several million years before T. rex and was comparable in size, the researchers said on Thursday. The skull previously was identified as a T. rex.

Other researchers expressed doubt that it represents a new Tyrannosaurus species, saying differences between it and other T. rex skulls were unremarkable and the study's conclusion that the fossil dated to 71-73 million years ago was problematic.

T. rex has been the sole species of the genus Tyrannosaurus recognized since the dinosaur was first described in 1905. A genus is a broader grouping of related organisms than a species. T. rex fossils date to the couple million years before an asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, dooming the dinosaurs.

The first parts of the New Mexico skull were found near the base of Kettle Top Butte in 1983, with more later discovered.

Paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science and one of the authors of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, said about 25% of the skull has been collected. Most of the braincase and the upper jaws are missing.

"Compared to T. rex, the lower jaw is shallower and more curved towards the back. The blunt hornlets above the eyes are lower than in T. rex," said paleontologist Nick Longrich of the University of Bath in England, another of the researchers.

"It's the nature of species that the differences tend to be subtle. The key thing is they're consistent. We looked at lots of different T. rex, and our animal was consistently different from every known T. rex, in every bone," Longrich added.

Vertebrate paleontologist Mark Loewen, associate professor lecturer, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah is a co-author of the paper and Resident Research Associate at the Natural History Museum of Utah.

Read the entire story by Will Dunham (Reuters) in USA Today.

Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine

January 29, 2024

University of Utah part of new NSF-funded initiative to ensure regional climate solutions and economic opportunities.

January 29, 2024

The National Science Foundation (NSF) on Monday announced the University of Utah along with six core academic partners will be part of a multi-institutional enterprise to confront the climate challenges facing the desert Southwest and spur economic development in the region.

The effects of climate change are acutely evident in the American Southwest, from the desertification of Utah’s Great Salt Lake to the record-breaking extreme heat in Arizona and the dwindling supply of the Colorado River reaching Nevada.

NSF Engines: Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine (SWSIE) will use these challenges to catalyze economic opportunity and seeks to establish the Southwest as a leader in carbon capture, water security and renewable energy and bring high-wage industries to the region. Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine unites academic, community, nonprofit and industry partners across Arizona, Nevada and Utah that are committed to this goal.

SWSIE is among the first proposals selected by the NSF to establish a Regional Innovation Engine, a first-of-its-kind NSF program to create focused research and technology transfer hubs. The NSF will fund SWSIE’s initial development and growth with $15 million over the next two years. The engine can be renewed for up to 10 years with $160 million in funding available for each Regional Engine.

The U of U’s core academic partners in SWSIE are Arizona State University, who serve as the lead partner of the project, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the Desert Research Institute, the Water Research Foundation, SciTech Institute and Maricopa Community Colleges. The team includes over 20 senior personnel including faculty from Atmospheric Sciences, Biological Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Communications, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Geography, and Geology and Geophysics. The College of Science's Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy is also part of the consortium.

THE U’S LEADERSHIP TEAM

Brenda Bowen.

At the helm of the U leadership team is Brenda Bowen, co-PI on the SWSIE project and co-lead of the community development working group. Bowen is professor of geology and geophysics, chair of department of atmospheric sciences, and director of the Global Change and Sustainability Center at the U.

“We are so thrilled to have the opportunity to grow academic, industry, and community partnerships that unite Utah, Nevada, and Arizona as we innovate sustainable solutions for water, energy, and carbon,” she says. “This is work that needs to happen, and this award will allow us to align our efforts to maximize the positive impacts across the region.”

Read the entire story by Xoel Cardenas, Sr. Communications Specialist.,Office of the Vice President for Research here.

An Unexpected Climate Solution

June 2, 2023

The Wilkes Center Student Innovation Prize

Nicholas Witham is the first-place winner of the Wilkes Center Student Innovation Prize, awarded earlier this month at the University of Utah. The competition invited students to propose creative solutions for tackling the climate crisis, along with presentations that detail their potential impact, benefits, and practicality. Three other prizes, one for second place and two for third place, were also given during the inaugural Wilkes Climate Summit at the University of Utah, May 17-18.

A graduate student at the U, Witham is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, as well as running his company Gaia Technologies which makes prosthetic components. For the Wilkes Center Prize, he designed an innovative renewable electric generator that relies on natural fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature. “The type of generator I’ve designed works with thermo-motive artificial muscles,” he says. “That means that they contract when you heat them. Every day the Earth gets hotter and colder which will make them move, and they can pull on a turbine, generating power. The great thing about this is that cooling also generates power, so you can make energy day and night.” This potential for around-the-clock power generation could help to bridge the energy gap that is common with renewable energy sources.

One of the first places Witham hopes to put his generators is in Southern Utah where the day-to-night temperature change is ideal for this technology 10 months out of the year. And although natural temperature fluctuations may not always be enough to run the generators, Witham believes that they could be used to complement existing renewables such as solar and geothermal energy: “You can use highly efficient geothermal heat pumps to actuate them without needing to have a temperature change caused by the environment. The excess heat that they are wasting, not spinning a turbine, just cooling down before they pump it back into the Earth–we could use that to increase the energy output of our generators tenfold,” he says.

In fact, installing these generators at pre-existing geothermal plants or solar farms may be the most ideal option to maximize the efficiency and cost of these sites. “I ran the numbers, and I believe that this could be a solution that could cost less than solar, and you can scale it vertically,” explains Witham. “So you could use existing solar infrastructure, place the solar panels on top, and any time you want to reinvest in the site without having to run new electric lines to it, you could just stack them higher.”

Not only is the generator a potentially powerful form of renewable energy, but it also incorporates carbon capture into its design. “These are polymer textiles. So they’re made out of a plastic called linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), which is a type of plastic that can be bio-derived. That means you can use corn husks to make this plastic as an indirect form of carbon capture. Every kilogram of LLDPE sequesters 3 kilograms of carbon.”

Witham carefully considered the environmental impact of these generators, ensuring that they contribute to carbon sequestering efforts instead of creating more waste: “In the decommissioning of solar panels, for example, you generate quite a lot of e-waste. This system is designed to be recycled and decommissioned in an environmentally safe practice.”

Witham plans to house the entire generator inside a shipping container, and he estimates that one of these generators could be expected to last over 25 years with very minimal maintenance. Due to their self-contained nature, the impact and effect of these units on the surrounding environment is very minimal. “It’s essentially a big black box that we plan to put in the middle of the desert. I contacted the local EPA office about this to see if there was anything I was missing, and they had no real concerns. Because we’re putting it in a box, any microplastics that might be generated by the textiles shearing or breaking catastrophically would be contained,” he states.

The capacity for incorporating these devices in urban areas, according to Witham, may be limited to apartment buildings or skyscrapers. “I don’t think anybody really wants to use a shipping-container-sized portion of their yard to make power,” he jokes. The weight of these containers also limits their ability to be placed on top of roofs, or buildings, as each unit weighs roughly 18 metric tons. However, there is potential for them to be incorporated underneath buildings. “You can absolutely put it underground if you have a heat pump HVAC system to regulate it, but that would be a bit less efficient.” Though the generators wouldn’t function as well as in the remote desert environment Witham has planned, there is still a possibility for urban incorporation.

With a purse of $20,000 from the Wilkes Center Prize, Witham is one step closer to getting his design up and running at full scale. His lab already has the capability to mass-produce the necessary artificial muscle technology, so a prototype will soon follow. “The assumption is that we can make a nine-megawatt-hour generator at scale to test it in the field. From there we could make a generator field just like you would see for a solar field. And then with a 2.4-year doubling period – which is typical for renewables in this area – that would mean that by 2050 we would have sequestered and offset a total of 15 million tons of CO2.” Witham’s consideration of sustainability, feasible scaling, and collaboration with other renewables make his design both practical and effective as a climate solution.

Textile artificial muscle in thermo-mechanical testing set-up. Photo credit: Nick Witham

Clearly, the judges of the Wilkes Center Prize thought so as well. Witham’s design is a unique and impressive fusion of renewable energy with pre-existing biomedical technologies, showcasing that the nature of climate solutions will likely be interdisciplinary. Witham jokes that a sleepless night at work is to thank for his idea to incorporate his biomedical work into a renewable energy source: “I was having a sleep-deprived night in the lab, as you do as a graduate student,” says Nicholas Witham, “and I crunched the numbers because I thought, ‘hey, the Earth heats up!’ I connected all the dots because we use a type of plastic that is a lot more energy efficient and is not typically used for these artificial muscles. And that energy efficiency really allowed this idea to have merit.”

Witham’s creative application of biomedical engineering shows that the most powerful climate solutions may come from unexpected places and that no branch of knowledge is too isolated to make an impact. His impressive design stands alongside dozens of other projects from creative and dedicated students that rose to meet this innovation challenge. With prizes such as this, the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy is leading the way toward creating a powerful forum for interdisciplinary climate solutions and collaboration, essential for tackling a multifaceted issue like climate change.

By Julia St. Andre
Intern Science Writer

2023 College of Science Awards

April 14, 2023

Weekend Effect

March 8, 2023

Along wild-to-urban gradients and especially within less developed areas, human recreation can affect wildlife behavior, especially during peaks in human recreational activity.

In a new study published in the journal Animal Behaviour large-scale citizen science camera trapping helped assess whether periodic increases in human recreational activity elicit behavioral responses across multiple mammal species in northern Utah.

Says lead author of the paper, Austin Green, PhD, “we assessed whether increases in human recreational activity during the weekend affected mammalian activity patterns at the community-wide and species-specific level.” The team headed up by Green, a postdoctoral researcher in the Science Research Initiative (SRI) at the U’s College of Science, found little evidence supporting the presence of time-specific, or temporal effect behavioral changes in response to increases in human recreational activity during the weekend, known as the “weekend effect.”

Only elk, Cervus canadensis, and rock squirrel, Otospermophilus variegatus, significantly altered temporal activity patterns during the weekend. “People significantly alter periodical activity during the weekend,” according to the study, “with more activity occurring in midday and less activity occurring in the early evening. This leads to consistent decreases in human-wildlife temporal overlap.”

Instructor of the Human Wildlife Coexistence stream in the SRI, Green is currently working with undergraduates in the field and in the lab located in the Crocker Science Center. Green’s research is focused on the Wasatch Front, a “functional landscape” that combines both human use and conservation. “One way in which mammals avoid the human ‘super-predator,’” says Green, “is by altering their behavior”: how they use both space and time; adjust their interaction with other species; and vary where they feed, sleep and reproduce.

Green’s group uses large-scale fieldwork in both natural and urbanized landscapes; performs data analytics; identifies wildlife in photos using artificial intelligence; and promotes citizen science education and engagement. In this study, says Green, “we were able to show that by altering the time of day that humans recreate, we can reduce the negative impacts of increased recreational activity on wildlife behavior.”

A.A.U. Membership

February 22, 2023

"It is difficult to overstate the importance of AAU Membership. This elevates the U to an exceptional category of peer institutions."

- Dean Peter Trapa

The University of Utah is one of the newest members of the prestigious Association of American Universities, which for more than 100 years has recognized the most outstanding academic institutions in the nation.

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Association of American Universities (AAU), announced Wednesday that University of Utah President Ruth V. Watkins has accepted an invitation to join the association, along with the University of California, Santa Cruz and Dartmouth College. The three new members bring the number of AAU institutions to 65.

AAU invitations are infrequent; this year’s invitations are the first since 2012.

“AAU’s membership is limited to institutions at the forefront of scientific inquiry and educational excellence,” said Coleman. “These world-class institutions are a welcome addition, and we look forward to working with them as we continue to shape policy for higher education, science, and innovation.” - Mary Sue Coleman

About the AAU
The AAU formed in 1900 to promote and raise standards for university research and education. Today its mission is to “provide a forum for the development and implementation of institutional and national policies promoting strong programs of academic research and scholarship and undergraduate, graduate and professional education.”

A current list of member institutions can be found here. The membership criteria are based on a university’s research funding (the U reached a milestone of $547 million in research funding in FY2019); the proportion of faculty elected to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine; the impact of research and scholarship; and student outcomes. The U has 21 National Academies members, with some elected to more than one academy.

An AAU committee periodically reviews universities and recommends them to the full association for membership, where a three-fourths vote is required to confirm the invitation.

Leaders of AAU member universities meet to discuss common challenges and future directions in higher education. The U’s leaders will now join those meetings, which include the leaders of all the top 10 and 56 of the top 100 universities in the United States.

“We already knew that the U was one of the jewels of Utah and of the Intermountain West. This invitation shows that we are one of the jewels of the entire nation.” - H. David Burton

U on the rise
In FY2019 the U celebrated a historic high of $547 million in sponsored project funding, covering a wide range of research activities. These prestigious awards from organizations such as the U.S. Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation are supporting work in geothermal energy, cross-cutting, interdisciplinary approaches to research that challenge existing paradigms and effects of cannabinoids on pain management.

They also are funding educational research programs with significant community engagement, such as the U’s STEM Ambassador Program and the Genetic Science Learning Center’s participation in the All of Us Research Program.

“AAU is a confirmation of the quality and caliber of our faculty and the innovative work they are doing to advance knowledge and address grand societal challenges. Our students and our community will be the ultimate beneficiaries of these endeavors. " - President Ruth Watkins

On Nov. 4, 2019, the U announced a $150 million gift, the largest single-project donation in its history, to establish the Huntsman Mental Health Institute. These gifts and awards are in addition to the ongoing support of the U from the Utah State Legislature.

This fall the university welcomed its most academically prepared class of first-year students. The freshman cohort includes 4,249 students boasting an impressive 3.66 average high school GPA and an average ACT composite score of 25.8. The incoming class also brings more diversity to campus with both a 54% increase in international students and more bilingual students than the previous year’s freshman class. Among our freshmen who are U.S. citizens, 30% are students of color.

The U’s focus on student success has led to an increased six-year graduation rate, which now sits at 70%—well above the national average for four-year schools. The rate has jumped 19 percentage points over the past decade, making it one of only two public higher education research institutions to achieve this success.

Fellow of the AAAS

February 14, 2023

Jennifer Shumaker-Perry

Jennifer Shumaker-Perry is among the 506 newly-elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

AAAS members have been awarded this honor because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Other fellows currently at the U including Nancy Songer, dean of the College of Education, Thure Cerling, recipient of the 2022 Rosenblatt Prize and Mario Capecchi, 2007 Nobel laureate. The U’s first Fellow was geologist and former university president James Talmage, elected in 1906. Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

New Fellows will be presented with a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin and gather in spring 2023 in Washington, D.C. Fellows will also be announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science in February 2023.

Shumaker-Parry, professor of chemistry, was elected for “significant contributions to the design and study of plasmonic nanomaterials, and promotion of graduate education integrating science, business, and communication for broad and diverse career pathways.”

“It’s an honor to have been nominated and selected to be an AAAS Fellow,” she says.

“The nomination also highlights the importance of all aspects of training the next generation of scientists including mentoring students through teaching relevant classes, collaborating on research, and advising and supporting them.”

Her research group studies how light interacts with metal nanoparticles.

“At the nanoscale, metal particles don’t behave like bulk materials,” she says. “Instead, the optical behavior of metal nanomaterials can be tuned by controlling the size, shape or assembly of nanoparticles.”

Learning how to fine-tune the interactions between light and nanoparticles by manipulating the properties of the nanomaterials can aid the design of systems to transfer information using light and monitors of human and environmental health.

Shumaker-Parry is the director of the Biotechnology track of the U’s Professional Master of Science and Technology program, which “provide(s) professional scientists an opportunity to earn a graduate science or math degree that increases their core scientific knowledge and quantitative skills,” according to the program description.

“I have learned so much from advising and teaching students who bring their work experiences and unique perspectives to the program,” she says. “Most of them are working full-time or part-time, so they add a lot of industry-based scenarios to classroom discussions. My role is to help the students create a path through the program that aligns with their career goals.”

“I am excited to see the elections of Dr. Bandarian, Dr. Schmidt and Dr. Shumaker-Parry as AAAS Fellows,” says Peter Trapa, dean of the College of Science. “This recognition demonstrates their lasting contributions to their disciplines, as well as their impacts on future scientists. The University of Utah is a national leader in scientific research and education, and our three new Fellows embody this leadership.”

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Currently, members can be considered for the rank of Fellow if nominated by the steering groups of the Association’s 24 sections, or by any three Fellows who are current AAAS members (so long as two of the three sponsors are not affiliated with the nominee’s institution), or by the AAAS chief executive officer. Fellows must have been continuous members of AAAS for four years by the end of the calendar year in which they are elected. AAAS Fellow’s lifetime honor comes with an expectation that recipients maintain the highest standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity.

Each steering group reviews the nominations of individuals within its respective section and a final list is forwarded to the AAAS Council, which votes on the aggregate list.

Space Sunscreen

February 9, 2023

Ben Bromley

Dust launched from the moon’s surface or from a space station positioned between Earth and the sun could reduce enough solar radiation to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

On a cold winter day, the warmth of the sun is welcome. Yet as humanity emits more and more greenhouse gases, the Earth's atmosphere traps more and more of the sun's energy and steadily increases the Earth's temperature. One strategy for reversing this trend is to intercept a fraction of sunlight before it reaches our planet. For decades, scientists have considered using screens, objects or dust particles to block just enough of the sun’s radiation—between 1 or 2%—to mitigate the effects of global warming.

A University of Utah-led study explored the potential of using dust to shield sunlight. They analyzed different properties of dust particles, quantities of dust and the orbits that would be best suited for shading Earth. The authors found that launching dust from Earth to a way station at the “Lagrange Point” between Earth and the sun (L1) would be most effective but would require astronomical cost and effort. An alternative is to use moondust. The authors argue that launching lunar dust from the moon instead could be a cheap and effective way to shade the Earth.

The team of astronomers applied a technique used to study planet formation around distant stars, their usual research focus. Planet formation is a messy process that kicks up lots of astronomical dust that can form rings around the host star. These rings intercept light from the central star and re-radiate it in a way that we can detect it on Earth. One way to discover stars that are forming new planets is to look for these dusty rings.

“That was the seed of the idea; if we took a small amount of material and put it on a special orbit between the Earth and the sun and broke it up, we could block out a lot of sunlight with a little amount of mass,” said Ben Bromley, professor of physics and astronomy and lead author for the study.

"It is interesting to contemplate how moon dust—which took over four billion years to generate—might help to solve climate change, a problem that took us less than 300 years to produce,” said Scott Kenyon, co-author of the study from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard + Smithsonian.

The paper was published on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, in the journal PLOS Climate.

A simulation from dust launched from the way station at Lagrange point 1. The shadow cast on Earth is exaggerated for clarity.

Casting a shadow

A shield’s overall effectiveness depends on its ability to sustain an orbit that casts a shadow on Earth. Sameer Khan, undergraduate student and the study’s co-author, led the initial exploration into which orbits could hold dust in position long enough to provide adequate shading. Khan’s work demonstrated the difficulty of keeping dust where you need it to be.

“Because we know the positions and masses of the major celestial bodies in our solar system, we can simply use the laws of gravity to track the position of a simulated sunshield over time for several different orbits,” said Khan.

Two scenarios were promising. In the first scenario, the authors positioned a space platform at the L1 Lagrange point, the closest point between Earth and the sun where the gravitational forces are balanced. Objects at Lagrange points tend to stay along a path between the two celestial bodies, which is why the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is located at L2, a Lagrange point on the opposite side of the Earth.

In computer simulations, the researchers shot test particles along the L1 orbit, including the position of Earth, the sun, the moon, and other solar system planets, and tracked where the particles scattered. The authors found that when launched precisely, the dust would follow a path between Earth and the sun, effectively creating shade, at least for a while. Unlike the 13,000-pound JWST, the dust was easily blown off course by the solar winds, radiation, and gravity within the solar system. Any L1 platform would need to create an endless supply of new dust batches to blast into orbit every few days after the initial spray dissipates.

“It was rather difficult to get the shield to stay at L1 long enough to cast a meaningful shadow. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, since L1 is an unstable equilibrium point. Even the slightest deviation in the sunshield’s orbit can cause it to rapidly drift out of place, so our simulations had to be extremely precise,” Khan said.

A simulation of dust launched from the moon’s surface as seen from Earth.

In the second scenario, the authors shot lunar dust from the surface of the moon towards the sun. They found that the inherent properties of lunar dust were just right to effectively work as a sun shield. The simulations tested how lunar dust scattered along various courses until they found excellent trajectories aimed toward L1 that served as an effective sun shield. These results are welcome news, because much less energy is needed to launch dust from the moon than from Earth. This is important because the amount of dust in a solar shield is large, comparable to the output of a big mining operation here on Earth. Furthermore, the discovery of the new sun-shielding trajectories means delivering the lunar dust to a separate platform at L1 may not be necessary.

Just a moonshot?

The authors stress that this study only explores the potential impact of this strategy, rather than evaluate whether these scenarios are logistically feasible.

“We aren’t experts in climate change, or the rocket science needed to move mass from one place to the other. We’re just exploring different kinds of dust on a variety of orbits to see how effective this approach might be. We do not want to miss a game changer for such a critical problem,” said Bromley.

One of the biggest logistical challenges—replenishing dust streams every few days—also has an advantage. Eventually, the sun’s radiation disperses the dust particles throughout the solar system; the sun shield is temporary and shield particles do not fall onto Earth. The authors assure that their approach would not create a permanently cold, uninhabitable planet, as in the science fiction story, “Snowpiercer.”

“Our strategy could be an option in addressing climate change,” said Bromley, “if what we need is more time.”

Fellow of the AAAS

February 2, 2023

Vahe Bandarian is among the 506 newly-elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Bandarian, professor of chemistry and associate dean for student affairs in the College of Science, was elected for “discoveries in the field of tRNA modifications and key contribution to mechanistic basis of radical-mediated transformations leading to complex natural products.”

“I was thrilled when I heard the news and humbled by it,” he says.

Bandarian’s lab studies how bacterial enzymes participate in producing natural chemical products, including many products that aren’t required for the bacteria to grow, but can provide a competitive advantage in the bacteria’s ecosystem.

“These compounds span a large swath of chemical space and include modified bases in RNA, modified peptides and small molecules,” he says. “Our overall goal is to discover and understand the details of these enzymatic transformations.”

Beyond studying natural processes, Bandarian is also interested in how the process of biosynthesis, including these enzymes, can be used to produce designed compounds that could have therapeutic properties.

$1M Grant to Chemists

January 30, 2023

Grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation will help chemists learn how molecules crystallize, potentially saving time in developing new drugs and industrial materials.

Michael Grünwald

Michael Grünwald, Ryan Looper and Rodrigo Noriega, of the University of Utah Department of Chemistry, received a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation funding studies of currently unpredictable aspects of the process of crystallization. Accurate models of how molecules come together to form solid structures will help save time in developing new pharmaceuticals and industrial materials, since researchers will be able to bypass lengthy and expensive screening processes.

“Developing a new drug that is effective, safe and affordable is an enormously expensive and time-consuming process”, says Michael Grünwald. “With our research on how drug molecules crystallize, we hope to really speed things up, so that new antibiotics or antivirals drugs can reach patients more quickly and cheaply.”

Rodrigo Noriega

Predicting how molecules will form crystals is, in the researchers’ words, “extraordinarily difficult.” A crystal is an arrangement of atoms or molecules in a repeating pattern, held together by attractive forces between them. While these atoms or molecules, like Legos, could possibly be arranged in many different ways, the principles of thermodynamics suggest that they will simply arrange themselves in the crystalline structure that maximizes their favorable interactions, just like magnets arrange themselves in a pattern dictated by the magnetic forces between them. This principle works very well for many simple crystalline substances, like table salt or gold, which only have one or two types of atoms and always form the same crystal structure.

Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work that way for organic drug molecules. These molecules are made up of tens or hundreds of atoms and can produce a variety of crystal structures. Often, when developing a new drug, only one of these structures has the “Goldilocks” properties of being stable enough that the drug doesn’t degrade but unstable enough that it can dissolve in the human body. Identifying which of these different crystal structures, or polymorphs, is the right one and how to reproducibly make the right polymorph requires dedicated teams of researchers, significant experimentation and time—ultimately delaying the delivery of life-saving medicines to the patient.

Ryan Looper

Grünwald, Looper and Noriega, along with graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, have an idea that may help make the process of predicting crystal structures simpler. Current models of crystal formation assume that crystals are built one molecule at a time. But the U team proposes that they’re likely built in chunks of two, three or more molecules, called oligomers, and that this process, rather than leading to the crystal structure favored by thermodynamics, instead picks crystallization pathways that are favored kinetically. Favoring one process over another kinetically simply means picking the faster option—like choosing restaurant X over Y because, even though you like Y’s food better, the wait is much shorter at X.

The team brings together a diverse set of researchers that study chemistry in very different ways: Grünwald is a chemical theorist who develops computer simulations to describe chemical processes, Noriega is a spectroscopist who studies the behavior of molecules in solution and Looper is a medicinal chemist who prepares and studies new drug substances. “Combining our expertise will allow us to build new models, compare them to experiments and extract insights to design new chemical systems”, says Noriega. As a group they aim to create a set of tools to help other chemists select the crystal structures they want and produce them quickly and purely.

“Crystal structure prediction of new drug molecules has the potential to really impact people’s well-being by expediting the development process and lowering the cost,” Looper says. “I am excited about our ideas to improve the drug development process, but many questions remain unanswered. The idea that thermodynamics might not accurately predict crystallization is quite controversial in the field. The Keck foundation’s support of our research is essential to provide new evidence to convince scientists to think a different way.”

About the W. M. Keck Foundation

The W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company. One of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations, the W. M. Keck Foundation supports outstanding science, engineering and medical research. The Foundation also supports undergraduate education and maintains a program within Southern California to support arts and culture, education, health and community service projects.

Regional Innovations Engine

THE U’S LEADERSHIP TEAM

The Wilkes Center Student Innovation Prize

2023 College of Science AWARDS

Student Recognition

Faculty Recognition

Postdoc Recognition

Staff Recognition

College of Mines and Earth Sciences Awards

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Weekend Effect

Along wild-to-urban gradients and especially within less developed areas, human recreation can affect wildlife behavior, especially during peaks in human recreational activity.

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UTAH JOINS THE A.A.U.

"It is difficult to overstate the importance of AAU Membership. This elevates the U to an exceptional category of peer institutions."

- Dean Peter Trapa

“We already knew that the U was one of the jewels of Utah and of the Intermountain West. This invitation shows that we are one of the jewels of the entire nation.” - H. David Burton

“AAU is a confirmation of the quality and caliber of our faculty and the innovative work they are doing to advance knowledge and address grand societal challenges. Our students and our community will be the ultimate beneficiaries of these endeavors. " - President Ruth Watkins

Fellow of the AAAS

Jennifer Shumaker-Perry is among the 506 newly-elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

>> Home <<

Space Sunscreen

Dust launched from the moon’s surface or from a space station positioned between Earth and the sun could reduce enough solar radiation to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Casting a shadow

Just a moonshot?

>> HOME <<

Fellow of the AAAS

Vahe Bandarian is among the 506 newly-elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

>> Home <<

$1M Grant to Chemists

Grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation will help chemists learn how molecules crystallize, potentially saving time in developing new drugs and industrial materials.

About the W. M. Keck Foundation

>> HOME <<