Month: April 2020

Article written by Paul Alongi, College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences

Clemson University researchers are volunteering their time and resources as part of a statewide effort to develop serologic tests that could play a key role in reigniting South Carolina’s economy and protecting healthcare professionals on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A test on track to be ready this week would be aimed at detecting antibodies that form in the bloodstream when someone has been exposed to the novel coronavirus and is therefore thought to have a lowered chance of re-infection.

Clemson researchers are developing the South Carolina tests with colleagues from the University of South Carolina, Prisma Health and the Medical University of South Carolina. Commercial labs are also developing the tests, but some South Carolinians are concerned that the tests will be in short supply and that the lion’s share will go to larger states with more purchasing power and more cases of COVID-19.

Delphine Dean is overseeing the Clemson portion of the work as the Clemson lead for the state’s Serological Testing and Diagnostic Working Group.

“We’re all working on it together,” said Dean, who is the Ron and Jane Lindsay Family Innovation Professor of bioengineering. “Many of the barriers between institutions that sometimes slow down collaboration have been removed. Everyone has been working around the clock to make these things go much faster than typically happens.”

Before any test is deployed, it would need to be validated for effectiveness to meet Food and Drug Administration regulations.

The test that will be available this week is aimed at checking healthcare professionals for antibodies. The idea is that those who test positive for the antibodies could be cleared to re-enter public life, allowing them to work with minimal concern they could come down with COVID-19 or infect others.

About 500-1,000 tests could be ready as early as this week, less than a month since the project started, researchers said.

The two Clemson researchers working on the test are Mark Blenner, the McQueen Quattlebaum Associate Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Sarah Harcum, professor of bioengineering.

Blood samples would need to be tested in a lab, which limits how many can be done. In a parallel effort, Clemson researchers are working to create tests that could take saliva, urine or blood and show results with a color change in as little as 15 minutes, similar to a home pregnancy test.

Researchers involved in developing those tests are: Blenner, Terri Bruce, research assistant professor of bioengineering and director of the Clemson Light Imaging Facility; Dean; Harcum; and R. Kenneth Marcus, University Professor of chemistry.

The tests would be an improvement on current methods. Antibody tests that check for immunity require a blood draw and are inaccurate and scarce, Blenner said. Testing directly for the virus itself requires an uncomfortable nasal swab and puts healthcare workers at a heightened risk of catching the virus, he said.

Martine LaBerge, the chair of Clemson’s bioengineering department, said all the researchers are volunteering their time, efforts and resources to help the state, as it faces the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They are working tirelessly to protect the health and safety of South Carolina’s healthcare professionals and the general public,” said LaBerge, who is playing a central role in coordinating Clemson’s research response to the pandemic. “Institutional barriers are coming down so that we can work together as one South Carolina. I offer all those sacrificing sleep and time with family my deepest gratitude.”

The process to develop the tests starts with Blenner, who is making spike proteins, which give the novel coronavirus its distinguishing feature and is believed to be how the viral infection is mediated.

In his lab, Blenner puts the DNA for the spike proteins inside of human or hamster cells. When the cells grow, they produce the spike proteins, which will ultimately serve as the key reagent in the antibody tests.

“Our group is going to make a stable cell line that we can scale up,” Blenner said. “Right now the procedure is not meant to make a lot of protein. It’s meant for quick protein production. I’m going to make a productive cell line and work with Sarah Harcum to get that in larger bioreactors.”

Harcum said she will put the cells in computer-controlled bioreactors that can sense oxygen and pH levels. Pumps carefully control the nutrients that feed the cells.

“I grow cells to make them happier so they make more protein,” Harcum said. “Normally, I look at how to make pharmaceuticals, but the pharmaceuticals I make are proteins, which makes this COVID-19 work a good fit for what I do.”

Once she has the protein grown, Harcum will then purify it so that it can be used in the diagnostic tests.

Meanwhile, Bruce, Marcus and Dean are starting to lay the groundwork for simple tests that could reach large numbers of people.

“What we really need is something simple that’s a colorimetric test that can be done in under 15 minutes at the point of care,” Bruce said.

The team is working to improve upon a commercially-developed enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay, or ELISA, that checks blood samples for antibodies.

Antibodies are plentiful in blood but less so in saliva. One of the challenges in developing a saliva-based test is isolating the antibodies.

To do so, Marcus and Bruce are turning to capillary-channeled polymer fiber-based films, a technology they have been researching for years.

“Antibodies exist in this tremendously complex soup, and what you would like to be able to do is pull them out of the soup selectively in a fairly high-throughput fashion,” Marcus said.  “We can modify our fibers so that the only things that stick are the antibodies.”

Clemson researchers are working to make a prototype, but a manufacturer would be needed to produce large quantities of the test, Bruce said.

Dean, who is helping develop the optical portion of the test, said it could also be possible to use the fibers to capture the virus itself from urine. There is evidence that the virus comes out in urine after it is no longer detectable in blood, she said.

“Patients could maybe test themselves at home,” Dean said. “The same principle could be used to test waste streams. If you wanted to do population monitoring, you might be able to get a sense for what percent of the population has the virus.”

Researchers said they are finding ways to pay for the development of the tests with existing funds but that eventually they will need financial support, particularly when the semester ends next month.

“We are going to need lab supplies and graduate student salaries, and we could accelerate development by outsourcing some of the work,” Dean said. “Typically, when we launch big projects, we apply for federal funding, a process that normally takes months, if not a year or more. But time is of the essence, and we are finding ways to quickly ramp up work. What we need most now is the funds to help keep the work going.”

Congratulations to Apoorv Balwani for successfully defending his dissertation titled “Impact of Nanoparticles on the Segmental Dynamics and Transport Properties of Ionomer Nanocomposite Membranes”.  Apoorv’s advisor is Dr. Eric Davis.

Nanocomposites of perfluorosulfonic acid ionomers and silica nanoparticles play a pivotal role in large scale, grid integratable Vanadium redox flow batteries. Impregnation of these ionomers with inorganic nanoparticles has gained prominent standing in recent years due to the ease and scalability of fabrication of ionomer nanocomposites and a desirably tuned vanadium ion selectivity, although the specific mechanisms underlying the slowdown of vanadium ion transport by these inorganic moieties presently elude us. In this work, Nafion-silica nanocomposites were characterized to investigate the correlation between their aqueous transport properties and their segmental dynamics as a function of heat treatment and nanoparticle concentration in order to elucidate the mechanism of vanadium ion crossover suppression as a function of structural dynamics, hydration state and nanoparticle sequestration and loading.

The water sorption kinetics of Nafion-SiNP nanocomposites were investigated with in situ time resolved attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (tATR-FTIR) while the impact of nanoparticles on structure dynamics of the nanocomposites were characterized with neutron spin echo spectroscopy (NSE) and broadband dielectric  spectroscopy (BDS). The hydration kinetics and viscoelastic swelling behavior were seen to be highly concomitant in the tATR-FTIR studies, while investigations with NSE and BDS correlate this change in viscoelastic behavior to the molecular scale nanoparticle-ionomer interactions.

Finally, quasielastic neutron scattering is employed to quantify the vanadium ion dynamics in fouled membranes with varying degrees of silica incorporation. The results from this study enlighten the mechanism of slowdown of ionomer segments due to electrostatic ionomer-nanoparticle interactions, and present an investigative framework which can be translated across different ionomer-nanocomposite systems to characterize water-mediated transport.

Professors David Bruce and Amod Ogale received the prestigious University Research, Scholarship, and Artistic Achievement Award (URSAA) from President James Clements this past year.

The award recognizes Clemson University faculty whose work has been acknowledged at the highest levels nationally and internationally. URSAAA winning faculty are lifetime appointees and participate in a yearly celebration of faculty achievements.

Dr. David Bruce, Professor and Chair of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, has been a faculty member at Clemson for 25 years.  Prof. Bruce was honored with Clemson URSAA Award for being an author of a paper that has received over 1,000 citations.  The referenced work was a collaborative effort between Dr. Bruce, Dr. Jim Goodwin (former ChBE Chair), Dr. Edgar Lotero (post-doctoral fellow), and graduate students Y. Liu, D.E. Lopez, and K. Suwannakarn. The article titled “Synthesis of Biodiesel via Acid Catalysis” was published in the journal of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research in 2005 and has to-date received over 1850 citations. This review article is one of the most highly cited articles on the production of renewable fuels from plant based materials. While at Clemson, Dr. Bruce has taught 15 different undergraduate and graduate courses, graduated 26 PhD and MS students, and mentored 4 post-doctoral research associates.

Dr. Amod Ogale, Dow Chemical Professor of Chemical Engineering, has served on the Clemson faculty for over 33 years. He also serves as the Director of Center for Advanced Engineering Fibers and Films (CAEFF). Prof. Ogale was honored with Clemson URSAA Award for being inducted as a FELLOW of three different professional societies for his life-time achievements and contributions to the American Carbon Society (ACS), Society for Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering (SAMPE), and Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). He has also won the Graffin Lecturer Award from ACS, and the SABIC Composites Educator Award from SPE.  While at Clemson, Dr. Ogales has taught 12 different undergraduate and graduate courses, graduated 41 PhD and MS students, and mentored 8 post-doctoral research associates. Prof. Ogale has published over 150 refereed papers and been the principal investigator or co-investigator on over 50 research grants worth over $ 40 million.

Mark Blenner, the McQueen-Quattlebaum Associate Professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, was named Junior Researcher of the Year.   Dr. Blenner received his Junior Researcher of the Year award from Clemson University President James P. Clements and was honored again at the College awards ceremony in October.

“The Researcher of the Year awards were created to recognize the efforts of high-achieving faculty whose work is improving society through the generation and dissemination of new knowledge. Drs. Marcus and Blenner offer wonderful examples of the impact university faculty members can have,” said Tanju Karanfil, vice president for research.

Blenner is a biotechnology expert whose innovations using metabolic engineering and synthetic biology are facilitating the conversion of low-value renewable substrates into more valuable products like biofuels, bioplastics, pharmaceuticals and omega-3 fatty acids for supplements and fish feed. His diverse research portfolio has applications in space exploration, waste utilization, covert surveillance of nuclear weapons development and much more. Blenner also is leading a statewide effort to attract more chemical engineering students with an eye toward diversifying the profession.

“I am honored and humbled to receive this award. In addition to all my research students, research mentors and collaborators, I would like to share my award with my colleagues at Clemson,” Blenner said. “Having a vibrant and intellectually stimulating working environment has been a critical driver of my achievements.”

Blenner’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies.

Anand Gramopadhye, dean of the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences, congratulated Blenner on the award.

“One of the most heartening aspects of Dr. Blenner’s work in the college is the level of student engagement he provides, not only for graduate students but also undergraduates,” Gramopadhye said. “His lab — one of the largest in the college — provides fertile ground for research and innovation at all levels.”

The Researcher of the Year awards were announced at the university’s annual Research Symposium, which brings together faculty from across the Clemson footprint to share ideas and explore the creation of interdisciplinary research teams that can tackle complex societal problems. The awards program was created with input from the Vice President of Research Faculty Advisory Board.

For the Researcher of the Year awards, each college nominated a senior faculty member and a junior faculty member who received his or her terminal degree within the past 10 years. Winners were selected by an interdisciplinary faculty committee.

Junior faculty nominees included David Jachowski from the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences; Eric Morris from the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities; Greg Cranmer from the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences; Sandra Linder from the College of Education; Blenner from the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences; and Xian Lu from the College of Science.

Senior faculty nominees were John Rodgers from the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences; Will Stockton from the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities; Catherine Mobley from the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences; Phillip Roth from the College of Business; Antonis Katsiyannis from the College of Education; Laine Mears from the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences; and Ken Marcus from the College of Science who was named Senior Researcher of the Year.

Graduate student Xiaohong Zhang’s research (along with her advisor Dr. Rachel Getman and collaborator Dr. Aditya Savara from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) recently made the cover of the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation.   Their journal publication titled “A Method for Obtaining Liquid-Solid Adsorption Rates from Molecular Dynamics Simulations: Applied to Methanol on Pt(111) in H₂O”, explains the new methods they developed to measure adsorption rates.

Industrial-scale chemical reactions routinely employ heterogeneous catalysts to more efficiently produce the desired chemical product(s).  In these processes, the reactants adsorb on the catalyst surface and are converted to the desired products, which are later collected and purified. Thus, adsorption is an important step in heterogeneous catalysis as it predetermines how many reactant molecules can participate in a surface reaction, which directly impacts catalyst performance. While adsorption processes are well studied in both theory and experiment for systems with gaseous reactants (gas-solid adsorption), such processes are much less understood for systems having liquid phase reactants (liquid-solid adsorption).  This is partly because of the difficulty in studying the ever-changing environment of the liquid reaction medium.

In this project, Zhang and her fellow researchers developed a method that combines molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and mathematical modeling to calculate adsorption rates for species binding to a solid catalyst surface from liquid solvent. These MD simulations explicitly model the liquid environment, enabling the trajectories of the reactant molecules to be followed as they adsorb on the catalyst surface. The mathematical modeling analyzes the essential behavior of the adsorbing process and provides quantitative studies of the adsorption rate.  This combined model supplants the prior state-of-the-art, which was derived from ideal gas collision theory.

As the new methods developed by Zhang et al. take into account intermolecular forces from the liquid reaction medium, they are up to 4 orders of magnitude more accurate than the prior state-of-the-art models, providing an example of the importance of atomistic simulations in understanding adsorption and catalysis.

Overall, their approach turned out to be more accurate than the prior methods and can be expanded to arbitrary catalyst surfaces and liquid solvents, providing a useful tool for evaluating and screening catalysts.

The authors also provide methods for accurately estimating rates of adsorption in cases where access to molecular dynamics simulations is unavailable, expanding the impact of the manuscript.

We are often faced with the unexpected in life. But no one could have foreseen the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on our students, faculty, staff, and our university.

The May 2020 commencement has been pushed to this upcoming summer or fall, our Ph.D. students are delivering their defenses via Zoom, our students and faculty are learning how to communicate and adjust to online learning, and our staff and student advisors are finding new ways to advise students electronically.

“For me, the transition to online classes has been fairly difficult,” ChBE Undergraduate, Emily Miller shared. “I learn best by being able to talk through challenging concepts with my peers and professors. While I can still do that to a certain extent, it’s not as flexible as being able to stop by a professor’s office for a quick question or as efficient as sitting in the student lounge working through UO lab reports with my group members.”

However, despite the challenges, Emily is finding a way to make things fun. “I also really miss talking to my friends throughout the day to break up my schedule. I am coping with all of this by using fun Zoom backgrounds. It’s an easy way to add a little light and laughter to a rather gloomy time!  Plus, I enjoy when my classmates (and professors) get a laugh out of them. Some of my favorites so far have been The Krusty Krab, a toilet paper aisle, and Rick Astley dancing.”

These circumstances have reminded Emily of one of her favorite quotes and she’d love to share that with our Clemson Family:

“When life gets tough and you’re faced with defeat, remember somewhere in the world a flower is popping through some concrete.” – Brad Montague

We will get through this!

Dr. Christopher Norfolk was recently presented the Byars Prize for Excellence in Teaching Engineering Fundamentals from the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences. This award honors Dr. Norfolk’s skills as a teacher, mentor, and one who is respected by students and faculty alike. It also acknowledges the many accolades he receives from our students each year.

Dr. Norfolk, who was promoted to Senior Lecturer this year, teaches Introduction to Chemical Engineering (ChE 1300) and Unit Operations Lab courses (ChE 3070 and ChE 4070).

Below you will find Dr. Norfolk’s teaching philosophy in his own words:

“My approach to teaching is likely different from many of the excellent lecturers and professors that practice the trade at Clemson. I find the traditional role of ‘teacher’ to be too confining to capture all of the things I am trying to do in my position. Instead, I consider myself to be the leader of a group of students, and I try to apply principals of good leadership to my interactions with my team. I find this paradigm to be very helpful.

The first thing any team requires is a clearly defined goal. The implicit goal for every class is that every student master the course material. However, I also spend a lot of time clearly communicating expectations, including allowing all students access to years’ worth of old exams, so that the final expectations are clear.

Another characteristic of a good leader is the realization that the success of the leader lies in maximizing the potential of the team. My greatest possible success is not in being a popular instructor, or in handling a large number of students, but in the extent to which my students master the course material. This philosophy suggests several tactical choices that I tend to use with my students. The first isto strive to meet each student ‘where they are,’ rather than where I think they should be. This means that the methods that I employ in the classroom are continually changing to accommodate learning styles of students, including hybrid in-person/online classes, in class exercises, providing opportunities for individual and group practice, etc.

I have also revised our Unit Ops Lab Manual, which more closely follows the current structure of the lab courses and gives students explicit instruction on the proper methods to estimate experimental uncertainty, based on the methods used by NIST. The manual also provides examples of the type and level of technical reports we expect from them. It is a critical resource to support our most important courses.

I view the task of learning as primarily belonging to the students; they are doing the hard work, and I am merely guiding them along the path. Part of my role is to remove, where possible, impediments to their work, so that they can progress as efficiently as possible. In this, timely communication is key, and so I make myself as available as possible to all students, both in-person and on-line; my students all have my cell phone number to facilitate this. I find this to be one of the most appreciated aspects of my teaching style. I also make it clear to students that I will support them through the learning process, doing whatever it takes to reinforce their efforts. With the knowledge that they have virtually limitless resources available to them, the responsibility for their progress in the course vests with the them. I find that forcing students to face this responsibility encourages more professional behaviors.

Since the students are doing all of the hard work of learning, part of my role as a leader is to keep them motivated. The students will get out of the course in proportion to the effort they put into the course, and so if I can keep them dedicated to the material, they will achieve the goal of mastery to a greater extent. This requires me to answer the ‘why’ question, rather than the ‘how’ question, keeping the purpose of the course as a central aspect. But in motivating students, as in motivating any team, I find that personal connection is most effective. As the saying goes (attributed to Theodore Roosevelt), ‘Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.’

Finally, I do what I can to model leadership and dedication for my students. I am continually encouraging them to give more to the class, to press through their limits, and to reach the next level of understanding of the material. So I strive never to falter when they ask me for more, either in class or out, and I do my best to put none of my other activities above the needs of any student. I want to inspire loyalty in my team, the idea being that students can see my dedication to them in our everyday interactions. I want them to tirelessly work for me because they know I will tirelessly work for them.”

By Paul Alongi | Photography by Josh Wilson | 

Yeast might be Earth’s most underappreciated lifeform. These single-celled members of the fungi kingdom get plenty of credit for turning barley into beer, grapes into wine and wheat into bread. But their range might not be limited to the blue planet for long.

Mark Blenner, the McQueen-Quattlebaum Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering at Clemson University, is engineering yeast to do things nature hasn’t yet figured out.

The potential is wide-ranging. Blenner is helping yeast produce two very different products —omega-3 supplements and polyester — that astronauts could use on missions to Mars. He is also using yeast to explore new ways of developing drugs, and to create sensors that would help search for radiation from nuclear weapons production.

For Blenner, the research is a platform to teach students how to ask and answer critical questions. He also sees his work as a potential catalyst for a cutting-edge industry that South Carolina could lead.

His colleagues are recognizing his work. Last spring, Blenner was named Clemson University Junior Researcher of the Year. He conducted research in the fall at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Over the summer, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the nation’s highest honor bestowed on young faculty.

“I use him as an example to my current students,” says Scott Banta, a professor of chemical engineering at Columbia University and Blenner’s former Ph.D. adviser. “If you want to go into academia, this is what it should look like.”

Blenner likens his work to installing software in a computer. He and his students use bacteria to construct DNA — the software — and then install it into the yeast — the hardware — to create the desired molecule.

The scientific community’s advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis over the past 10 years have helped break open the field to new possibilities, Blenner says.

“I think we’re going to see a lot more solutions to problems that are microbial based,” Blenner says. “And I think it’s going to be part of the solution to helping us survive on Mars and other planets.”

Ph.D. Candidate, Jaime Idarraga-Mora, whose advisor is Dr. Scott Husson, successfully defended his dissertation titled “Mechanical Properties of Thin-Film Composite Membranes and their Role in Osmotic Processes” on March 18^th.

Jaime reflected on his research and studies:  “During my Ph.D.,  I had multiple feelings, from hopelessness to joy. My joy came from constantly trying to learn new things, which led me to propose new, better-informed, hypotheses and experiments to test them. Additional excitement came when some of the hypotheses were proven true.   Osmotic processes are membrane operations in which the main driving force is a concentration difference of solutes in the solutions in contact with the two sides of a semipermeable membrane. Applications include removing water from products/contaminants, harvesting energy from salinity gradients, and lowering the costs of seawater desalination. The study system for my research was a set of thin-film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes designed for rejecting salts in desalination. These TFC RO membranes have thick supporting layers (~150 μm), which increases the diffusion pathway for salts within the membranes. This decreases the effective salinity gradient between the two surfaces of the membrane active layer, which ultimately decreases the process productivity (i.e., water flux) in osmotic processes. I aimed to provide guidelines for the improved design of TFC membranes for OP, considering the trade-off between membrane mechanical integrity and productivity.”

“Moving forward, I hope to bring the skills and critical thinking that I have gained at Clemson to develop new technologies that enable sustainable chemical processes,” said  Idarraga-Mora.    After graduation, Jaime will be joining the Dow Chemical Company as a Senior Research Specialist at their Innovation Center in Lake Jackson, TX.

Preparing for graduation can be tricky, especially during a nation-wide crisis.  And defending your thesis as a Ph.D. student remotely through Zoom, added another layer of concern.   However, Allison Domhoff was well-prepared and successfully presented her dissertation titled “Tuning Transport in Ionomer Nanocomposites via Nanoparticle Surface Functionalization” on April 1^st.

Domhoff’s research during her studies here at Clemson investigated the effect of different surface chemistries on silica nanoparticles and incorporated the functionalized nanoparticles into ionomer membranes for vanadium redox flow batteries to correlate nanoparticle dispersion, nanocomposite morphology, and bulk ion transport through these nanocomposite membranes.

Upon graduation, Allison Domhoff will continue her career in Pittsburgh, PA as a Research Chemist for PPG Industries.   PPG Industries is a global supplier of paints, coatings, and specialty materials and a Fortune 500 company.

As Allison reflected on her journey to receiving her Ph.D., she had this to say; “I am so fortunate to have been a part of the Davis Research Group at Clemson for my PhD studies, through which I have bolstered my technical and writing skills with awesome experiences and feel ready to tackle any scientific problem that presents itself. I look forward to using my expertise on new and different projects as a Research Chemist at PPG.”

As a parting gift, Allison had a wonderful piece of advice for Ph.D. students in the Clemson Chemical Engineering program, “I recommend to all current and future students to try all new opportunities and apply to anything extra that you can, whether that be for fellowships you don’t think you have a chance in being awarded or for experiments at external facilities, you never know what will happen!”