[neact] March 1st lecture

Dr. Angela Belcher will be speaking at the Science and Engineering Colloquium 
for Teachers on March 1st in East Hartford, CT, sponsored by the MIT Club of 
Hartford.  If you are interested in attending or in receiving more information, 
contact Avi Ornstein at aornstein@xxxxxxxxxxxx  In addition, there will be an 
afternoon program for selected high school students.  One or two sophomores 
and/or juniors from each high school in Connecticut are invited to attend.  
Students can register with Jack Solomon at jacksolomon1@xxxxxxxxxx 

 

Angela Belcher


 Dr. Angela Belcher is a materials chemist with expertise in the fields of 
biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces and solid 
state chemistry. The focus of Dr. Belcher's research is understanding and using 
the process by which Nature makes materials in order to design novel hybrid 
organic-inorganic electronic and magnetic materials on new length scales. Her 
research is very interdisciplinary in nature and brings together the fields of 
inorganic chemistry, materials chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology and 
electrical engineering. Among her awards are the Presidential Early Career 
Award in Science and Engineering (2000), and the Du Pont Young Investigators 
Award (1999). Her research was mentioned in a July 2001 Forbes magazine cover 
story on nanotechnology. 

On November 12, 2006, Professor Angela Belcher was named 2006 Research Leader 
of the Year and a member of the "Scientific American 50," the magazine's annual 
list of individuals, teams, companies and other organizations whose 
accomplishments demonstrate outstanding technological leadership.

The following excerpt is from Time, dated February 20, 2008:

 

The reason we aren't all driving electric cars has little to do with a Detroit 
conspiracy. It's that nobody has invented a lightweight, inexpensive battery 
that can store enough electricity to make such a vehicle practical. 

 

If anyone can change that, it's Angela Belcher. A materials scientist and 
bioengineer at M.I.T., Belcher, 49, won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 
2004, and last fall Scientific American named her research leader of the year 
for her current project: creating an entirely new kind of battery, not by 
building it but by growing it. Working with several M.I.T. colleagues, Belcher 
has engineered a virus, known as M13 bacteriophage, that latches onto and coats 
itself with bits of inorganic materials, including gold and cobalt oxide. That 
turns each long, tubular virus into what amounts to a minuscule length of wire. 
Coax these nanowires to line up, and you have the components of a battery that 
is far more compact and powerful than anything available.

 

If her battery works as a commercially viable product, that alone could qualify 
Belcher as a climate-change hero, but her vision is green in other ways as 
well. Conventional batteries generate a lot of waste during manufacture, and 
they're a disposal nightmare. But a viral battery essentially grows itself, 
using water as a solvent, so there's practically no waste. And since much of 
its relatively small bulk is organic, the battery is partly biodegradable.

 

Belcher has been tackling a whole new field of science every five years (so 
far, she has mastered materials science, biochemistry, molecular biology and 
electrical engineering). Considering her track record, the next thing she 
decides to study could well lead to yet another remarkable breakthrough.

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