Rensselaer is America’s oldest technological research university, offering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in engineering, the sciences, information technology and web science, architecture, management, and the humanities, arts, and social sciences.

The university offers degrees from five schools: Engineering; Science; Architecture; Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; and the Lally School of Management; as well as an interdisciplinary degree in Information Technology and Web Science.

Rensselaer offers more than 145 programs at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. Students are encouraged to work in interdisciplinary programs that allow them to combine scholarly work from several departments or schools. The university provides rigorous, engaging, interactive learning environments and campus-wide opportunities for leadership, collaboration, and creativity.

Driven by talented, dedicated, and forward-thinking faculty, Rensselaer has dramatically expanded the research enterprise by leveraging our existing strengths and focusing on five signature research areas: biotechnology and the life sciences; energy and the environment; computational science and engineering; nanotechnology and advanced materials; and media, arts, science, and technology.

The Institute is especially well-known for its success in the transfer of technology from the laboratory to the marketplace so that new discoveries and inventions benefit human life, protect the environment, and strengthen economic development.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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Rapid Synthesis of Silk-Like Polymers Facilitated by Microwave Irradiation and Click Chemistry

Coating Topologically Complex Electrospun Fibers with Nanothin Silk Fibroin Enhances Neurite Outgrowth in Vitro

Chemical Synthesis of Silk-Mimetic Polymers

Universal nanothin silk coatings via controlled spidroin self-assembly

Silk and Silk‐Like Supramolecular Materials

R. Helen Zha, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, focuses her research on developing bio-inspired materials for applications in human healthcare and sustainability. She earned her bachelors of science at MIT in Materials Science & Engineering with a focus on polymeric materials, before receiving her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. While at Northwestern, Zha worked as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow on self-assembling peptide-based materials. As a postdoctoral researcher at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, Zha developed supramolecular materials with highly ordered nanostructures and photoswitchable properties. Following her work at Eindhoven, she moved to UC Berkeley where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher on bio-inspired antimicrobial coatings.

Biomimetic and Bio-inspired Materials

Nanostructured Soft Matter

Biomolecular Engineering and Self-assembly

Drug delivery and Nanomedicine

Sustainable Materials and Plastic Upcycling

R. Helen Zha Lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Google Scholar Profile

RPI researchers develop disinfecting mask for COVID-19

RPI researchers working to develop virus-killing masks

Research Turns Plastic Waste into Biodegradable Silk

selfbuilt-protein-coatings-could-improve-biomedical-devices

Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering

Fouling is a natural phenomenon that describes the tendency of proteins in water to adhere to nearby surfaces. It’s what causes unwanted deposits of protein to form during some food production or on biomedical implants, causing them to fail. Using her expertise in developing bio-inspired materials for use in human health, R. Helen Zha, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering will harness this process found in nature to develop a versatile and accessible approach for modifying solid surfaces.

With the support of a more than $592,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant, Zha will use silk fibroin — a protein that naturally assembles itself — to grow a nanoscale film on the surface of an object. This approach only requires a beaker, water, salt, and the protein, which Zha said makes it biocompatible, safe, ecofriendly, and accessible beyond the walls of a lab. 

Zha has demonstrated that this approach can work and, in some cases, even increase the therapeutic benefits of an implant. In research published in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, Zha collaborated with Ryan Gilbert, a professor of biomedical engineering at Rensselaer, to modify the surface of a fibrous scaffold that was developed by Gilbert’s lab in order to encourage the growth of neurites at the site of nerve damage.

 
The importance of this research could expand beyond the protein Zha and her lab are working with. This approach, she explained, could be applied to any number of proteins and macromolecules.




Self-Built Protein Coatings Could Improve Biomedical Devices

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