Featured Post from VCU College of Engineering

Meet Supathorn Phongikaroon, Ph.D., director of Virginia's only comprehensive nuclear engineering degree program

Oct 31, 2019

1 min

As director of engineering at the Virginia Commonwealth University College of Engineering, Supathorn Phongikaroon, Ph.D., leads Virginia's only nuclear engineering education program offering bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. VCU Engineering is also home to the nation's only hybrid doctorate in mechanical and nuclear engineering. 


Phongikaroon is a nationally recognized expert on nuclear waste minimization. He has developed novel ways to process and store used nuclear fuel. He has also developed new techniques to ensure safeguard special nuclear materials.


Prior joining the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in January 2014, he held academic and research positions at University of Idaho in Idaho Falls, Idaho; the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho; and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.


Phongikaroon grew up in a restaurant family. While working at the Idaho National Laboratory, he authored "Thaidaho," a cookbook for creating Thai cuisine in American kitchens.


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1 min

Founder of Medicines for All Institute’s Vision: Produce Medications More Efficiently to Expand Global Access

Featuring: B. Frank Gupton, Ph.D. A former process development executive in the pharmaceutical industry, B. Frank Gupton, Ph.D., was coaxed out of retirement to teach in the Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University. Gupton, whose research focuses on improving health care by making pharmaceutical production cleaner and more cost-effective, is founder and CEO of the Medicines for All Institute (M4ALL), based in the VCU College of Engineering. The institute began with a simple idea: expand global access to lifesaving medications by producing them more efficiently. The institute’s team of chemical engineers and chemists demonstrated compelling results with its first target, the anti-HIV/AIDS drug nevirapine. As the researchers continue to work on additional therapies for HIV/AIDS treatment and other diseases, M4ALL is now working with a manufacturer in South Africa and partnering with the government of Ivory Coast to bring their advances to the places they are most needed. VCU Engineering’s experts are available to speak about how M4ALL is transforming pharmaceutical engineering and improving access to medicines around the world. Gupton is the Floyd D. Gottwald Junior Chair in Pharmaceutical Engineering, professor and chair of the Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering. An award-winning researcher and National Academy of Inventors Fellow with multiple patents, he is an expert in his field. Simply click on his icon to arrange an interview.

4 min

‘Alexa for chemistry’: National Science Foundation puts VCU and partners on fast track to build open network

D. Tyler McQuade, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University College of Engineering, is principal investigator of a multi-university project seeking to use artificial intelligence to help scientists come up with the perfect molecule for everything from a better shampoo to coatings on advanced microchips. The project is one of the first in the U.S. to be selected for $994,433 in funding as part of a new pilot project of the National Science Foundation (NSF) called the Convergence Accelerator (C-Accel). McQuade and his collaborators will pitch their prototype in March 2020 in a bid for additional funding of up to $5 million over five years. Adam Luxon, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering who has been involved from the beginning, explained it this way: “We want to essentially make the Alexa of chemistry.” Just as Amazon, Google and Netflix use data algorithms to suggest customized predictions, the team plans to build a platform and open knowledge network that can combine and help users make sense of molecular sciences data pulled from a wide range of sources including academia, industry and government. The idea is right in line with the goal of the NSF program: to speed up the transition of convergence research into practice in nationally critical areas such as “Harnessing the Data Revolution.” The team itself reflects expertise across several specialties. Working with McQuade are James K. Ferri, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering; Carol A. Parish, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and the Floyd D. and Elisabeth S. Gottwald Chair in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Richmond; and Adrian E. Roitberg, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Chemistry at University of Florida. Two companies are also involved with the project: Two Six Labs, based in Arlington, Virginia, and Fathom Information Design, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Currently, there is no shared network or central portal where molecular scientists and engineers can harness artificial intelligence and data science tools to build models to support their needs. What’s more, while scientists have been able to depict what elements make up a molecule, how the atoms are arranged in space and what the properties of that molecule are (such as its melting point), there is no standard way to represent — or predict — molecular performance. The team aims to fill these gaps by advancing the concept of a “molecular imprint.” The collaborators will create a new system that represents molecules by combining line-drawing, geometry and quantum chemical calculations into a single, machine-learnable format. They will develop a central platform for collecting data, creating these molecular imprints and developing algorithms for mining the data, and will develop machine learning tools to create performance prediction models. Parish said, “The ability to compute molecular properties using computational techniques, and to dovetail that data with experimental measurements, will generate databases that will produce the most comprehensive results in the molecular sciences. “There are many laboratories around the world working in this space; however, there are few organizational structures available that encourage open sharing of these data for the benefit of the community and the common good. We seek to collaborate with others to provide this structure; an open knowledge network or repository where scientists can deposit their molecular-level experimental and computational data in exchange for user-friendly tools to help manage and query the data.” The initial response to their idea has been strong from potential partners. Ferri and the others have already collected more than a dozen letters from major corporations such as Dow and Merck expressing interest in participating. Also on board are Idaho National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, as well as national chemical engineering and chemistry organizations. McQuade said that chemical engineers in major industries including consumer products and oil and gas producers expend a lot of effort running experiments to determine the molecule they want to use, such as finding the best shampoo additive that doesn’t make babies cry. “The ability to design the properties you want is still more art than science.” The team also plans to develop a toolkit for processing and visualizing the data. Roitberg, whose research focuses include advanced visualization, said this could take the form of a virtual reality realm in which a user could find materials that are soluble in water but not oil, for instance, and then be able to browse for similar materials nearby. “We envision a very interactive platform where the user can explore relations between data and desired material properties,” he said. 

3 min

At VCU, engineering and pharmacy join forces to make inhaled medications more effective for infants and children

Pharmaceutical aerosols are painless, fast-acting and less likely to cause side effects than medicines delivered via pills or injections. Yet inhaled therapies are often avoided because of the challenges associated with targeting how aerosol particles are deposited within the lung. “Current inhalers produce fairly large particles, so approximately 90 percent of the medication gets lost in the mouth and throat. It’s swallowed and wasted. This prevents many medications from being delivered through the inhalation route, even though there are a number of advantages to be gained, such as improved efficacy and reduced side effects,” said Worth Longest, Ph.D., the Louis S. and Ruth S. Harris Exceptional Scholar Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering in the VCU College of Engineering. Simply making the particles smaller isn’t a solution. “The problem with making the particles smaller is that they go in really well — but they also come straight back out during exhalation,” said Michael Hindle, Ph.D., the Peter R. Byron Distinguished Professor in the VCU School of Pharmacy. With three National Institutes of Health R01 grants totaling more than $7 million, Longest and Hindle are applying a combined engineering and pharmaceutical approach to make inhaled medications more effective and available. In “High-Efficiency Aerosol Delivery Using the Excipient Enhanced Growth Concept: A Human Proof of Concept Study,” Longest and Hindle have created a novel platform that produces particles that are tiny when they enter the lungs — but grow in size as they travel down the warm, humid airways. This platform comprises a device that uses a mixer-heater to produce tiny particles, about one-fifth the size of those from conventional inhalers. With this delivery concept, a pharmaceutical powder or liquid is enhanced with a hygroscopic excipient, essentially a substance that attracts water. “Your lungs are full of water,” Hindle said. “So if you put something inside your lungs that likes water, it’s going to swell and grow in size and not be expelled.” Using sodium chloride — salt — as the hygroscopic excipient, they have tested their system in vitro. The results have been promising. “We’ve flipped the needle,” Longest said. “Previously, only 10 percent of the initial dose would reach the lung, and that 10 percent was poorly targeted within different lung regions. With our approach, you can get 90 percent in and distribute that 90 percent evenly, or target a specific lung region.” The researchers will begin testing their method on adults in two human proof-of-concept trials beginning in late 2019 and early 2020. In two separate, but related, NIH studies, Longest and Hindle are adapting this concept for patients ranging in age from newborn to six. Each project proposes a device approximately the size of a lipstick tube that contains a pediatric formulation (liquid or powder) enhanced with a hygroscopic excipient. There are currently no inhalers on the market specifically designed for children or infants, even though their inhaling patterns and volumes differ from those of adults. Pediatric patients therefore must use adult-sized devices. One study focuses on targeted lung delivery of the antibiotic tobramycin to children with cystic fibrosis, a population prone to respiratory infection because of overproduction of mucus in the lungs. Pediatric cystic fibrosis patients with lung infections usually receive the medication via, 20-minute nebulizer treatments daily, sometimes up to four per day. Longest and Hindle’s proposed alternative is a pediatric dry powder inhaler that is fast and easy to use. Because its particles are engineered to reach the deep lung, it is expected to eradicate infection more efficiently because there is less risk of resistant strains of bacteria forming in undertreated regions of the lung. The other study focuses on delivery of surfactant aerosols to premature infants. Surfactant is a substance found in healthy lungs that keeps the tissue supple enough to expand and contract properly. The respiratory system is among the last to develop in utero, so in newborns and preemies, this substance is sometimes not fully developed — or not present at all. When these infants experience severe respiratory distress, the current protocol is to intubate and administer large doses of liquid surfactant to the lung by way of the throat. This highly invasive and potentially dangerous procedure causes distress and blood pressure fluctuations. In this third NIH-funded study, the researchers are also developing a tiny, small volume nebulizer and a dry powder inhaler for efficient, noninvasive respiratory support for infants.

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