HOME / News Archives - April 2008
News Archives - April 2008 |
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Jeff Eldredge hosts successful fluid dynamics symposium for graduate students and post-docs
On Saturday, April 12, MAE Prof. Jeff Eldredge hosted the 2nd Southern California Symposium on Flow Physics in Engineering IV at UCLA. The symposium, called “So Cal Fluids 2”, for short, was jointly organized with Prof. Tim Colonius from Caltech. The event provided a forum for graduate students and post-docs in Southern California to present their fluid dynamics-related research. A total of 42 speakers and 95 attendees (students, post-docs and faculty), from 9 different Southern California universities—UC Santa Barbara down to UC San Diego— participated in the day-long event. Two parallel sessions were held in the morning, early and late afternoon. Said Eldredge, “This event gave the students a chance to meet their future colleagues, to advertise their work, and to discuss potential academic positions with faculty from other universities. For some of them, this was their first time speaking in front of a group of their peers and faculty, so it was important to keep the atmosphere relaxed. The students did a wonderful job with their presentations, and the technical quality was first-rate.” Profs. Eldredge and Colonius also organized So Cal Fluids 1, held last April at Caltech. This year’s event drew more speakers and more attendees than the first one, demonstrating the potential for this to become an annual event among the Southern California universities. The low registration cost (an optional $2) stands in stark contrast to the large fees of most professional society meetings. “We have a critical mass of fluid dynamics researchers in Southern California, which should maintain the long-term success of this series,” said Eldredge. Prof. Eldredge would like to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of David Shatto and Grace Chan in organizing the event.
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Chih-Ming Ho works with researchers to develop method to rapidly ID optimal drug cocktails
UCLA researchers have developed a feedback control scheme that can search for the most effective drug combinations to treat a variety of conditions, including cancers and infections. The discovery could play a significant role in facilitating new clinical drug-cocktail trials. The best known use of drug cocktails has been in the fight against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Drug cocktails also have been used to combat several types of cancer. Often, drugs that might not be effective in combating diseases individually do much better in combination. With the use of the new closed-loop feedback control scheme, an approach guided by a stochastic search algorithm, researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have devised an invaluable means of identifying potent drug combinations fast and efficiently. Their findings appear in the March 17 online version of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It has long been a difficult challenge for clinical researchers to determine the optimal dose of individual drugs used in combination. For example, a researcher testing 10 different concentrations of six drugs in every possible arrangement would be faced with 1 million potential combinations. "With the development of this optimization method, we've overcome a major roadblock," said study author Chih-Ming Ho, UCLA's Ben Rich-Lockheed Martin Professor and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. "There have always been too many choices and too many combinations to sort through. It was like finding a needle in a haystack." In one test case, the research team examined how to best prevent a viral infection of host cells. Using the closed-loop optimization scheme, they were able to identify, out of 100,000 possible combinations, the drug cocktails that completely inhibited viral infection after only about a dozen trials. In addition, they found that total inhibition of the virus occurred at much lower drug doses than would be necessary if the drugs were used alone; in fact, the concentrations of the drugs were only about 10 percent of that required when used individually. "Viruses grow very rapidly and change rapidly as well. Because of that, a virus can become resistant to a particular drug," said Genhong Cheng, a member of the research team at the UCLA Center for Cell Control and UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. "This is why it's so important to be able to use a combination of more than one drug. If the virus mutates to become resistant to one drug, it is still sensitive to the other drugs." Drug combinations can also be used effectively to inhibit infectious diseases because resistance to a single drug is very common, according to Ren Sun, UCLA professor of molecular and medical pharmacology and a member of the research team. "If we can apply multiple drugs against one infectious agent, it probably will prevent the occurrence of drug resistance," said Sun, who is also a researcher at the Jonsson Cancer Center. "But, of course, when you use multiple drugs, side effects will be strong. With this model, there is a way to optimize the combination to reduce the side effects while maintaining efficacy that will be very beneficial." "What the search scheme does is it tries to detect trends for optimal output," said Pak Wong, a former UCLA graduate student who participated in the study and is now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Arizona. "Basically, the algorithm sees a trend and a direction and drives the trend in that direction. It's like mountain climbing and finding a way to get to the peak. So you keep going, and soon you rapidly find the peak while being guided by a smart search scheme." In an example used to illustrate the prevention of viral infection of host cells, researchers started with arbitrarily chosen dosages of the drugs. The percentage of non-infected cells under this initial drug-cocktail treatment was fed into the stochastic search algorithm, which essentially helps guide a random search process. The algorithm then suggested the next drug concentrations for producing a higher percentage of non-infected cells. This closed-loop feedback control scheme is carried out continuously until the best combination is found. Randomness is built into the search decision, preventing the trap at local optimum levels and allowing the search process to continue until the optimal drug cocktail is identified. The model also provides an alternative approach to studying cellular functions. Molecular biologists can identify all the players of a particular regulatory pathway in order to decipher how to block or augment that pathway. Cells are complex systems with many redundant functions, and it is difficult to predict how a cell will respond to multiple stimulations at one time. The model overlooks these details and lets the system determine what works best for itself. If researchers are more interested in how the cellular network functions, this approach can provide an initial bird's-eye view, but it also allows them to home in on the important molecular activities controlled by the best drug combinations. This search scheme is an extremely effective and versatile tool that can be applied to combat numerous diseases, including cancer, the researchers say, and its multidimensional properties will likely make it useful in a wide variety of additional situations. The next steps are animal and clinical testing. The study was funded and supported by the Center for Cell Control, a nanomedicine development center funded by the National Institutes of Health through the Roadmap for Medical Research, and by the Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration, a NASA-sponsored institute. The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, established in 1945, offers 28 academic and professional degree programs, including an interdepartmental graduate degree program in biomedical engineering. Ranked among the top 10 engineering schools at public universities nationwide, the school is home to seven multimillion-dollar interdisciplinary research center in nanomedicine, space exploration, wireless sensor systems, nanotechnology, nanomanufacturing and nanoelectronics, all funded by federal and private agencies. For more information, visit www.engineer.ucla.edu. UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center comprises about 235 researchers and clinicians engaged in disease research, prevention, detection, control, treatment and education. One of the nation's largest comprehensive cancer centers, the Jonsson Center is dedicated to promoting research and translating basic science into leading-edge clinical studies. In July 2007, the Jonsson Cancer Center was named the best cancer center in California by U.S. News & World Report, a ranking it has held for eight consecutive years. For more information, visit www.cancer.mednet.ucla.edu. Associated pdf files:
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UCLA Engineering Open House welcomes prospective students, shows MAE's
strengths Sunday, April 6, 2008, was UCLA Engineering's Open House. After an opening session for the entire School of Engineering and Applied Science, our department hosted our prospective undergraduate students and their families for presentations, lunch, and informal conversations with MAE students, faculty, and alumni. Professor Robert M'Closkey (Vice Chair for Undergraduate Affairs) made a presentation on our undergraduate program. Mini Baja's Nick Herron showed a video of the Mini Baja in action on a grueling course. Additionally, a panel of six MAE Alumni gave a talk about their lives and experiences at UCLA MAE and after graduation. There were plural sessions because of the large turnout. Altogether, 121 admitted students attended the event. When including parents and guests, there were a total of approximately 300 attendees. During and after lunch, there was a great interest in the student displays in the Courtyard. Five MAE-affiliated student groups participated. AIAA displayed last year's Design/Build/Fly airplane, a proof-of-concept airplane for a stabilizing control system, a helium-filled blimp, and rockets (which they did not fire)! The ASME Battlebots group brought in their
robot warrior UBRuined, which you can see in action here. Formula Zero, a
new student group that spans MAE and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering,
brought a prototype for a car that runs on hydrogen fuel cells. The SAE Mini Baja group
brought a completed vehicle from last year, as well as a work in progress
piece (a car skeleton) for this year's competition. Robotics brought their
Mars Rover, which took third place last year in the Mars Society's University Rover Challenge.
A good time was had by all, and we look forward to seeing many of the
prospective students on campus next Fall!
- Photos by Grace Chan and David Shatto
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Jong-Eun Ryu wins this year's Perkin Elmer Award
Jong-Eun Ryu (doctoral student in Prof. H. Thomas Hahn's group) has won this year's Perkin Elmer Award. His abstract "The Incorporation of MWNT-Enzyme Biocomposites to Glucose/O2 Biofuel Cell Devices" was judged the best out of the 24 entries received this year. The panel of experts from industry judged the entries in two rounds. All judging was done blind: the judges only saw the title, abstract, current degree of the participant (i.e. undergrad, Masters, Doctoral) and year this degree was started. They did not know the name or university affiliation. The Award carries a $500 travel allowance to SPE's ANTEC this year, $1000 prize money ($500 from PerkinElmer and $500 from the SPE Composites Division) and a plaque at the conference.
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