Molecular Machines Group: Program
A group of scientists, entrepreneurs, and institutional allies who meet monthly online to advance progress on atomically precise applications in energy, medicine, and materials science toward Feynman’s vision of molecular machines. Based on key areas identified in the first half of 2021, we develop and support working groups and projects to significantly advance progress on molecular machines in the second half of 2021. Meetings are private and may be off-the-record. Those that are recorded can be found on our video page. Apply to join. Support to join.
January | Introduction & Goals
What does the future hold for molecular machines?
James Arthur Cooper is a 2021 Foresight Fellow in Transmembrane Molecular Nanotechnology and the Chair of Foresight’s Molecular Machines Group. He was born and raised in Shropshire, England. He obtained his MChem (2010) from the University of York and his PhD (2014) from the University of Bristol, where he studied transmembrane anion transport under the guidance of Professor Anthony Davis. James then moved to the University of Edinburgh to work as a postdoctoral research associate with Professor Scott Cockroft, interrogating single molecules and reactions using transmembrane protein nanopores. He then took up a postdoctoral position at Northwestern University in the United States, working with Professor Sir Fraser Stoddart and Professor Douglas Philp, studying molecular machines, systems chemistry and self-replicating molecules.
James returned to the United Kingdom in September 2020 to take up a position as Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at the University of Reading. His group’s research interests focus on the study of systems chemistry, membrane transport and molecular machines, particularly the development of stimuli-responsive membrane-bound assemblies and coupling replication processes with compartmentalised architectures.
ARPA-E Program Overview
Dr. Isik C. Kizilyalli currently serves as the Associate Director for Technology at the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). In this role, Dr. Kizilyalli supports the Deputy Director for Technology in oversight of all technology issues relating to ARPA-E’s programs as well as assisting with program development, Program Director and Fellow recruitment, and coordinating project management across the Agency. Kizilyalli’s focus at ARPA-E includes power electronics, wide bandgap semiconductors, electronic systems for hostile environments, electrification of transport (aviation, ships, automotive), subsurface instrumentation, novel drilling concepts, medium voltage DC distribution grids, and grid resiliency against EMP and space weather threats. Prior to joining ARPA-E, Kizilyalli served as founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Technical Officer of Avogy Inc., a venture backed start-up focused on bulk GaN based vertical power semiconductor technologies and power electronics. Previously, he was with Bell Laboratories, followed by Nitronex Corporation, and solar PV startup Alta Devices where his team holds the world record for single junction solar cell conversion efficiency. Kizilyalli was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2007 for his contributions to Integrated Circuit Technology. He also received the Bell Laboratories’ Distinguished Member of Technical Staff award and the Best Paper Award at the International Symposium on Power Semiconductors and Integrated Circuits in 2013. Kizilyalli holds his B.S. in Electrical Engineering, M.S. in Metallurgy, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has published more than 100 papers and holds 120 issued U.S. patents.
February – March | The Advent of Artificial Molecular Machines
Artificial Molecular Motors and Programmable Molecular Synthesizers
David Alan Leigh (born 1963), FRS FRSE FRSC, is a British chemist, Royal Society Research Professor and, since 2014, the Sir Samuel Hall Chair of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Manchester. He was previously the Forbes Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh (2001–2012) and Professor of Synthetic Chemistry at the University of Warwick (1998–2001). He is noted for the development of new methods to construct rotaxanes, catenanes and molecular knots and for the invention of some of the first synthetic molecular motors and functional nanomachines. Using mechanically-interlocked molecular architectures he prepared a novel molecular information ratchet that employs a mechanism reminiscent of Maxwell’s demon. He has developed a rotaxane based photoactive molecular switch with the capability of changing the hydrophobicity of a surface and thus causing small droplets of liquid to move up hill, against the force of gravity. He holds a Feynman Prize in Theory.
Molecular Machines and their Biological Applications
James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist, is at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in 1999 where he is presently the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. In 2020, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and in the same year was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Centenary Prize for innovations in materials chemistry with applications in medicine and nanotechnology. Based on the impact of his published work, in 2019 Tour was ranked in the top 0.004% of the 7 million scientists who have published at least 5 papers in their careers. He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015. Tour was named among “The 50 Most Influential Scientists in the World Today” by TheBestSchools.org in 2019; listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch.com in 2014.He won the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007. He holds a Feynman Prize in Experiment.
Commercial Applications of Nano/Micro Machines Brainstorm
Ayusman Sen is the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Chemistry at the Penn State Elberly College of Science. His research focuses on self-powered nano and micromotors and pumps. He received numerous honors and awards, including the Langmuir Lecture Award from the American Chemical Society, and the Humboldt Prize. He is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and won a Medal by the Chemical Research Society of India.
Understanding How Molecular Machines Work
Raymond Astumian is a Professor of Physics at the University of Maine. His research interests are in biophysics, condensed matter physics, and chemically driven molecular motors and pumps. He holds a Feynman Prize in Theory.
Molecular Motors
Nicolas Giuseppone received his PhD in asymmetric catalysis (laboratory of Prof. H.B. Kagan, Orsay University), performed a post-doctoral research in total synthesis (laboratory of Prof. K.C. Nicolaou, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA), and entered the field of supramolecular chemistry as a CNRS research associate (laboratory of Prof. J.-M. Lehn, University of Strasbourg).
In 2008 he started his own research group, became Associate Professor, and was awarded the ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council in 2010. In 2013 he was promoted Full Professor of Chemistry at the University of Strasbourg and nominated as a junior member of the Institut Universitaire the France (IUF). In 2016, he was promoted Distinguished Professor.
He is deputy director of the Institut Charles Sadron – CNRS (since 2012), and director of the Research Federation on Materials and Nanoscience for the Grand Est region (since 2018).
His research interests are focused on supramolecular chemistry, molecular machines, and functional materials.
Designing the National Nanotechnology Initiative of the Future
Dr. Lisa Friedersdorf is the Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office. She has been involved in nanotechnology for over twenty-five years, with a particular interest in advancing technology commercialization through university-industry-government collaboration. She is a strong advocate for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, and has over two decades of experience teaching at both the university and high school levels.
While at the NNCO, Lisa has focused on building community and enhancing communication in a variety of ways. With respect to coordinating research and development, her efforts have focused on the Nanotechnology Signature Initiatives in areas including nanoelectronics, nanomanufacturing, informatics, sensors, and water. A variety of mechanisms have been used to strengthen collaboration and communication among agency members, academic researchers, industry representatives, and other private sector entities, as appropriate, to advance the research goals in these important areas. Lisa has also led the establishment of a suite of education and outreach activities reaching millions of students, teachers, and the broader public. She continues to expand the use of targeted networks to bring people together in specific areas of interest, including the Nano and Emerging Technologies Student Network and the U.S.-EU Communities of Research focused on the environmental, health, and safety aspects of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology entrepreneurship and nanomedicine are areas where new communities of interest are developing.
Prior to joining the NNCO, Lisa held a number of positions les at the intersection of academia, industry, and government. At Lehigh University, Lisa served as the associate director of the Materials Research Center and director of the industry liaison program. In this role, she oversaw dozens of membership programs and was responsible for developing and coordinating multi-investigator interdisciplinary research programs including a multimillion-dollar public-private partnership in microelectronics. As director of the Virginia Nanotechnology Initiative, she led an alliance of academic institutions, industry, and government laboratories with an interest in nanotechnology across the Commonwealth of Virginia. At the University of Virginia, she served as managing director of the nanoSTAR Institute and led the development of pan-university initiatives as a program manager in the Office of the Vice President for Research. Additionally, Lisa has been active in the start-up ecosystem for many years assisting small companies with business development and access to resources, and vetting emerging technologies for investors.
Lisa earned her PhD and MSE in Materials Science and Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University and BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Central Florida.
April – June | The Next Generation of Nanomaterials
Protein-based Materials and Assemblies
David Baker is the director of the Institute for Protein Design, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry, and an adjunct professor of genome sciences, bioengineering, chemical engineering, computer science, and physics at the University of Washington. His research group is focused on the design of macromolecular structures and functions.He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry with Randy Schekman at the University of California, Berkeley, and did postdoctoral work in biophysics with David Agard at UCSF. Dr. Baker has received awards from the National Science Foundation, the Beckman Foundation, and the Packard Foundation. He is the recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Irving Sigal and Hans Neurath awards from the Protein Society, the Overton Prize from the ISCB, the Feynman Prize from the Foresight Institute, the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, the Sackler prize in biophysics, and the Centenary Award from the Biochemical society. Sixty-five of his mentees have gone on to independent faculty positions, he has published over 500 research papers, been granted over 100 patents, and co-founded 11 companies. Dr. Baker is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a project leader with The Audacious Project.
Interfacing Materials With Molecular Machines
Nathalie Katsonis received her MSc (2001) and PhD (2004) degrees from the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France). Her investigations of the interplay between motion, light and molecular machines started in the group of Ludovic Jullien, where she researched the chromophore that initiates the flagellar movement of purple bacteria. For her postdoctoral research she moved to the group of Ben Feringa to investigate chirality and order in supramolecular assemblies. Her independent career started in 2007 as Associate Researcher for the French National Center for Scientific Research. In 2008 she was invited back to Groningen to work with Feringa on artificial molecular motors and switches. In 2011 she took up a tenure-track position at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente (the Netherlands), where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014 and to Full Professor in ‘Bio-inspired and Smart Materials’ since 2017. In March 2020 she joined the Stratingh Institute of Chemistry of the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), as Professor of ‘Active Molecular Systems and Materials’.Katsonis has led the way in transmitting directed molecular motion across length scales, with a special focus on the role of chirality and on the effects of mechanically-relevant motion of molecular machines. Her achievements have provided the underpinnings for increasingly complex functionalities in dynamic and ultimately life-like supramolecular materials.
Precision in Polymer Synthesis and Nanotechnology
Rachel was born in Holywood, Northern Ireland and then got her first degree from the University of Cambridge, working with Professor Brian Johnson FRS for her Masters project. She then went on to complete her PhD at Imperial College, London in 2003, working with Professor Vernon C. Gibson. Her PhD was in collaboration with BP and focused on organometallic catalysts for radical polymerisation. She then moved to the US to under the joint direction of Professors Craig J. Hawker (IBM Almaden) and Karen L. Wooley (Washington University in Saint Louis). In 2004 was awarded a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 research fellowship which she held in the US for 1 year before returning to the UK in 2005. She then started her independent career in 2005 at the University of Cambridge as a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship. Then in 2008 she moved to the University of Warwick and in 2012 was promoted to full Professor. In 2018 she took up the position of chair and head of school in the Chemistry Department at the University of Birmingham.
DNA Origami and Programmable Biomaterials
William is overseeing an effort to apply Synthetic Biology approaches to the development of self-assembling DNA nanostructures and devices for use in biomedical applications. In addition to carrying genetic information, DNA is increasingly being explored for its use as a building material. This new process is called DNA origami because a long strand of DNA can be programmed to fold in on itself to create specific shapes, much as a single sheet of paper is folded to create a variety of designs in the traditional Japanese art. Using long biologically produced DNA strands to construct particles with precisely specified shapes, William is able to approximate a level of complexity that rivals that of the molecular machinery found in cells. To achieve structures of even greater complexity, his laboratory is pioneering methods for hierarchical assembly of these particles into three-dimensional networks with site-specific control over chemical functionalization and mechanical actuation. Working in Programmable Biomaterials at the Wyss, William most recently created nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape on demand. In contrast to existing nanotechnologies, these programmable nanodevices are highly suitable for medical applications because DNA is both biocompatible and biodegradable. William is a Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Cancer Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In 2008, William received a New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health, and in 2013, he was named as a Blavatnik National Awards Finalist. He holds a Feynman Prize in Experiment.
DNA Robotics, Circuits, and Networks
Lulu Qian is a Professor of Bioengineering and head of The Qian Lab at the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Professor Qian has made major contributions to several key areas of nanotechnology, including molecular robotics, the self-assembly of DNA nanostructures, and biochemical circuits. She has pushed the frontier of molecular robotics by developing DNA robots that autonomously explore DNA surfaces at the nano level, pick up cargo molecules and deliver them. She has pioneered the study of DNA origami tilings for creating nanostructures at the micrometer scale but with nanometer resolution and has built the first artificial neural network out of DNA. Her goal, with members of the Caltech Qien Lab, is to create synthetic molecular programs that approach the complexity and sophistication of life itself. She holds the Feynman Prize for Experimental work.
AMO’s program in atomically precise manufacturing and nano-carbon metals
Tina Kaarsberg is a Technology Manager at the DOE and manages atomically precise manufacturing and other Nanotechnology, SBIR/STTR, R&D for Additive Manufacturing Powder Metallurgy.
August | Manipulating Molecules and Nanomaterials at the Atomic Level
Design and Study of Single-molecule Devices on Surfaces
Christian Joachim is a Research Director Fellow at CEMES-CNRS in Toulouse, an Adjunct Professor in Quantum Physics, ISAE-Sup’Aero, Toulouse, and an Adjunct Professor in Nanoscience and Quantum Enginnering. With J.K. Gimzewski, in 1996, he learnt how to manipulate a large molecule at room temperature using the tip of a STM, and, as early as in 1997, learnt how to change the electronic structure of a single molecule by acting on its conformation or on its geometry. This was the conclusion of his work started with A. Aviram 10 years before, a proof that molecular devices, at a single molecule basis, can really work at least at the lab scale. Single molecular machines follows with the discovery of the first molecular rotor (1.2 nm in diameter) in 1998. In 2001 and 2003, the first prototype of mono-molecular robots came from those pioneering experiments. The first single molecular amplifier started in 1997, the design of hybrid molecular circuit with more than 1000 single C60 molecular transistors in 2000, the first intramolecular switch in 2001 in collaboration with Dr. F. Moresco and Dr. G. Meyer from F.U. Berlin, and the first mono- molecular circuit in 2003 resulted all from those pioneering results on a single C60 molecule. In parallel, the manipulation of a single molecule on a metallic surface opened the way to contact a single molecular wire as early as in 1999, also in collaboration with Dr. J.K. Gimzewski. This led to pioneering work on mono-molecular electronics and atomic scale technology and the seminal 2000 Nature review paper. He holds a Feynman Prize in both Theory and Experiment.
Study of Molecular Machines at the Single-molecule Level
Anne-Sophie Duwez obtained her PhD in chemistry in 1997 at the University of Namur. She then joined the University of Louvain as a FNRS postdoctoral researcher. From 2002 to 2003, she was visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany. She then returned to the University of Louvain as a senior scientist to develop single-molecule force spectroscopy by AFM.In 2006, she was appointed associate professor at the University of Liege and obtained an Incentive Grant for Scientific Research from the FNRS to create a new laboratory for advanced AFM techniques. She is currently full professor in the Department of Chemistry. Her research focuses on the development of probes and technologies to interface single small functional molecules with AFM.Over the last decade, her group has developed the first examples of single-molecule force spectroscopy on small synthetic molecules to study their operation.
She recently received the Triennial Prize (2015-2017) Agathon-De Potter for chemistry, awarded by the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Belgium.
September | Molecular Networks and Technology-Enhanced Synthesis of Molecules and Materials
Nano- and Microscale Molecular Machines
Ayusman Sen is the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Chemistry at the Penn State Elberly College of Science. His research focuses on self-powered nano and micromotors and pumps. He received numerous honors and awards, including the Langmuir Lecture Award from the American Chemical Society, and the Humboldt Prize. He is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and won a Medal by the Chemical Research Society of India.
Out-of-equilibrium Materials and Self-assembly
Job Boekhoven holds an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Groningen, where he majored in organic chemistry, and a PhD degree (2012) in chemistry from Delft University of Technology, both in the Netherlands. Before his appointment at TUM, he was a Rubicon postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University in Chicago. In January 2016 Boekhoven was appointed Rudolf Mößbauer Professor at TUM, heading a research group in supramolecular materials.The research group of Job Boekhoven aims at developing conceptually new supramolecular materials through non-equilibrium self-assembly. The platforms developed in the lab will be used for a wide range of applications, including healthcare and robotics. Research in the group is heavily bio-inspired and uses organic, physical and supramolecular chemistry as its toolboxes.
Programmable Reactions and Chemical Networks
Bartosz Andrzej Grzybowski is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Korea, where he leads the IBS Center for Soft and Living Matter. Previously, he was the Kenneth Burgess Chair in Physical Chemistry and Chemical Systems Engineering at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Department of Chemistry and the Director of the DoE Energy Frontier Research Center (Non-Equilibrium Energy Research Center, Northwestern University). Bartosz holds the Foresight Feynman Award in the category of Theory.
October – December
An open space for us to fill as the year advances with potential keynote presentations or concrete proposal development to make progress on key areas to advance crucial work on molecular nanotechnology.
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