Moving on up
Student researchers get a piece of the pie in the BRC

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

Nanotechnology researchers at Rice have set their sights on bigger things the past few weeks: boxes and crates, pulley systems and hydraulic tables, moving trucks and dollies. Last week, Vicki Colvin, the Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor of Chemistry and professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering, and her lab group became the first pioneering researchers to move into Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC), a place where scientists and educators from Rice University and Texas Medical Center institutions can work together to perform leading research that benefits human medicine and health.

	PHOTOS BY JEFF FITLOW
	Vicki Colvin wastes no time getting set up in her new lab in the BRC.

After spending a week packing up their old lab and a week unpacking in their new lab, the researchers are ready to take full advantage of what the new space has to offer. The 10-story BRC features eight floors of research labs, classrooms and auditoriums. It is designed to eventually accommodate a visualization center and an entire floor dedicated to biomedical informatics.

Colvin’s group is already taking advantage of its innovative new workbenches, prime office space, new equipment and numerous fume hoods, which are designed to limit exposure to hazardous or unpleasant fumes and keep experiments intact.

BRC
Discover how Rice is becoming a catalyst for new and better ways for researchers to collaborate, explore, learn and lead
Photo gallery
Get a behind-the-scenes look at Rice’s first lab moving into the BRC
“Sometimes you can spend the better part of a day waiting for someone else to finish using a hood,” said Hema Puppala, a graduate student researcher in the Colvin group. “Now, there will be a hood for almost everyone who needs one. It’s going to save so much time and help me do, I hope, great science.”

Instead of being able to complete only a couple of experiments in a day, Puppala expects to complete up to five. She plans to pour the time she saves into reading more about advances in her field and ideas that could shape her work. Puppala is researching silver nanoparticles as an antimicrobial material that could be used in consumer products like socks. She hopes that her research will lead to discoveries of more effective ways of killing bacteria and fungi.

“Dr. Colvin gives us a lot of freedom to explore and try new things,” Puppala said. “I can really take advantage of that in the new lab.”

Puppala is also looking forward to something the BRC offers outside of the lab space: the student hub.

The BRC welcomes its first group of pioneering researchers: the Colvin Group.

“It has a great view of campus, but it will also be a really great space where we get to know other undergrads, graduate students and postdocs working in the BRC,” she said. “It will be a place where we can talk about what we’re working on and hear about what others are doing and maybe find ways we can work together.”

Finally got a piece of the pie

The student hub is located right next to an office hub for graduate students in Colvin’s group. Affectionately called the “Pie Slice” for its wedge-like setup, the office space is a welcome change.

“We actually have space to put our lab books,” said Zuzanna Lewicka, a graduate student researcher. She said in their old space, many books ended up piled on the floor.

Lewicka is researching how to improve the ability of nanoparticles in sunscreen to effectively filter harmful UV rays. Another focus of her research is evaluating possible related toxicity issues in using nanoparticles in sunscreen.

“I need a biologist to test that, someone who knows how to create the culture and the tissue and treat the cells,” Lewicka said. “And in the BRC, there will be a tissue-culture room and biological scientists, like those in Dr. (Rebekah) Drezek’s group, who can help take my work to the next level.”

Drezek, professor in bioengineering and in electrical and computer engineering, and her group will move into the BRC next month, just a floor above the Colvin lab. Others who have already made the move are John McDevitt, the Brown-Wiess Professor of Chemistry and Bioengineering; James McNew, associate professor in biochemistry and cell biology; Robert Raphael, associate professor in bioengineering; and Michael Stern, professor of biochemistry and cell biology.

Later this month, more faculty and researchers will join them in the BRC: George Bennett, the E. Dell Butcher Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology; Jane Grande-Allen, associate professor in bioengineering; Joel Moake, associate director of the J.W. Cox Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering; Ka-Yiu San, the E.D. Butcher Professor in Bioengineering and professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering; and Junghae Suh, assistant professor in bioengineering.

“It will be fun once we get everyone in here,” said Arjun Prakash, a graduate student researcher in Colvin’s group. “The facilities are definitely nice — the labs, the space, the building. And the building is very pro-collaboration in the way it’s set up. It’s very open and has common areas.”

Prakash got to test out the lab this week when he did his first experiment in his new digs with one of the new hoods. He was trying to see how nanoparticles move in the water by attaching dye to them. Prakash is researching how nanorust can be made more biocompatible for applications such as hyperthermia and MRI contrast agents.

	Graduate students in the Colvin Group take a break from unpacking the new lab to talk about the moving experience. From left are Huiguang Zhu, Minjung Cho, Zuzanna Lewicka and Hema Puppala.

“To see the impact and potential of nanorust, you need a materials chemist and clinical researchers on the medical side,” Prakash said. “The proximity now to those researchers in the building and within the Texas Medical Center makes that more possible.”

His fellow group member, doctoral student J.T. Mayo, sees that potential too. Mayo’s work involves how nanoparticles can be used to improve water purification systems.

“At first I was skeptical that the BRC would become what was imagined, but as I’ve seen it get set up, I’ve gotten more and more excited,” Mayo said.

To the (south)east side

While the building on the southeast side of campus suits him and his new endeavors, the move was bittersweet for Mayo, who had spent the past five years in a Dell Butcher Hall lab.

“I spent 20 percent of my life in that lab,” he said. “But I guess it’s fitting that we’re moving into a more professional space now that I’m toward the end of my Ph.D. I know being here will help me build some important professional relationships at Rice and in the Texas Medical Center.”

Collaboration with the Texas Medical Center and bioengineers at Rice is imperative for Minjung Cho, a graduate student in chemistry. Researching the roles nanomaterial and quantum dots could play in medical imaging, Cho hopes to be able to test out new methods to develop MRI contrast agents.

“I’m going to need to collaborate with another group to carry out my work,” she said. “So it’s very good that we will all be in the same place and so close to the medical center.”

But pioneer life at the BRC has had some challenges. While any move can be stressful, moving laboratory equipment has a more rigorous set of issues. Several large pieces of scientific equipment needed to be carefully moved and recalibrated upon arrival. Fragile parts and materials also had to move, and though it’s just a quick trip across campus, extra precautions and time was needed to transport cells, tissues and other biological materials. Packing the lab’s glassware also proved to be a large undertaking.

“All the people who helped move us did the best job,” Prakash said. “But there were still uncertainties. There would be questions that came up that nobody knew the answer to. That could be frustrating at times, but all in all, it was a very nice moving experience and an exercise in group bonding.”

The collegiality among group members is coming in especially handy as the team tries to navigate the new building and refine the practices and procedures they’ve established. Things aren’t running smoothly yet, but each day gets better, Lewicka said.

From left, Colvin group researchers Denise Benoit, J.T. Mayo and Huiguang Zhu test out the optic table and microscope that was just moved into the BRC.

She has had to rethink the way she does her work. Much of the equipment needed for her work characterizing nanoparticles is located in Dell Butcher Hall, where the other chemistry labs will remain.

“Right now it seems like I’m spending more time going back and forth than I am using the instruments,” Lewicka said. “I’m sure it will work out in time, but right now, it’s a bit of a hassle.”

To help ease that commute, the BRC planners and Facilities, Engineering and Planning created a path to the BRC from campus. The 1,000-foot-long, 10-foot-wide path is designed to promote easy pedestrian, bicycle and cart access. It begins at Alumni Drive near Wiess College and meanders along an elevated berm through the Harris Gully Natural Area, ending at Main Street and University Boulevard. Lights, blue-light emergency phones and landscaping are still being added, but the path is already open for use.

The planning team is also looking into other options to help people get back and forth, exploring the possibility of offering bikes to those labs that need it and providing shuttle service along current TMC-Rice bus route.

Parts of the BRC remain under construction. Over the next several months and into January, more Rice research teams will make the move, including the rest of the Bioengineering Department, the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Beyond Traditional Borders, Rice 360