Mark E. Davis, a successful chemical engineer, never dreamed that he would reinvent his career and create a revolutionary kind of cancer drug. But everything changed when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. 10 years later, IT-101, the nanoparticle drug he engineered, was approved for a six-month trial in humans. Also, meet a group [...]

Linda Morfoot is the recipient of an Artificial Retina. At age 21, Linda was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. Over the next 30 years, her eyesight slowly degenerated from the edges inward. Her right eye was completely blind for ten years, and she had only the slightest light perception remaining in her left eye. Then she [...]

In this Web Exclusive video, Dr. Mark Humayun discusses the workings of the Artificial Retina and explains the surgical procedure used to implant the device in the eye. The first generation of the implant only has 16 pixels, and if a person with normal vision suddenly reduced their sight to this small amount of visual [...]

Because the technology is still very new, the Artificial Retina cannot be completely machine made in an automatic process. In this Web Exclusive video, Damien explains how the electrode array of the Artificial Retina is constructed in a process that involves computer models, photolithographic technologies (similar to those used in photography), and integrated cicuit technologies [...]

Artificial Retina Animation by Tun Min Soe Narration by Yu-Chong Tai, Professor of Electrical Engineering The Artificial Retina Project is a multi-institutional collaborative effort, headed by the U.S. Department of Energy, whose goal is to restore partial sight to people blinded by retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. In normal vision, [...]

Far from being a “new” or “alternative” energy source, solar energy is what makes all life on earth possible. It’s been that way for millions — even billions of years. In this Web Exclusive video, Dr. Amy Litt of the New York Botanical Garden explains how all energy on earth — from the food energy [...]

Spurred by the looming energy crisis, Nathan Lewis and Sossina Haile are working to invent a new kind of fuel that uses the sun to power the planet. They are attempting to produce a prototype for a truly alternative fuel source — an artificial leaf that emulates natural photosynthesis, converting solar energy into a usable, [...]

Video: Uncut interview with Sossina Haile, Caltech One of the biggest obstacles to creating a viable solar energy fuel cell involves finding the right catalyst. But what is a catalyst? And what makes the right one right? We spoke with the scientists working on the solar energy fuel cell. Here’s what they told us. SOSSINA [...]

Although fuel cells have been around for more than 150 years, it is only in recent years that they have become a hot area of research and development. In 2003, President Bush announced the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative (HFI) in his State of the Union Address. This initiative is intended to make fuel cell-powered automobiles practical [...]

When Mark Davis, a chemical engineer, found out that his wife, Mary, had cancer, helping her survive devastating chemotherapy treatments became his mission. Her treatments became so unbearable that she pleaded with her husband to find a better way. “You can fix this,” she challenged him, and so began a scientific odyssey that led Davis [...]