Media Coverage

Scientific American
Researchers are developing cutting-edge foams, coatings, metals and other substances to make our homes, vehicles and gadgets more energy efficient and environmentally friendly...

National Geographic
Combine shrimp shell and silk proteins and a miraculous new substance is born. “Shrilk” was invented by researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard, who layered the two components in a way that mimicked structures found in shells and insect cuticles...

Gizmag
Last year, a group of Harvard University scientists led by Dr. Joanna Aizenberg announced the development of a highly-hydrophobic (water-repellant) material known as SLIPS, or Slippery Liquid Porous Surfaces. The material is remarkable, in that it repels virtually any liquid...

The Guardian
...At Harvard University's Wyss Institute, Shawn Douglas (now at the University of California, San Francisco), Ido Bachelet and George Church have been using Autodesk's software to build nano-scale protein structures in a process of "DNA origami"...

MIT News
DNA’s unique structure is ideal for carrying genetic information, but scientists have recently found ways to exploit this versatile molecule for other purposes: By controlling DNA sequences, they can manipulate the molecule to form many different nanoscale shapes...

GEN
After spending decades trying to outdo each other in consumer electronics, Samsung and Sony have expanded their rivalry over the past year to the life sciences. Sony DADC, the Japanese giant’s discs and digital unit, said March 18 it will use its manufacturing prowess to create Organs-on-a-Chip with the Wyss Institute...

BioCentury This Week [video]
Harvard's George Church: Brain Activity Map aims to chart activity "millions" of 86 billion human neurons, compared to "just 100" now. New technologies can reduce cost of understanding key circuits across the brain...

Harvard Medical News
Researchers have found that missteps in a basic cellular process, RNA splicing, is the culprit behind a class of rare neurological disorders manifested by intellectual disability and stunted development...

Wired
Some deep sea sponges have skeletons made of a surprising material: glass. Appearing frail and ethereal, the sponges -- one of which is known as Venus' Flower Basket -- are anything but delicate. Their glassy skeletons are stronger than some cements, capable of sustaining the thousands of pounds of pressure present at the seafloor...

Boston Herald
Harvard University researchers are tapping into Sony’s manufacturing expertise with the goal of mass-producing matchbox-sized “organs-on-chips” that could make it possible for scientists to test new drugs easily without animal trials....

GEN -- Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News
...Last November, investigators led by Wyss Institute faculty member Bryan Wei, Ph.D., reported that they created scaffold-free 3D structures starting with smaller DNA bricks, about 32 bases long, which changes the orientation of every matched-up pair of bricks to a 90 degree angle, giving every two bricks a 3D shape...

Washington Post
...Researchers working in bio-inspired engineering have benefited from better technology to dissect organisms at the atomic level, according to David J. Mooney, a research scientist at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering...

Boston Business Journal
...Lily Kim has provide sustained leadership in fluidic MEMS over the past several years. She now provides even wider technology development and commercialization leadership at the Wyss Institute where she is focused on technology translation and commercialization strategy...

Scientific American
Not too long ago a mysterious affliction called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) began to wipe out honeybee hives. These bees are responsible for most commercial pollination in the U.S., and their loss provoked fears that agriculture might begin to suffer as well... [Note: This link leads to a preview of the article.]

GreenBiz
...The Wyss Institute at Harvard University is a research institute centered on bioinspiration and engaging an extended network of researchers, clinicians, engineers and science faculty from public and private academic institutions, hospitals and companies...

Discovery
If you’re an activist who frequently stumps for PETA’s anti-cruelty campaigns outside of animal-testing laboratories, you have reason to rejoice. Scientists are developing a desk-top machine that “plays” plug-in cassettes about the size of a USB memory stick designed to simulate the complicated mechanical and biochemical behaviors of human organs...

New York Times
...For two days the scientists mostly “talked at each other,” he recalled. Then George M. Church, a Harvard molecular geneticist who helped start the original Human Genome Project in 1984, said, “All right I’ve heard all of you say what you can do, but I haven’t heard anyone say what you really want to do.”...

Roclay
Doctors used typical eye-hand coordination tests to analyze neuromuscular deficits which are usually found in aging people and those injured during sports or accidents. But earlier this month a revolutionary invention was unveiled at Boston, when biomedical researchers from Harvard carried out a clinical study on 150 people...

Harvard Medical News
Last summer, six scientists proposed a project they compared in scope and ambition to the Human Genome Project: to map the activity of the human brain. In February, news media reported that the Obama administration plans to move forward with that effort, known as the Brain Activity Map...

Mashable
When diagnosing neuromuscular problems in patients — when they age or get a concussion, for example — doctors typically make conclusions based on information that is qualitative, or subjective. But a tablet app developed by researchers at Harvard University's Wyss Institute...

United Press International
A tablet app using a stylus and a tracing exercise can assess neuromuscular performance at a doctor's office or the scene of an injury, its U.S. developers say...

CNET
Harvard's Wyss Institute unveils an application that involves a stylus and simple tracing exercise to rapidly assess neuromuscular performance in a doc's office or at the scene of an injury...

Technology Review
The Wyss Institute, at Harvard, has developed a tablet application that, among other things, could help diagnose concussions on the sidelines of a football match. Wyss reports on the findings on its site (and in the Journal of Gerontology); CNET and others have taken also taken note...

Harvard Crimson
Harvard researchers have developed the first quantitative neuromotor assessment device, an advancement which could have repercussions for fields ranging from sports medicine to Parkinson’s disease research...

Wired
Your first experience with haptics was probably your phone vibrating in your pocket. Or maybe it was the rumble pack on your N64 controller. But whatever the case, you probably didn’t know it as a haptic interface...