WPI Research is the research magazine of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It contains news and features about graduate research in the arts and sciences, business, and engineering, along with notes about new grants, books, and faculty achievements.
Issue link: http://wpiresearch.epubxp.com/i/229254
"Life self-organizes. It has intrinsic properties that create order, and we don't really know exactly how. So that is what we are trying to understand. " A FRUITFUL COLLABORATION Integrating Tüzel's expertise in physics and modeling with his groundbreaking work on plant physiology helped Vidali earn a coveted fve-year, $977,000 CAREER Award (the largest such award ever received by a WPI faculty member) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Tüzel and his colleagues at Penn State University secured a four-year, $1.75 million R01 award from the National Institutes of Health to study a microtubule steering mechanism that may play a role in helping neurons repair themselves after trauma (Tüzel is a co-principal investigator). More recently, Tüzel received a $293,000 award from the NSF to develop models that will help refne a microfuidic device that can sort sperm for in vitro fertilization. He will work directly with Xinming Huang, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at WPI, and collaborate with a research team at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Tüzel and Vidali have recently expanded their collaboration to include studying the dynamics of chloroplasts, organelles in plant cells that transform solar energy and CO2 into sugar through the process of photosynthesis. Chloroplasts move over the course of the day in reaction to the level and direction of ambient light. This movement must involve molecular motors, the cytoskeleton, and a signaling network, but just how it all works is unknown. "It's an important problem that not many others are focused on," Tüzel says, "and it's well-suited for our combined capabilities." Overall, the collaboration thrives for many reasons. Perhaps most important, they get along. They share interests outside of work, like coffee, ethnic foods, reading, and discussing history. They have become genuine friends and their families enjoy each other's company. They are also committed to changing the culture of education within their respective felds, pushing their students to learn the language of biology and physics, and to work together on common biophysical problems. Fundamentally, though, they work together because they seek answers to the same existential questions. "Selforganization, that's the common theme," both men say, nearly simultaneously, as the discussion draws to a close in their shared offce. Then Vidali goes deeper, with Tüzel nodding in agreement. "That's life, really. It self-organizes. It has intrinsic properties that create order, and we don't really know exactly how. So that is what we are trying to understand." Re Worcester Polytechnic Institute > 35