Heparin is a prominent and widely used clinical anticoagulant prepared from animal tissue; a contamination crisis in 2008 led to an examination of the opportunities to use biotechnology to engineer improved heparin products. It also highlighted challenges in maintaining food and drug safety in a global marketplace. Linhardt discussed projects to better understand heparin biosynthesis using molecular biology to engineer organisms and nanotechnology to prepare devices on which biosynthesis can take place. 

Linhardt is the Ann and John H. Broadbent, Jr. ’59 Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer,
holding appointments in the chemistry and chemical biology, biology, chemical and biological engineering, and biomedical engineering departments. His honors include the American Chemical Society Horace S. Isbell Award. He is a fellow of the AAAS and one of the Scientific American Top 10, has published over 600 peer-
reviewed manuscripts, and holds over 50 patents.

Detail View: Rensselaer professors and researchers shared in-depth perspectives on their fields of inquiry, inviting an exchange of ideas between experts and non-experts alike.

Painter David Reed is known for works which are engaged in a crossover between film, electronic media, and everyday culture. His works are exhibited in numerous museums across the world, including the Guggenheim in New York City and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Matias del Campos’s work engages natural formations in our environment to create architectural form. He is a founder and partner at SPAN, based in Vienna, Austria.

Perhaps most well known for his work on the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Mark Burry is an established international architect focused primarily on putting theory into practice with regard to ‘challenging’ architecture. He is the Director of RMIT University’s Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory and is also the founding director of RMIT University’s Design Research Institute.

Anna Dyson is an educator at the School of Architecture at Rensselaer. She is the director of The Center for Architecture, Science, and Ecology (CASE), which hosts the Graduate Program in Architectural Sciences, concentrated in Built Ecologies.