Schiffman and Perry, both professors in chemical engineering, and Perry is an IALS translational cohire. The $2 million award from the U.S. National Science Foundation is in collaboration with researchers from Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Univ. of Buffalo and the Air Force Research Lab. This new technology is based on how human cells allow some small molecules to enter through the cell wall while filtering out others. Applications such as water purification, new therapeutics or antibody treatments could be far more efficient and cost-effective, and can be made without the use of toxins.
“There are also tons of applications where we need to separate out different types of molecules when we’re trying to make things,” Sarah Perry adds, such as new therapeutics or antibody treatments where the target compound is made within a cell and needs to be separated out. For many of these processes, membrane separation could be a far more efficient and cost-effective strategy, but the right membrane might not yet exist. “If such membranes did exist, we could save huge amounts of money because the way that they’re doing it right now is very energy intensive.”