Notre Dame’s Bioengineering & Life Sciences Initiative has announced significant investments aimed at enhancing and growing biomedical research at the University. These include funding of four new cross-disciplinary faculty research teams and a milestone instrument acquisition that will enable cutting-edge experimentation and discovery.

“These exciting commitments have launched large-scale investigations that address timely, wide-ranging health questions and, at the same time, serve as a model for future interdisciplinary growth,” said Paul Bohn, director of the Bioengineering & Life Sciences Initiative, Arthur J. Schmitt Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry.

The team projects delve into how the body’s environment affects the growth of cancerous tumors, how biomolecular structures function in the body, how to use AI to track and treat cardiovascular systems, and how to improve cell-based cancer therapies, Bohn explained.

“The acquisition of a cryo-transmission electron microscope, a technology that is one of the most powerful recent developments in biomedical research, is a strong statement about how committed Notre Dame faculty and students are to finding health solutions that serve all people,” he added.

A key priority of the University’s strategic framework, the Bioengineering & Life Sciences Initiative coordinates and catalyzes multidisciplinary research teams targeting human health and wellness; addresses gaps, needs, and opportunities in expertise and infrastructure; and incentivizes cross-disciplinary collaborations across the university and with external partners. Through strategic investments in research and infrastructure, the initiative brings together specialists from diverse fields to build a powerful environment for productive research.

New Research Teams

Each of the four teams awarded Bioengineering & Life Sciences Initiative grants—among the most substantial internal project awards ever distributed at Notre Dame—includes researchers from multiple disciplines. The projects are:

CAR.L.L.: An LLM Agent for Physiologic Inversion

This project is led by Daniele Schiavazzi, associate professor in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, together with faculty members in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and colleagues in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics.

The CAR.L.L. team aims to provide patients and clinicians with a physiological snapshot of the patient’s cardiovascular health by developing a neural network-powered personalized model of each patient’s cardiovascular system. The prototype model will combine anonymized clinical data and data collected from wearable sensors with socio-demographic insights to create cardiovascular “digital twins” to monitor treatment and improve early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases and abnormalities.

Learn more about the CAR.L.L. team

Dynamics of Molecular Ensembles (DOME): Multiscale Investigation of Biomolecular Condensates in Biology and Disease

The DOME team is headed by Katharine White, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, along with faculty members in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and colleagues in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry.

This team seeks to understand the formation and function of an exciting but understudied class of dynamic biomolecular structures implicated in diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration, and Type 2 diabetes. Using cutting-edge imaging, structural analyses, computational modeling, and AI-driven data mining approaches, they will study the connections between the “ingredients” of the structures, the “recipes” of their assembly, and their effects on human health and disease.

Learn more about the DOME team

IMPACT: Immunoengineering Microgravity Platform for Accessible Cell-based Therapies

The IMPACT team is guided by Meenal Datta, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, along with faculty members in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the Department of Biological Sciences, and colleagues in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.

Cell-based cancer therapies (e.g., CAR-T cells) are drawing significant attention for their promise of improving patient outcomes; however, these therapies are time- and cost-intensive to produce. For these therapies to become more effective, affordable, and rapidly produced, there is a need to understand the conditions required for immune cells to multiply and fight against tumors. By studying the mechanical and gravitational forces on immune cells, this team will uncover what is required to accelerate the engineering of these promising cell types into therapies for rare cancers. A long-term goal of this project is to investigate if and how these promising therapies can be manufactured more inexpensively under microgravity conditions, such as those found in low-Earth orbit. Companies in the space and pharmaceutical industries are already advising the team, some members of which already have active cancer research programs in space

Learn more about the IMPACT team

Uncovering Cancer Matrix Mechano-dynamics as a Druggable Treatment Paradigm

Principal investigator Matt Webber, Keating-Crawford Collegiate Professor of Engineering and associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, leads a team that includes faculty members from the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.

This cross-disciplinary team aims to engineer new, adaptable materials that allow researchers to better recreate the environment around cancerous tumors in a lab setting. These models will help to predict how changes in the environment around tumors affect disease progression and metastasis, providing an innovative means to test the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions.

Learn more about the Matrix team

New Instrumentation

In addition to awarding the internal grants, the initiative made a significant investment in a cryo-electron microscope that allows scientists to see the intricate structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and other biomolecules and study how they move and change.

This investment arose out of a faculty-led survey, conducted by the initiative’s infrastructure committee—chaired by Brian Baker, Coleman Professor of Life Sciences in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry—that assessed biomedical research needs and capabilities on campus and produced a roadmap for future growth.

“The Glacios 2 instrument, and its related components, represents a significant advance in bio-research capabilities for Notre Dame,” Bohn said. “We’re excited about the discoveries that it will foster and grateful for the efforts Prof. Baker and his committee put into identifying and securing this critical advance.”

“This is just the first of many capability upgrades that the Bioengineering & Life Sciences Initiative aims to bring to scientists and engineers here,” he added.

It is anticipated that the new microscope will be delivered and installed in fall 2025. Work has started to prepare a suitable site and infrastructure to support the instrument, and to recruit a specialist to lead its use and train others.

Originally published by Emily Monacelli Guzman at strategicframework.nd.edu on March 05, 2025.