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A researcher wearing safety gear kneels at the open door of a lab fridge, displaying a tray of samples.

Sinking Our Teeth Into Science: How Biomedical Engineering Can Help Make Us Healthier

August 21, 2024

From safer dental products to tracking the movement of tiny plastics through gut tissues, regenerative medicine can make us healthier.

NIST researchers Elizabeth Strychalski and David Ross program the robotic arm that operates within the box-like structure of the NIST biofoundry.

The Promise of Synthetic Cells: Revolutionary New Drugs, Outer Space Explorers and Pushing Beyond the Limits of Evolution

July 8, 2024

Scientists are getting closer to creating a living cell from scratch. It could help treat diseases or even create life forms that can be better adapted to space.

A spherical, spiky virus is approached on all sides by Y-shaped antibodies.

You Don’t Learn This in School: My Experience as a NIST Summer Intern

June 4, 2024

George Sellers

The most important thing I remember from being a NIST intern last summer is the power of persistence in research.

$close up of a clear fractured glass like substance with some rainbow distortions$

Clear as Glass: Studying Drug-Delivery Materials as a NIST SURF Student

October 1, 2021

Claire Lamberti

This summer was an interesting one, to say the least. I was in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program offered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). As my summer project, I studied organic glasses, solid materials composed of molecules that are arranged in

Callie Higgins in a lab. She is standing in front of a reflective screen surrounding an atomic force microscope.

3D Printing With Light: A Q&A With NIST's Callie Higgins

April 28, 2021

Callie Higgins is a materials research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). She studies a special branch of additive manufacturing called vat photopolymerization, which uses light to solidify a liquid resin layer by layer into a 3D object. Callie is a finalist for a

RNA Structure and Dynamics: The One-Two Punch in the Fight Against COVID-19

February 17, 2021

Christina Bergonzo

We are all well aware of COVID-19, and by now most people have seen pictures of the spike protein that forms the “handshake” interaction between virus and host cells and is the basis of two new vaccines. The COVID-19 virus is made of RNA, which manufactures the spike protein and all the other

artists rendition of human embryonic stem cells

Experts Next Door: How a Public-Private Partnership Benefits the Regenerative Medicine Community

September 21, 2020

Catherine (Katie) Zander

I’m a scientific program manager at the Standards Coordinating Body (SCB), a private nonprofit organization devoted to advancing standards for regenerative medicine, an emerging field that includes cell therapies, immunotherapies, tissue engineering and other next-generation treatments. Presently

a latex gloved hand holds a syringe that has been loaded with medicine

Manufacturing Standards for Biopharmaceuticals: A Q&A With NIST’s Sheng Lin-Gibson and Vijay Srinivasan

January 21, 2020

Biopharmaceuticals, also known as biological drugs or biologics, are manufactured from living organisms or contain living organisms that have been genetically engineered to prevent or treat diseases. Biologics are chemically and structurally complex, and often highly heterogeneous; therefore

image of a subway train as it rushes past, the words "mind the gap" appear on the subway platform

Mind the Gap: Bridging the ‘Valley of Death’ for U.S. Biomanufacturing

January 6, 2020

Kelvin H. Lee

Biopharmaceutical manufacturing uses living cells to produce therapies that treat diseases like cancer, diabetes and autoimmune disorders. Manufacturing medicine using biology presents different challenges from the traditional chemical manufacturing processes that stamp out identical pressed pills

Justin Zook in a lab surrounded by genetic sequencing machines

Genome in a Bottle: Spelling Out DNA’s ‘Dark’ Sequences

March 6, 2019

Justin Zook

When the Human Genome Project began 20 years ago, its consortium of researchers at 20 research institutes spent more than $1 billion to sequence that first genome’s billion plus bases. Recently, researchers from the Harvard Personal Genome Project (PGP) sent me my whole genome sequence, costing

showing representations of various microorganisms

Say Hello to Our Little Friends: Toward Microbial BiotheraPOOtics and Diagnostics

May 13, 2016

Scott Jackson

My fascination with the microbial world began when I was around 7 years old and my mother bought me a book called “ The Value of Believing in Yourself: The Story of Louis Pasteur”. Nearly four decades later, I still vividly remember the story about the little boy Joey and the “invisible enemy” that

Taking Measure Blog Posts

Engineering / synthetic biology

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