NEL was recently awarded a Monash-Penn State Seed Grant of $40K to collaborate with Prof Slava Rotkin to inviestigate the mechanisms underpinning the use of carbon nanotubes as optical protein biosensors. Prof Rotkin is an internationally recognised expert in the physics of carbon nanomaterials and we are delighted to be sharing our fluorogenic antibodies with him so that we can immobilise them to nanotubes and use them to detect antigens, and to understand the photophysics behind this process.
As part of the Seed Project, a Monash contingent visited Penn State in October, spending a week to collaborate with our co-CIs, and also to meet with a range of Penn State scentists - in my case ranging from the Hershey Medical Centre to the Agricultural Engineering School. We also had a tour of the university, where I think the highlight was the football stadium which seats over 100,000 people and regularly reaches that capacity for college football games. Compare that to the MCG.....