A new experiment led by biomedical engineering researchers at the University of Connecticut is taking place 254-miles off Earth— inside NASA’s International Space Station.
Connecting ISS astronauts to Storrs via videoconferencing is no easy feat, but a team of School of Engineering researchers made it happen this spring to facilitate experiments featuring life-saving nanomaterials.
Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Yupeng Chen, who is the principal investigator of these experiments, and his graduate students partnered with UConn-affiliated Eascra Biotech and Axiom Space.
Working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the teams are organizing a proof-of-concept study aboard the ISS involving the fabrication of Janus base nanomaterials (JBN), a family of novel biomaterials that mimic DNA.