Technology has dramatically changed laboratory research at the University of Delaware, fostering a huge growth in interdisciplinary work, generating entirely new fields of study and also opening up fields within fields. The excitement of discovery is being shared with both graduate students and undergraduates, who have access to some of UD's leading scientists through the highly regarded Undergraduate Research Program.

Technology is making it possible to study phenomena deep in outer space at UD's Bartol Research Institute, to design and test pharmaceuticals without pestle and bowl, to predict evolution and to work with minute particles in the growing field of nanotechnology.

Bartol researchers are studying the cosmic rays that reach Earth from space through a neutron monitor at the South Pole, in addition to work in cosmology, experimental and theoretical space physics and particle astrophysics.

In chemistry, technology has provided such a clear understanding of biology at the molecular level that scientists can design and test new disease treatments on a computer. This virtual screening provides an economy that UD researchers hope might entice large pharmaceutical companies to develop cures for relatively rare genetic disorders.

New technologies have enabled University biologists to make strides in cancer research, and plant and animal researchers are applying bioinformatics in genomic studies. A major project has been the mapping of the genome of the chicken, long a mainstay of the economy of the Delmarva Peninsula, by the Center for Agricultural Biotechnology.

Through technology, a researcher in UD's nationally ranked chemical engineering department is able to use advanced computerized mathematical models to predict the evolution of bacterial cells. The work could have important implications in such fields as human health, energy and environmental remediation.

Also in engineering, the materials science department is conducting advanced research in biomaterials that have, among other things, important drug delivery applications.

Technology is a major component of research in the College of Marine Studies, where researchers are currently working to develop an artificial attractant that mimics that of the horseshoe crab, which is popular among waterman as bait, to take pressure off the declining population. Other researchers in the college are mapping the floor of the Delaware Bay using sound waves, computer tracking and satellite positioning tools.

Furthermore, the UD campus is home to the Delaware Biotechnology Institute (DBI), where vital research is under way in areas such as human health, avian genetics, plant molecular biology, computational biology, marine environmental genomics, protein structure and function and biomaterials.

In 2001, DBI was selected as a Sun Microsystems Inc. Center of Excellence. As such, it joined a select group of academic institutions developing advanced technology to do groundbreaking research.

The powerful Sun computers are being used at DBI in high-performance computational biology, a field that enables researchers to probe the structure and workings of genomes.

"We are very pleased to be recognized by Sun," Guang Gao, a member of the College of Engineering faculty and director of the DBI Center for Bioinformatics, says. "Not only does this give us the opportunity to work directly with Sun to further our biological research, it also links us into a rich network of complementary research institutions so that we can all benefit from each other's technological advances."

In addition, DBI is home to a leading-edge Silicon Graphics Inc. visualization center that renders computer models in three dimensions, an advance that is expected to greatly accelerate research in the life sciences. The center has been named a Computerworld Honors Laureate, an award given by the magazine to institutions whose use of information technology "merits special recognition in the history of the information technology revolution."

"Visualization becomes an important factor to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration," Karl V. Steiner, associate director of DBI, says, "and the studio provides a unique environment to bridge the 'language gap' between researchers from different scientific disciplines through the use of computer models, simulations and interactive visualization tools. By taking highly complex and data-intensive events in the life sciences and transforming them into a visual language that can be interpreted in a collaborative way, we believe that we have laid the foundation to rapidly explore new ideas that may lead to new knowledge."