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Sept. 29, 2004 – Angela Belcher, a scientist who uses genetically modified viruses to produce nanowires, self-assembling films and other nanomaterials, received a $500,000 “genius grant” on Tuesday. She will share the title of 2004 MacArthur Fellow with a diverse group that includes a debating coach, a ragtime pianist and a businessman who has helped free hundreds of political prisoners in China.
The 23 recipients of the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award will receive support for five years to pursue whatever interests them. The fellowship program, now in its 24th year, honors people for their creativity, originality and potential to affect society. Candidates are nominated and selected through a confidential process.
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Belcher, an associate professor of materials science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-founder of the nanotechnology startup Cambrios Technologies Corp., said she received a call from the MacArthur Foundation last week informing her of the award.
“Usually it is easy for me to talk, but I couldn’t even talk,” she said. She began to fret during the prolonged silence that they might rescind the award. “I think I finally said, ‘thank you.'”
Belcher mimics processes in nature to create nanoscale electronic and magnetic materials. The technique may allow manufacturers to one day build nanoscale integrated circuits and other electronic components efficiently and cost-effectively.
She said that she has yet to decide how to spend the $500,000, but that her research program is well funded and her 24-person research group already fills her lab facilities to capacity.
She is considering using the money to develop science outreach initiatives in the Boston area for children in elementary and middle schools. As a chemistry professor at the University of Texas in Austin, she worked with high school girls in programs designed to interest them in science careers. She joined MIT in 2002, and has been focused on building up her lab and classes since the move. “I don’t have specifics,” she said. “But I want it to be exciting and to have an impact on society.”
Belcher’s interest in biologically inspired manufacturing techniques dates back to her graduate student days at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). In the mid-1990s, she discovered that abalone used proteins to form nanoscale tiles of calcium carbonate to build a sturdy shell. She theorized that other biological systems could be conscripted to make molds for perfect nanoscale crystals of technologically useful materials.
“We want to make nanostructures. Biology already makes nanostructures,” she said in a Small Times Magazine profile in 2002. “The machinery in our cells already exists on the nanoscale. It’s already evolved the ability to do that. Let’s harness the potential it already has and apply it toward materials that it hasn’t had the opportunity to work with yet.”
Borrowing a technique in drug discovery, she exposed millions of proteins on bacteria-infecting viruses to semiconductor materials to see if any would adhere. If one did, she removed the virus from the surface and inserted it into bacteria to replicate, and them re-exposed that generation to the material. She repeated the process under increasingly stringent conditions to strengthen the binding trait.
In 2002, Belcher and her UCSB professor and mentor Evelyn Hu founded Semzyme Inc., renamed Cambrios this year. The company intends to use Belcher’s strategies to make and assemble nanocomponents for the electronics industry.
Hu said that the MacArthur prize recognizes Belcher’s visionary capabilities and commitment to bettering society. “Angie has a special view of a way to change the world by thinking across disciplines and boundaries that is truly extraordinary,” Hu said.
“She has continuously looked into the future. She’s very much in the excitement of the present but always looked at the broader aspect.”
Belcher, 37, has received numerous honors, including Small Times’ 2002 innovator and researcher finalist awards; Beckman, DuPont and Army Young Investigator awards, and a Presidential Early Career Award. But none of those awards carried the cash or no-strings-attached character of the MacArthur award. “The money is great, obviously,” Belcher said. “I feel like I’ve gotten a pat on the back, and a ‘now, what can you do?'”