Researchers at Illinois —including bioengineering professors Michael Insana and Wawrzyniec Dobrucki, who are full-time Beckman faculty members — are partnering with researchers at the Mayo Clinic to develop sensitive, low-cost imaging technologies for detecting microvascular changes in diabetic patients.

In the growing need to improve imaging techniques, the US Department of Health and Human Services has awarded an RO1 grant to improve breast ultrasound tomography. Beckman’s Mark Anastasio, Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering and the head of the Department of Bioengineering at Illinois, is the contact principal investigator on the project, titled “Advanced image reconstruction for accurate and high-resolution breast ultrasound tomography.” Illinois will partner with Wayne State University.

Among the three faculty members to be awarded fall 2019 support from the Department of Chemistry’s Discovery Fund are Beckman’s Joaquín Rodríguez-López and Yi Lu. The fall 2019 round of funding will support research on enhanced MRI sensitivity, genetic engineering, and improved environmental pollutant monitoring.

Jianjun Cheng, a professor of materials science and engineering, and his team developed a new method that streamlines the construction of amino acid building blocks that can be used in a multitude of industrial and pharmaceutical applications. Cheng is a memebr of Beckman's Selective Theranostic Agents and Systems for Multiscale Photoacoustic Imaging Group.