Two Minutes with ...

Monica Lamm

 

“I will never have a tangible product from this research – our product is to create a better understanding. Engineers want to know how things work.”

As a new member of the Iowa State faculty, Monica Lamm is already leaving her mark on campus as an innovative researcher. Lamm, assistant professor of chemical engineering, is engaged in numerous research projects, and one of her most notable is creating simulation programs for a supercomputer that is to be completed in 2011.

Achieving a petaflop
An Iowa State University team is being funded by the National Science Foundation to develop multiscale molecular simulation programs for a petascale computer—and Lamm is helping to develop these programs. A petascale computer runs at 1,000 trillion operations per second, also known as “petaflop.”

Facing up to grand challenges
The role of Lamm and her team is to develop models to successfully create programs that will ultimately solve “grand challenge problems.” An example of a grand challenge problem is discovering how a dendrimer, a treelike macromolecule with tendrils branching from a central core, binds with different elements of a cell. The supercomputer will run a molecular dynamics simulation—a form of computer simulation where atoms and molecules interact with each other—to solve the problem. This process of modeling dendrimer interactions with proteins is currently beyond what anyone has the capability to do.

From computers to cancer treatments
Not much fundamental understanding exists about how dendrimers would change with different chemistry modifications. Lamm is focused on the application of dendrimers in cancer therapy and drug delivery. The goal is for dendrimers to be used as a vehicle to send cancer treating drugs through cell membranes to fight off cancer cells. Dendrimers can be used to carry other drugs as well.

 

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