From Thayer: 150 Gifts to the World
Thayer looks back at 150 inventions, companies, and innovations from faculty, students, and alumni that changed the world.
NO. 1: Human Glycosylation of Yeast
Photograph courtesy of Tillman Gerngross.
Professor Tillman Gerngross achieved a biomedical feat that most experts said couldn’t be done: engineering yeast to produce fully human proteins. The ability to humanize the sugar structures—or glycosylation—of the yeast Pichia pastoris not only increases the capacity to produce therapeutic proteins, but also allows for precise control of protein structures, making drug production far more efficacious.
Compiled by Lee Michaelides and Kimberly Swick Slover
Featured Posts
Professor Eric Fossum's Innovation Legacy
January 2018
The Thayer engineer’s invention of an image sensor used in almost all cellphone cameras and other applications is chronicled in this video, from the National Inventors Hall of Fame, into which Fossum was inducted in 2011. Last month Fossum and colleagues shared engineering’s biggest award, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.
Dartmouth engineers produce breakthrough sensor for photography,
life sciences, security
December 18, 2017
The Quanta Image Sensor enables new imaging capability in accessible, inexpensive process
This is a sample photo taken with the 1Megapixel Quanta Image Sensor operating at 1,040 frames per second, with total power consumption as low as 17mW. It is a binary single-photon image, so if the pixel was hit by one or more photons, it is white; if not, it is black. Figure 4 shows how an image in grayscale was created by summing up eight frames of binary images taken continuously. This process is where the innovative image processing of the QIS can be applied. (Courtesy of Jiaju Ma).
Prince Charles Presents Royal Prize to Thayer Professor
Prince Charles presented the Queen Elizabeth Prize to Eric Fossum of Dartmouth, retired Bell Lab scientist Michael Tompsett, and Nobukazu Teranishi, of the University of Hyogo and Shizuoka University. Not pictured is the fourth recipient, George Smith, a retired Bell Lab scientist. (Photo courtesy of qeprize.org)
