DeLisa

Manohar

Technology Review magazine has named two Cornell University faculty members to its "TR35" list, the magazine's selection of top technology innovators under age 35. They are Matthew DeLisa, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Rajit Manohar, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Winners from previous years, the magazine says, "have changed the world."

Manohar is a co-founder of the Computer Systems Laboratory, which brings faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science together to research problems of mutual interest. His research focuses on the design of integrated circuit chips. Technology Review cited him for an innovation in chip design that removes the "clock" from a chip. Rather than having all operations on a chip move in lockstep to a single timing signal, Manohar designs chips in which each operation can signal that it is finished, allowing the next operation to begin immediately. In addition to being faster than chips with a conventional clock, Manohar's chips are 10 times more energy efficient, because "You only activate the part of the chip that's doing the work you need." He has used the technology to make sensors that could run on the same batteries for years instead of weeks.

DeLisa studies the machinery cells use to make proteins and has used the results to improve the biomanufacturing of drugs. Many drugs are now made by growing huge vats of bacteria that have been genetically engineered to use their protein-making machinery to produce drug molecules or human proteins such as insulin. DeLisa has gone further by modifying the protein-making machinery itself to make it more efficient, inserting genes from higher organisms. In particular, he has studied the transport mechanisms cells use to move proteins inside the cell and across cell membranes. In addition to improving drug manufacture, the research could lead to improved drug design and new drug-delivery systems. He also studies the mechanisms by which proteins "aggregate," or clump together, a process involved in diseases like Alzheimer's.