Allbritton receives national award in chemical instrumentation

Dr. Nancy Allbritton, Kenan Distinguished Professor and chair of the UNC-NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, will receive the 2016 American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Instrumentation at the 252nd ACS National Meeting and Exposition held Aug. 21-25.

The award recognizes advances in the field of chemical instrumentation including: conceptualization and development of unique instrumentation, stimulation of other researchers to use chemical instrumentation and authorship of research papers or books that have had an impact in the use of chemical instrumentation.

Dr. Michelle Kovarik, an assistant professor of chemistry at Trinity College, has organized a symposium in Allbritton’s honor on Wednesday, Aug. 24 during the ACS meeting in Philadelphia, Pa. Kovarik, who worked with Allbritton as a post-doctoral student, and four other speakers will be part of the program. Kovarik said that each session will focus on how the innovation of new technology is being used to probe the biology of single cells, an area where Allbritton is a clear leader. She also said that her talk, “Microfluidic Chemical Cytometry and Peptide Substrate Reporters: Expanding Applications and Access,” will examine how technology developed in Allbritton’s lab is being applied and used by researchers who aren’t specialists, including Kovarik’s own undergraduate students at Trinity College.

Allbritton’s research focuses on biomedical microdevices and pharmacoengineering. Specifically, Allbritton is interested in signaling in single cells and microfabricated systems for cellular analysis. The Allbritton lab conducts multidisciplinary research using principles and techniques from chemistry, physics, engineering, and materials science to develop new assays and technologies for biomedical applications.

She received a B.S. degree in physics from Louisiana State University, an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Ph.D. in medical physics/medical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.