About
David joined Cooper in the summer of 2008 with a BS in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from Cornell University and a MS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Rochester. Before coming to Cooper he also earned an MD, did an intern year, and developed an interest in improving efficiency in the Emergency Room setting. He teaches several biology and biomedical engineering courses, helps direct the Kanbar Center for Biomedical Engineering, and serves as the college’s pre-medical advisor. He is always available to discuss new ideas for projects with a biology, medical, or biomedical engineering flavor. Outside of Cooper, David now helps create iPhone apps and workbooks for children. See www.Brain-Go.com.
This year, David is excited to have teamed up with several other Cooper Union faculty and staff plus faculty from Columbia University and GenSpace, an open-source bio lab in Brooklyn (www.genspace.org) to co-instruct teams of undergraduate engineering and graduate architecture students from The Cooper Union and Columbia University as well as several local high school students. So far, our students have elected to modify E-coli bacteria to make “quantum dots,” nanocrystal semiconductors that absorb broad spectrum electromagnetic energy and emit a narrow band of light whose color depends upon the size of the crystal made. Quantum dots are desirable for myriad applications such as solar cells, bioimaging and sensing, communication and optics, targeted gene and drug delivery, etc. Normally the chemical manufacturing of quantum dots is highly toxic and energy expensive and produces dots that are not so uniform, but we hope to turn bacteria into controllable factories to produce the quantum dots in more environmentally friendly ways, biologically, with more uniform quality. We hope to also solicit donations from companies to help fund this project. http://2011.igem.org/Team:Columbia-Cooper