November 14, 2022
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC — Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society and American Scientist magazine are proud to announce that Markita Del Carpio Landry and Madeline Klinger are the recipients of the 2022 Bugliarello Prize. The University of California, Berkeley scientists were awarded for their article "Tiny Lights in the Brain's Black Box" in the Jan–Feb 2022 issue of American Scientist. The article explores imaging brain chemistry in real time using fluorescing carbon nanotubes switched on and off with synthetic DNA.
The George Bugliarello Prize is awarded to a superior interdisciplinary essay, review of research, or analytical article published in American Scientist magazine. The Prize of $5,000 is awarded with the goal of inspiring thoughtful discourse about how technology, human society, our biological needs, and the needs of other life on our planet can be advanced.
The award was presented November 16 in a virtual ceremony in conjunction with an online lecture discussion with the recipients.
Dr. Markita Landry is an associate professor in the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UC Berkeley. She received a BS in Chemistry and a BA in Physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a PhD in Chemical Physics and a Certificate in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She completed an NSF postdoctoral fellowship in Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her current research centers on the development of synthetic nanoparticle-polymer conjugates for imaging neuromodulation in the brain, and for the delivery of genetic materials into plants. The
Landry lab exploits the highly tunable chemical and physical properties of nanomaterials for the creation of bio-mimetic structures, molecular imaging, and plant genome editing.
Madeline Klinger is a PhD Candidate in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is co-advised by Dr. Markita Landry and Dr. Linda Wilbrecht. She received a BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2016 and completed a DAAD Research Fellowship in Frankfurt, Germany in 2017. She is broadly interested in the relationship between neurotransmission and animal behavior. In her dissertation research, she is developing the use of single-walled carbon nanotubes for optical detection of dopamine in the living brain. She additionally employs two-photon calcium imaging to investigate the neural basis of learning in the adult and adolescent brain.