From the 2010 Physics Alumni Newsletter
Last year I mentioned that a former WFU graduate student, Anthony Pecorella (’04)(MA ’06), who worked with Jed Macosko was directing a brand new SimCity-like videogame called “CellCraft” which teaches Middle School students about how cells work. Anthony showed the game to various White House officials on May 12 of this year. There are currently over 500 websites that host the game. One of them is http://www.kongregate.com/games/CellCraft/cellcraft . In the first ten days that it was available on the internet it was played over one million times by people in over 140 countries. It was rated by gamers at kongregate.com and newgrounds.com in the top 100 games of all time (out of more than 30,000 games). Considering that these two sites are the 2nd and 5th largest gaming sites and cater to serious gamers, it’s phenomenal that an educational game was rated so highly.
I also mentioned last year that Jed was partnering with high school students at Atkins Academic Technology High School in Winston-Salem, NC to produce a 3-minute, animated short that features characters based on the molecular machines that perform essential functions inside living cells. This film is now finished and was first shown publically on January 20 of this year at Wake Forest. You can watch the film and read more about it if you go to http://www.wfu.edu/wowf/2010/20100121.cellsidestory.php .
David Carroll’s research group has come up with a new solar cell which is both significantly less expensive to make than the current commercially available solar cells and at the same time is about twice as efficient. They have received a patent from the European Patent Office. An application for one has also been submitted to the U.S. Patent Office.
Martin Guthold, in collaboration with Jed Macosko, several students, and myself, has invented a new technology which may dramatically cut the time it takes to develop new drugs. It is called “Lab-on-Bead NanoSelection”. Martin, Jed, and I are all associated with the biotechnology company NanoMedica Inc. which will investigate ways in which the new technology can be used and commercially developed.