Meng Wang, a Ph.D. Candidate in UCLA Civil and Environmental Engineering, presented research at the 251st American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting & Exposition in San Diego this Spring. More than 16,000 people attended the Spring ACS National Meeting which focused on shari
ng some of the most exciting developments in the field. Under the direction of Dr. Shaily Mahendra, Meng presented research on a way to protect bioremediation enzymes by packaging them in a protein cage. To clean up contaminated soil or water, environmental engineers can turn to Nature for help. This approach, called bioremediation, sometimes involves coaxing bacteria or fungi to use their inherent enzymatic machinery to chew up pollutants or transform the compounds into something less toxic. The team published some of their results in ACS last year (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.5b04073) and Meng’s presentation was also highlighted in Chemical & Engineering News. Meng also received Honorable Mention for his poster presentation related to this research at the 2016 Emerging Contaminants Summit.