Scientists with the Department of Energy's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have won two of this year's seven Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation. The winners were Ashok Gadgil of Berkeley Lab's Energy and Environment Division, in the environment category for the "UV Waterworks" device, an ultraviolet-based water purification system; and Xiao-Dong Xiang and Peter Schultz, of the Materials Sciences Division, in the computer hardware and electronics category; for "Combinatorial synthesis," a high-speed technique for making and testing new advanced materials.

This is the seventh year that Discover Magazine has presented its awards, which are intended to "celebrate the outstanding innovations of our time, and specifically, the scientists, engineers, and inventors who too often are the unsung heroes of our technological age."

Safe Drinking Water for the World.

Worldwide each year, the waterborne viruses and bacteria in unsanitary drinking water cause cholera, typhoid, dysentery and other deadly diseases that kill an estimated four million children under the age of five and make adults sick enough to loose billions of hours of work productivity and income. Ashok Gadgil knows personally how devastating dysentery can be on a developing nation's population. Growing up in India, he lost several cousins to the disease and saw how it can stunt the growth of those who survive it.

Three years ago, as a particularly virulent strain of cholera was sweeping his native country, it occurred to him that he might be able to make a water purifier based on ultraviolet light that would be inexpensive enough for even the poorest villages. With cost as a main consideration, Gadgil designed the UV Waterworks using off-the-shelf gear, such as sheet metal, UV lamps that are replaced every two years, and stainless steel piping. Because it is designed to rely on gravity for water flow and only needs electricity for the UV light, that can be produced by a car battery or a 40 watt solar cell, the device does not require a pressurized water delivery system nor electrical outlets. The water flows into a tray where it is exposed to twelve seconds of UV light before it flows out at the rate of a typical American bathtub spigot. The ultraviolet light triggers the formation of peptide bonds between certain amino acids in the pathogen's DNA molecules, which robs pathogens of the ability to reproduce and renders them harmless. While highly effective on E.coli bacteria, and ten other pathogens including typhoid and cholera, the device does not work with very muddy water, which is opaque to UV light, and Giardia spores that can not be penetrated by UV light. Negotiations for licensing the technology to EEG Inc. of Chicago are in their final stages for worldwide use, except in India, where a company in Bombay is investing $700,000 in a new plant that will manufacture a solar-powered version capable of supplying 1,000 villagers with clean water. The UV Waterworks costs $250 to make and is expected to go on sale next year. Cost of purification for 1,000 gallons of water? About eight cents.

Highspeed Creation of New Materials

Xiao-Dong Xiang and Peter Schultz have modernized the age old trial and error method of testing different molecular combinations to create new materials. The new method allows researchers to increase the number of chemical compounds that can be created and tested, as potential new materials, from the current rate of about one a day to as many as 10,000 a day.

Schultz, who is also a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, got the idea for combinatorial synthesis from the human immune system. The immune system maintains a "Library" of roughly one trillion differently-shaped antibodies, each made up of different combinations of protein chains. When faced with an invading virus, the immune system selects the antibodies from this combinatorial library that bind to the virus and creates multiple copies to fight the infection. Schultz used the technique to invent "catalytic" antibodies - antibodies that, because of their shape, promote certain chemical reaction - for which he received the 1995 Wolf Prize in Chemistry.

Though biotechnology researchers have used a combinatorial approach to screen for potentially useful drugs, this is the first time the strategy has been applied to materials research. Working at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Design Institute, Xiang and Schultz have already used their combinatorial synthesis technique to discover 26 new magnetoresistive materials. Symyx Technology, a California start-up corporation, has licensed the combinatorial synthesis technology from the Berkeley Lab for commercial development.

"These honors are a tribute to the innovation and creativity of our scientists and to the breadth and excellence of the work that goes on here," said Berkeley Lab Director Charles Shank. "They are further examples of how national laboratories like Berkeley Lab turn fundamental science into practical solutions."

For additional information, please contact:

Dr. Cheryl Fragiadakis (cafragiadakis@lbl.gov)
(510) 486-6467 Fax: (510) 486-6457