Chemistry Professor Receives National Science Foundation CAREER Award
Dr. Eden Tanner is awarded $850k early-career grant
Assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Dr. Eden Tanner has been honored with an $850k National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for her project “Elucidating the Mechanism of Ionic Liquid-Coated Nanoparticle Interactions with Blood Components.” She is the recipient of the most prestigious award by the NSF in support of early-career faculty who have both the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, as well as to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
?When the five-year research project to determine how and why ionic liquid coating enables selective hitchhiking on blood components is complete, Tanner and her team are expected to be established as experts in engineering the bloodstream. She is also expected to be considered an expert in equipping the next generation of scientists. Her award represents the 6th?NSF CAREER award over the past dozen years for a faculty member of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. ?
?The Tanner Lab’s work with nanoparticles - now considered the best possibility for ideal drug delivery systems due to their ability to deliver drugs effectively, safely, and specifically - focuses on solving specific biomedical and bioengineering challenges. She seeks to apply a rigorous systematic investigatory style of physical chemistry to understand how materials interact with the human body.
?“The materials that we work with are called ionic liquids. They are basically salts, but they are very bulky so they don’t form solids at room temperature, unlike salts which are sodium and chloride that fits cleanly together and makes a crystal lattice, explained Tanner. “The materials that we’re working with don’t do that - so that frustration, that almost forbidden love story between the cations (the positively charged part) and the anion, (the negatively charged part) is what makes them liquid at room temperature. So, we are kind of manipulating basic chemistry, to really impact applications for human health.”
Her specific expertise is in the use of ionic liquids to mitigate the issues encountered when using nanoparticles in biomedical applications, including drug delivery. At this point, researchers must construct ionic liquids. They know of just one example where ionic liquids are found in nature.
Tanner said, “There is one example we know of, although there are likely several we have not discovered yet. Two warring species of fire ants are involved, where one of the ants makes an ionic liquid out of the venom of the other ants to neutralize it. They basically are taking over the Southwestern region of the United States because of their ability to make ionic liquids - basically out of their competitors' venom.”
“Broadly speaking, that is the only natural example of ionic liquids “in the wild,” although I will say all the things that we mix together to make ionic liquids are generally found either in the human body, in foodstuffs or other very safe kinds of materials. For us, we are looking at human health so we are really focused on creating materials that are safe from the get-go,” she said.?
“The chemicals are naturally derived. What that means is that if you put them into the human body, the human body recognizes those molecules as being part of the natural environment?that it’s used to?and not foreign.”?
?The ionic liquids project incorporates collaboration for specific testing by scholars from Louisiana State University , the 美国明尼苏达大学双城分校 , 美国斯坦福大学 , and Mississippi State University , in addition to an opportunity for her research team to travel to the 密西根大学 .
Tanner’s career path spans three continents – Australia, Europe, and the United States. The native Australian wasted no time in pursuing goals clearly aligned with the NSF perspective, utilizing her interdisciplinary doctoral training in physical chemistry from the 英国牛津大学 , where she earned her Ph.D., and her postdoctoral training in bioengineering at 美国哈佛大学 to solve biomedical challenges. She arrived here in Oxford, MS, just three years ago.
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?“There was a real openness to let me develop the research program that I wanted to develop, which is very interdisciplinary, collaborative, and pretty far-reaching without having me feel like I had to be in a box,” said Tanner. “It is just what people would consider to be pure chemistry.”
In 2022, Tanner was the sole recipient of the annual $100k Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America‘s Research Starter Grant in Drug Delivery, which supports tenure-track faculty who are in the earliest stages of their drug delivery research career.
Also last year, she received the highest service-based honor at the University of Mississippi, the Frist Student Service Award in recognition of her excellence in mentoring students and her ongoing efforts to create equitable spaces for marginalized scientists to work in. Last year was the first time a pre-tenure professor has been selected in the 26-year history of the Frist Award.
The NSF expects Tanner’s pursuit of activities in her early career to be designed to build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. Submission of CAREER proposals is particularly encouraged for from women, members of underrepresented minority groups, and persons with disabilities. Tanner extends the NSF expectations by staffing her lab differently than many others. She indicated that the University of Mississippi provides the strength and support to build the interdisciplinary team that she needs.
“I have graduate students who have backgrounds in chemical engineering, bioengineering, molecular biology, physics - and of course they are all here earning a Ph.D. in Chemistry - so they have an interest in chemistry, but their backgrounds are really diverse,”?said Tanner. “Engineers and scientists think about problems - the same problem - from different perspectives, and physicists do, too, you know? I find having multiple perspectives in the room?really strengthens the kind of questions we are able to ask, the experiments we are able to design, the ideas that are coming in.”
She specifically recruits undergraduate students to work alongside her graduate students. All scientists receive stipends, which allow them to focus on their research without the pressure of maintaining external employment.
The composition of her current team has grown annually in the representation of typically marginalized students. Over 70% of her team is comprised of women or non-binary people with 45% being people of color, including seven African American scholars. Twenty undergraduate researchers, six graduate students, and one post-doctoral research fellow are led by historically underrepresented minorities. Tanner is directly contributing to the diversification of STEM education.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2236629.
By Debbie Nelson [see also Ole Miss News article]