Dictyota sp. is a seaweed native to Hawaiian waters that is notable for its ability to produce fucoidan and alginate. What are these compounds, you might ask? Why, they’re high-value ingredients with wide application in the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, food processing, medical, and dental industries.

Two years ago, Alena Albertson never thought she’d have the once-in-a lifetime experience of presenting cutting-edge research at a conference, let alone winning an award. But that’s exactly what happened recently.

When Qing X. Li joined the Dept. of Molecular Biosciences & BioEngineering in 1995, he wanted to tackle agricultural chemistry issues relevant to Hawaiʻi. In his case, this meant a research focus on chemical proteomics, phytopharmaceuticals, food chemistry and safety, pesticide chemistry, and environmental monitoring and remediation. 

What does it take to become a world-renowned scientific investigator? Only the top researchers in the world can answer that question – and Samir Kumar Khanal of the Dept. of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering is officially recognized as one of them by Research.com, the leading research portal for science rankings. 

Over the past decade, CRISPR genetic engineering tools have become an essential technology in numerous industries, including food and agriculture, drug development, and therapy, as well as for ongoing scientific research. Yet, says Rock, Zhi-Yan Du of the Dept. of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering, these Clustered Regularly Intersced Short Palindromic Repeats systems are “not well understood in the general community, leading to fears and misunderstandings about genetic engineering and an overall anti-science outlook.”

What started out as a hobby for four graduate students has started to become much more than that. Bitter Root Brewery (BRB for short) is a student-run business. Our ginger beer, or the O.G. (the Original Ginger) was created in a Fermentation Biochemistry class offered in the Dept. of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering.

If you’re not familiar with CTAHR’s Environment and Bioenergy Research Group, just ask the faculty and students of Can Tho University in Vietnam. Led by Samir Khanal of the Dept. of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering, the group will soon travel to the Mekong Delta in a new international effort “pairing some of the United States’ top research institutions and scientists with their counterparts from countries where agriculture is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change,” notes the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

Intertidal limpets are a prized delicacy in the Hawaiian islands, but they’re tough to find on O'ahu. To help rebuild the population, grad students Angelica Valdez and Mitch Marabella in the Dept. of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering are attempting to spawn and rear ʻopihi to adulthood in their lab on campus.