1012 Corridor

Along the corridor may lie the next generation of wireless technology, a solution to global warming, miracle drugs made from alligator blood, artificial intelligence, an end to food recalls and crime-fighting tools way cooler than anything we’ve ever seen on CSI.

All of it is the subject of intense study by some of the best minds in research. We’re not talking tenured veterans here, but rather 20-, 30- and 40-somethings.

The young scientists.

Meet seven of them, from Lake Charles to New Orleans. They spend their days probing alligators, hairy maggots, carbon dioxide and computer code in hopes of discovering the Next Big Thing—and possibly making the world a better place to live.

Mark Merchant

McNeese State University, 
Lake Charles

Age: 43

Quest: Finding the protein in the white blood cells of alligators that protects them from infection and discovering how it might benefit humans

As a boy growing up hunting and fishing in South Texas, Merchant has been around gators all his life. So he’s noticed that the creatures chew the heck out of each other, eat bacteria-laden dead things and live in stagnant waters—seemingly with no ill effects. What do they have that we don’t? That’s what the assistant professor of biochemistry is trying to find out.

His immunological studies focus is on the antimicrobial properties of alligator blood and other tissues. “We have very strong direct evidence that alligator white blood cells produce small proteins that have these tremendous antimicrobial properties,” Merchant says. “I think if we can isolate these, it could mean a whole new class of drugs for humans, the likes of which is not on the market right now.” Chances are slim that such medicine could be taken internally, but Merchant’s work has found topical applications on burns, ulcerations and lesions could prove promising. Says Merchant: “This stuff really does a number on MRSA [staph].”

Dmitri Perkins

University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Age: 36

Quest: Developing the next generation of wireless

Remember how there was just no communicating with the outside world during hurricanes Katrina and Rita when the cell phone towers went down? Perkins’ work eventually may eliminate that problem.

He and his research team are writing protocols for a new networking paradigm called “mobile ad hoc networks.” What it means is that those devices we love so much—PDAs, cell phones and the like—won’t need any centralized stations to route calls and information. Instead, they’ll self-organize and work on their own.

The work was initially aimed at the military, so soldiers could continue to communicate even if the centralized controller were destroyed. Now, Perkins is also exploring ways to add sensors to the wireless world, including remote health monitoring of human patients and people in high-risk situations [firefighters, deep-sea divers and athletes], and engineered structures [bridges, dams, buildings and oil and gas platforms]. “We’re currently testing it on part of the campus,” Perkins says. “Eventually, we’d like to test it on a larger scale—maybe over the entire city. That’s our long-range goal.”

Michelle Fletcher Claville

Southern University, Baton Rouge

Age: 40

Quest: Determining what happens to amino acids in food during eradiation

It was around the time of the spinach and peanut butter recalls that this Jamaican native discovered a practical application for her research into proteins. With all the talk of food eradiation, she wondered, what happens to amino acids—a basic component of proteins—when they undergo that process? “Belgium and India actually use gamma eradiation to purify water and some of their food,” Claville says. “They’ve been using it for some time, and now because of issues in the United States, there are those pushing to eradiate all food. So there’s my question.”

She’s focusing on methionine, a common amino acid in a number of different proteins—including some of those in the human body—and is subjecting them to eradiation to investigate the results. A National Science Foundation CAREER grant is helping her get it done. Thankfully, spinach and peanut butter may never be the same.

Tevfik Kosar

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge


Age: 34

Quest: Create a means for researchers to crunch massive amounts of data via linked networks around the world

Kosar’s interest in computers started when he began taking programming courses in high school, but at the time, his family didn’t even own one. So he encouraged his older brother to study computer engineering in college, knowing it would prompt his father to buy a PC. The strategy worked; the Kosar family became the proud owner of a Commodore.

Today, the Turkish native is a long way from that 8-bit home computer. He’s developing what’s called an automated distributed computing system that allows researchers in high-energy physics, astronomy, genetics and other fields to tap into thousands of computers around the world to crunch their massive amounts of data.

Who benefits? The Large Hadron Collider at the European Center of Nuclear Research, for one, which is trying to recreate the origin of the universe. It produces data at a rate of five million DVDs per year. And astronomers mapping the universe with high-definition telescopes, who are piecing together images. And geneticists exploring looking for cures for cancer, Alzheimers and AIDS who need to run DNA simulations.

“They have complex problems with massive amounts of data,” Kosar says. “In order to process the data they generate, you need to have more than 100,000 computers together and all of those computers need to be communicating with each other synchronized.” The National Science Foundation recently gave him a $400,000 CAREER grant for his work.

Aron Culotta

Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond

Age: 28

Quest: Artificial intelligence

It was in college that this New Orleans native discovered the phenomenon of Chat Bots, where users could have a “conversation” with their computer.

“For first 60 seconds, it was pretty amazing that the computer was responding to what I’d asked it,” Culotta says. “But rather quickly I realized it’s kind of a dumb program. It would just keep asking questions, kind of like a psychologist; it wasn’t really realizing what you were saying. But then I got interested in, ‘Oh, what if this really worked? What if you really did have computers that could understand human communication?’ That’s when I started looking at artificial intelligence.”

Culotta is basically creating a Google-on-steroids sort of program— a search engine that can not only find information online, but also analyze it and piece it together in relevant fashion. Culotta is doing that by “teaching” the computer to communicate by building a statistical model of how language works.

He envisions it as sort of an automated journalist or researcher, digesting different sources of information and finding connections or missing pieces. Medical researchers, for example, could use it not only to collect information on a particular topic, but also look for areas that have not yet been probed. Says Culotta: “It relieves the burden of piecing together information.”

Erin Watson

Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond

Age: 34

Quest: Refining the means for determining time of death in crime victims

Call Watson the accidental entomologist. As a child, the Seattle native had twin passions for ballet and duck hunting, but was never really the kind of kid who played with bugs—until she unintentionally enrolled in a class in college and loved it.

This bug expert is also a crime fighter—she’s the state’s only full-time forensics entomologist. She studied with LSU’s C. Lamar Meek, teaches FBI seminars and works on countless murder mysteries, including serial killings in Baton Rouge.

When not doing that, however, her laboratory is devoted to studying an invasive species of fly called the hairy maggot, using dead pigs.

Just how will that help solve crime? Turns out that since invading Louisiana, the maggots are threatening the native insect population that devours human remains. “They’re disrupting the natural balance,” Watson says. “They’re displacing the native insects. They’re predacious and cannibalistic, and they emit this repellency pheromone, so the predatory beetles and other insects stay away.” Their presence, in fact, made it difficult to determine the time of death of one of convicted Baton Rouge serial killer Sean Vincent Gillis’ victims.

Watson is also observing the heat generated by certain insects during various stages of life in something called an insect growth chamber. Her goal: a more precise mathematical formula for determining time of death in the southern climate. “That’s going to be a big deal to the southern states,” she says. “It’s something that needs to be addressed.”

James Donahue

Tulane University, New Orleans

Age: 40

Quest: Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it into alternative fuel

What if we could find a way to run vehicles on pollution? It might sound far-fetched, but if Donahue’s work is successful, he’ll solve two environmental problems at once. The National Science Foundation thinks enough of his work to have given him a $570,000 coveted CAREER grant, even without a published paper on the subject.

The MIT and Harvard grad has reason to believe tungsten—an inexpensive plentiful metal—can successfully remove an oxygen molecule from carbon dioxide. That converts it to carbon monoxide, the starting point for methanol. And methanol can be used directly as a fuel.

“Fossil fuels are limited, and we’re using them up at a pretty good clip,” Donahue says. “We have to devise other forms of energy. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is potentially threatening to the global climate. The two taken together make a compelling case that we need to do something. Without a doubt, this is one of the holy grails of the energy issue.”