Stanford Engineering Puzzle

June 2006

This month we invite you to hunt down nasty cancer proteins using magnetic nanotechnology in a way that is simpler than but evocative of MSE and EE Associate Professor Shan Wang's research. He is developing a MagArray chip that could detect cancer proteins in lower concentrations (and therefore sooner) in a blood sample than current technologies. Here's how: Every "target" cancer protein in a blood sample will attach only to a specific complementary "probe" protein attached to a magnetic sensor on the chip. Magnetic nanoparticles are designed to attach to the targets. Whenever a target hooks up with a probe, therefore, it will bring the nanoparticle close enough to the sensor to generate an electrical signal. Voil�, the cancer protein has been detected.

Directions for puzzle

In this puzzle you have to match up the proper target proteins with the right probe proteins (yes, these proteins look nothing like real proteins). When you do, the nanoparticles will turn yellow to indicate that they are giving off their magnetic signal. When all the matches have been made, a "secret word" will be revealed. For fun we will post (below) the names of ten alumni who successfully complete the puzzle and e-mail the secret word in the subject line to staff member Marge Kastner. She'll post entry number 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, etc. up to 91.

You must have Flash installed to run this puzzle, which was designed by Scott Kim of Shufflebrain and programmed by Larry Doyle of Cyberiandesign.

"Winning" entries

1)Danny Hsu, BS 1999 CS
11) Jack Lin, BS 1996, MS 1997 CEE
21) Steve Chappell, BS 0998, MS 2003 EE
31) Harry N Ewald, PhD 1968 EE
41) Diane Palme, MS 2000 ME
51) Molly Follette Story, MS 1983 Product Design
61) Joshua Webb, MS 2005 ME
71) Mike Hill, BS 2005 ME
81) Guillermo Maldonado, BS 1999 ME
91) Misty Davies, MS 2005 Aero/Astro

Try your hand at our other puzzles in the puzzle archive.