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2009 News

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  • October 10, 2009

    BME Department makes a record showing at the Biomedical Engineering Society - Student Chapter wins Meritorious Achievement Award

    BME students receiving the Meritorious Achievement Award, recognizing the best student chapter in the nation.

    Dozens of UR students and faculty attended the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA from October 7-10. Our group gave 12 oral presentations and presented 17 posters demonstrating work in many areas of the department's research, including imaging, orthopaedics, tissue engineering, neuroengineering, nanotechnology, and cellular mechanics. The work was presented by faculty, graduate students and undergraduates, and also included examples of both translational research and educational outreach programs. The department also hosted an exhibit booth to meet with prospective students and faculty.

    The annual meeting also offered numerous activities for students, related to research and career development. Perhaps most exciting was that our student BMES chapter received a Meritorious Achievement Award. This recognizes the best student chapter in the nation for achievements during the last academic year, based on last year's Chapter Development Report.

  • September 14, 2009

    BME Graduate Sarah Lancianese wins Young Investigator Award

    Recent graduate Sarah Lancianese received a Young Investigator Award at the 2009 World Congress on Osteoarthritis in Montreal, Quebec. She presented her work on the use of biomechanical models to understand risks for knee osteoarthritis in a plenary session including the 6 highest rated abstracts from young investigators. This abstract represented the final chapter of her PhD dissertation which she defended in July, 2009. The overall project, supervised by BME Associate Professor Amy L. Lerner, investigated the combined effects of obesity, limb alignment and bone mechanical properties on the knee joint. Dr. Lancianese is now a design engineer at Wright Medical, Inc. in Memphis TN.

  • June 24, 2009

    Alumnus Christopher Kumar's Student Team Wins American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Competition

    Alumnus Christopher Kumar, now a science instructor at Monroe Community College, led his student design team to a first place finish at the American Society for Engineering Education's National Robitcs Competition. Kumar's student team, Tinkerballz, won the design title by creating a robot that could sort colored golf balls and deposit them in corresponding targets. Chris completed is BS in our BME Undergraduate program in 2003, then continued as a research technician and MS student with Greg Gdowski. After receiving hs MS degree in 2008, he joined the faculty at Monroe Community College as an instructor in the Department of Engineering & Physics.

  • June 16, 2009

    Carlos Sevilla Awarded NIH Pre-doctoral Fellowship

    Carlos Sevilla was awarded a prestigious NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Pre-doctoral Fellowship. This three-year award will provide funding for Carlos' thesis research project, titled ,Promoting Chronic Wound Healing with Ultrasound and Fibronectin. In his research, Carlos is investigating the ability of ultrasound to produce conformational changes in the extracellular matrix protein fibronectin that, in turn, stimulate cellular processes important for accelerating soft tissue wound repair. Carlos is a third year graduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and his thesis research is co-advised by Dr. Denise Hocking and Dr. Diane Dalecki. Carlos is also a student member of the Rochester Center for Biomedical Ultrasound (RCBU). Carlos' research is part of a larger, multidisciplinary project, led by Drs. Dalecki and Hocking and funded by the NIH, that aims to develop the use of ultrasound for chronic wound therapy.

  • June 5, 2009

    Kelley Garvin Wins Best Student Paper Competition

    Kelley Garvin won the Best Student Paper Competition at the 157th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America held in Portland, OR from May 18-22. Her paper, titled Ultrasound standing wave fields control the spatial distribution of cells and protein in three-dimensional engineered tissue, was recognized as the best student paper in the Biomedical Ultrasound / Bioresponse to Vibration Technical Section. Kelley presented her recent work demonstrating the use of ultrasound fields to non-invasively control the spatial locations of cells in collagen-based engineered tissues. Ultrasound standing wave fields were used to organize cells into planar bands within collagen gels, resulting in a significant two-fold increase in cell-mediated gel contraction, suggesting that ultrasound-induced cell organization leads to a differential extracellular matrix remodeling. Further, using ultrasound to spatially band endothelial cells within collagen gels resulted in vessel sprouting. These novel technologies have important applications to the fabrication of engineered tissues with desired tissue characteristics. Kelley is a third year graduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and her thesis research is co-advised by Dr. Diane Dalecki and Dr. Denise Hocking. Kelley is also a student member of the Rochester Center for Biomedical Ultrasound (RCBU). Kelley's research is part of a larger, multidisciplinary project, led by Drs. Dalecki and Hocking and funded by the NIH, that aims to develop novel ultrasound technologies for the field of tissue engineering.

  • May 1, 2009

    Lisa Bonanno Awarded NIH Pre-doctoral Fellowship

    Lisa Bonanno was awarded a prestigious NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Pre-doctoral Fellowship. This two-year award will provide funding for Lisa's thesis research project to develop label-free porous silicon optical biosensors. Lisa's research is focused on designing sensors to detect molecules of interest in complex biological fluids (blood, urine etc.) for point-of-care diagnostic applications. This work is aimed at improving patient health care by reducing the time and cost associated with clinical laboratory testing. In particular, the fellowship award, entitled, Drug Screeening with Nano-Porous Silicon Optical Biosensors is focused on designing sensors to detect small molecule drugs of abuse in urine. This multidisciplinary study is co-sponsored by Dr. Jean Bidlack in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology. Lisa is a fourth year graduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and her thesis research is advised by Dr. Lisa DeLouise in the Department of Dermatology.

  • February 25, 2009

    UR BME Faculty, Students and Alumni at the 2009 Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting

    The UR Biomedical Engineering Program was well represented at this year's Annual Meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society in Las Vegas, Nevada. In addition to several podium and poster presentations by current members of the BME department, it was great to connect with many alumni of the program, who have gone on to graduate degrees, positions in industry, or post-doctoral fellowships. For example, presenting their work at this year's ORS were UG alums Suzanne Ferreri ('01), Tunde Babalola ('02), Jason Long ('03), Dan Xia Chen ('05), Andrea Pallante ('05), Jedd Sereysky ('05), Nick Drury ('06) and Carrie Voycheck ('06). Their presentations included studies of cartilage tissue engineering, tendon properties, finite element modeling, and the effects of ultrasound.

  • February 17, 2009

    Candace Gildner wins Ruth Kirchstein National Research Service Award for MD/PhD Studies

    Candace Gildner, an MD/PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Department, has recently been awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Individual MD/PHD Fellows from the NIH. This prestigious, four-year award covers her PhD research as well as her remaining two years in medical school. The overall goal of this project is to determine how chronic exposure to cigarette smoke affects extracellular matrix remodeling in the lung. Cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for the development of several non-neoplastic lung disorders, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pulmonary hypertension, and interstitial lung disease. Candace's research will focus on whether chronic exposure to tobacco smoke hinders normal tissue repair by altering the ability of cells to polymerize a fibronectin matrix. Her studies will provide insight into factors that regulate the deposition, conformation and physiologic properties of extracellular matrix fibronectin and determine if these factors are localized to lung tissue in response to cigarette smoke. Candace was born and raised in Rochester, NY. She graduated from the University of Rochester with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and completed a MS thesis in Biomedical Engineering at UR. She is currently in her fourth year as a PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, working under the direction of Dr. Denise C. Hocking.

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