News

A group of BME Seniors led by Professor Laurel Carney has been working together since Fall of their Sophomore year on a research project with the goal of improving automatic detection of epileptic seizures. This debilitating neurologic disorder has an impact on millions of patients, yet there is hope for better treatment through improved detection and someday, prediction, of seizures. The group founded UR DASDA (Database for Automatic Seizure Detection Algorithms), and established a goal of setting up an internet-based database that will provide high-quality electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings for researchers around the world who are developing seizure detection algorithms.

In collaboration with Drs. James Burchfiel, Michel Berg, and staff in the Strong Epilepsy Center in the Department of Neurology, the group is collecting data that will be suitable for this research effort. Owen Zacharias, from the Departments of BME and Neuroscience, has been coordinating efforts with the computing administrators at the URMC to establish a website that can handle the large datafiles that are being developed. The students designed a website that will allow researchers to carefully select and download examples of seizures for use in testing algorithms. They are currently populating the database with datafiles, with a goal of 100 entries, including infants through older adults and a wide range of seizure types. A preliminary report of this database will be presented at the Fall conference of the Biomedical Engineering Society in Hartford Connecticut. The BME Seniors in URDASDA are Gregory Hartnett, Andrew Hagar, Caitlin O'Connell, Zachary Milstone, Brian Schwartz, and Geoffrey Yee.

Benjamin Freedman and Johanna Kelly, OmNeo, LLC

A student team that presented a business plan to commercialize two devices for monitoring pain in premature infants took first place in this year's Forbes Entrepreneurial Competition and third place in the Mark Ain Business Model Competition at the University of Rochester.

Biomedical engineering students Benjamin Freedman and Johanna Kelly, which make up the OmNeo, LLC team, presented two systems:

1. wee rePLI, which objectively measures pain during procedures
2. ORB|IT, which continually measures an infant's pain

Reducing pain in premature infants can assist clinicians in better focusing treatment and can help prevent developmental health consequences. The devices were developed by a larger team of students, supervised by Professors Laurel Carney from Biomedical Engineering, and Martin Schiavento from the School of Nursing.

Congratulations to Professor Laurel Carney, who was recognized by the Student Association as the Engineering Professor of the Year at the prestigious annual University of Rochester Undergraduate Research Symposium. Undergrad Travis Bevington, BME '12, said, in presenting the award, Even with all of her research, Professor Carney manages to find time to spend countless hours with students on projects and it really proves how much she cares about our success as students. She really serves as an outlet to different opportunities that students might be unaware of, such as finding a lab position or research opportunity. Beyond the classroom, Professor Carney is always in high demand for letters of recommendation—students really feel like she takes the time to get to know all of us, even if her deck of cards in class can be quite intimidating! (Dr. Carney has a deck of playing cards, with one card for each student. Cards are drawn during class to direct questions to the students.)

Said Professor Carney about the award, Since coming to UR 4 years ago, I've been greatly impressed by the quality of the undergraduates here and have really enjoyed my classes. Receiving this recognition from the students is a great honor. On the other hand, I think it provides objective evidence that my courses are too easy; I intend to remedy this situation as quickly as I can!

Congratulations to the RCBU and BME students whose work was recognized at the prestigious annual University of Rochester Undergraduate Research Exposition 2011. Undergraduate students from RCBU and BME research laboratories participated in the symposium. BME undergrads Benjamin Freedman '11 and Kelli Summers '11 were both invited to speak at the Engineering and Applied Sciences Symposium Talks.

Freedman discussed his work, What is Q-Angle really measuring? A novel alternative to predict patellar maltracking, which received the Dean's Award. Summers spoke about her research with Dr. James McGrath, Mechanisms Underlying Collective Cell Migration in Vitro, which was recognized by President Seligman with the President's Award. Aaron Zakrzewski (ME '11), mentored by Mechanical Engineering Professor Sheryl Gracewski, gave an oral presentation of his research titled Natural frequency of bubbles within rigid and compliant tubes. Aaron also received a Deans' Award for Undergraduate Research in Engineering and Applied Sciences for his presentation. In addition, five of the seven poster exhibitions from the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences were by BME students:

Molly Boutin (Benoit Lab) BME '11

A Polymeric Delivery System to Induce Differentiation in hMSCs

Jasmine Carvalho (Dalecki Lab) BME '11

Investigations of Ultrasound Parameters to Promote Spatial Organization of Cells in Three-Dimensional Engineered Tissues

Vlabhav Kakkad (McAleavey Lab) BME '12

Experimental Implementation of Shear Wave Induced Phase Encoding Imaging

Angela Ketterer (Carney Lab) BME '12

Design and Implementation of a Behavioral Apparatus for Auditory Research in Birds

Hannah Watkins (Benoit Lab) BME '11

Novel Parthenolide Delivery System for Acute Myeloid Leukemia Treatment

(Received the Professor's Choice Award)