Brian Litt, MD, Professor in Neurology, Neurosurgery and Bioengineering and Director of the Penn Epilepsy Center, has received a 2022 Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). This award honors Litt’s dedication to superior mentorship and training in neuroscience research. The award includes $100,000 in the form of a supplement to an existing NINDS grant to support his efforts to foster the career advancement of additional trainees.
Buffone got his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from SUNY Buffalo in Buffalo, NY in 2012, working with advisor Sriram Neelamegham, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Buffone completed previous postdoctoral studies at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center with Joseph T.Y. Lau, Distinguished Professor of Oncology in the department of Cellular and Molecular Biology. Upon coming to Penn in 2015, Buffone has worked in the Hammer Lab under advisor Daniel A. Hammer, Alfred G. and Meta A. Ennis Professor in Bioengineering and in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, first as a postdoc and later a research associate. Buffone also spent a year as a Visiting Scholar in the Center for Bioengineering and Tissue Regeneration, directed by Valerie M. Weaver, Professor at the University of California, San Francisco in 2019.
While at Penn, Buffone was a co-investigator on an R21 grant through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which supported his time as a research associate. Buffone is excited to start his own laboratory where he plans to train a diverse set of trainees.
Buffone’s research area lies at the intersection of genetic engineering, immunology, and glycobiology and addresses how to specifically tailor the trafficking and response of immune cells to inflammation and various diseases. The work seeks to identify and subsequently modify critical cell surface and intracellular signaling molecules governing the recruitment of various blood cell types to distal sites. The ultimate goal of his research is to tailor and personalize the innate and adaptive immune response to specific diseases on demand.
“None of this would have been possible without the unwavering support of all of my mentors, past and present, and most especially Dan Hammer,” Buffone says. “His support in helping me transition into an independent scientist and his understanding of my outside responsibilities as a dad with two young children is truly the reason why I am standing here today. It’s a testament to Dan as both a person and a mentor.”
The inaugural class of the CiPD NIDCR T90/R90 Postdoctoral Training Program Fellows with Dean Mark Wolff (center); Dr. Michel Koo, Founding Director of CiPD (far right); and CiPD Co-Director Dr. Kathleen Stebe of Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science (far left).
With one of its key missions to develop a new generation of scientists at the interface of dental medicine and engineering, the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) has selected its inaugural class of fellows for its new postdoctoral training program.
The CiPD was awarded a $2.5 million T90/R90 grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) last summer to establish the program, recently naming this first cohort of fellows that includes Justin Burrell, Marshall Padilla, Zhi Ren, and Dennis Sourvanos.
“We’re hoping this program will promote cross-pollination and create a culture between these two fields to help dentists develop innovative strategies with engineers,” says Penn Dental Medicine’s Michel Koo, Co-Director of CiPD, who launched the Center in 2021 with Co-Director Kathleen Stebe, Richer & Elizabeth Goodwin Professor in Penn Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “Dentists can learn from engineering principles and tools, and engineers can understand more about the needs of the dental and craniofacial fields. We’re providing a platform for them to work together to address unmet clinical needs and develop careers in that interface.”
The NIDCR T90/R90 Postdoctoral Training Program aims to specifically focus on the oral microbiome, host immunity, and tissue regeneration, each of which ties into different aspects of oral health, from tooth decay and periodontal disease to the needs of head and neck cancer patients. To advance these areas, emerging approaches, from advanced materials, robotics, and artificial intelligence to tissue engineering, chloroplast- and nanoparticle-based technologies, will be leveraged.
As part of the two-year training, each postdoc will receive co-mentorship from faculty from each school in conjunction with a career development committee of clinicians, basic scientists, as well as engineers. These mentorships will be focused on research outcomes and readying participants to submit grants and compete for positions in academia or industry.
The inaugural class of fellows includes Justin Burrell, a postdoctoral student in the lab of D. Kacy Cullen, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery; Marshall Padilla, a postdoc in the lab of Michael J. Mitchell, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in Bioengineering; and Zhi Ren, a postdoc in the lab of Michael Koo; and Dennis Sourvanos, an Advanced Graduate Dental Education resident at Penn Dental Medicine whose research has been co-directed by Timothy C. Zhu, Professor of Radiation Oncology in the Perelman School of Medicine. Cullen, Mitchell, Koo and Zhu are all members of the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group.
Penelope earned her Ph.D. in Bioengineering in 2006. She is now Associate Director of STEM Initiatives at Princeton University.
Penelope Georges, Ph.D.
“My time at Penn spoiled me for many job experiences that followed. The Institute for Medicine and Engineering (IME) was collaborative, familial, and stimulating. During my Ph.D. work, I felt simultaneously nurtured and challenged. Most credit for this prolific phase of my career is due to the members of Dr. Paul Janmey’s laboratory during my tenure at Penn – starting with the big man himself. My research mentor promoted a research experience that centered on respect for others, not only within our field of study but also outside the academy. Respect meant the expectation of forming strong relationships and collaborations and having reverence for scientific experts and practitioners alike. The foundation of the lab’s ethos was collaboration for the greater good.
Dr. Janmey set the tone for lab members to hold each other in high regard and to be team players. I would not have been as successful without this support. Beyond the lab, the IME at the time had a remarkable staff assistant in Marvin Jackson who was central to promoting camaraderie across the Institute. Marvin was a critical presence in the IME and I believe that many scientific collaborations were made possible due to the environment he cajoled.
Outside the IME, some the most meaningful moments of my Ph.D. studies came from traveling outside the U.S. to collaborate internationally. I was fortunate to travel as close as Mechanicsville, PA and as far as the Czech Republic to attend meetings, perform experiments, and make connections with colleagues. Through travel and meeting many different types of people, I learned the culture of being in academia and developed a broader view of scientific research.
As of recently, my career has focused on pedagogy in higher education. At Princeton, I serve within an entity that has a central mission of improving science and engineering literacy for all its constituents: the Council on Science and Technology. I develop new science and engineering courses and introduce interactive research-based teaching methods into these courses. I am involved in policy issues on STEM education at Princeton and beyond. The skills I learned at Penn that are critical to my current position are to recognize problems and design innovative solutions and the ability to communicate and collaborate with researchers across many disciplines. I am very grateful to be an alumna of a remarkable program.”
The Office of the Provost awards the Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students in recognition of their profound impact on education across the University. Nominations come directly from undergraduate and graduate students in their courses and are narrowed down to ten awardees each year.
Anderson is a Ph.D. student who studies the computational modeling of injury in full-brain networks in the Molecular Neuroengineering Lab of David Meaney, Solomon R. Pollack Professor in Bioengineering and Senior Associate Dean of Penn Engineering. Anderson has served as a teaching assistant for Bioengineering Senior Design since Fall 2019. Senior Design (BE 495 & 496) is the Bioengineering Department’s two-semester capstone course in which students work in teams to conceive, design and pitch their final projects, and is taught by Meaney and Sevile Mannickarottu, Director of Educational Laboratories in Bioengineering. Anderson earned her B.S. in Bioengineering from Rice University in 2016. Her doctoral thesis focuses on how subconcussive head trauma affects subsequent concussion outcomes.
In a proof-of-concept study, researchers from the School of Dental Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science shows that a hands-free system could effectively automate the treatment and removal of tooth-decay-causing bacteria and dental plaque. (Illustration: Melissa Pappas)
A shapeshifting robotic microswarm may one day act as a toothbrush, rinse, and dental floss in one.
The technology, developed by a multidisciplinary team at the University of Pennsylvania, is poised to offer a new and automated way to perform the mundane but critical daily tasks of brushing and flossing. It’s a system that could be particularly valuable for those who lack the manual dexterity to clean their teeth effectively themselves.
The building blocks of these microrobots are iron oxide nanoparticles that have both catalytic and magnetic activity. Using a magnetic field, researchers could direct their motion and configuration to form either bristlelike structures that sweep away dental plaque from the broad surfaces of teeth, or elongated strings that can slip between teeth like a length of floss. In both instances, a catalytic reaction drives the nanoparticles to produce antimicrobials that kill harmful oral bacteria on site.
Experiments using this system on mock and real human teeth showed that the robotic assemblies can conform to a variety of shapes to nearly eliminate the sticky biofilms that lead to cavities and gum disease. The Penn team shared their findings establishing a proof-of-concept for the robotic system in the journal ACS Nano.
“Routine oral care is cumbersome and can pose challenges for many people, especially those who have hard time cleaning their teeth” says Hyun (Michel) Koo, a professor in the Department of Orthodontics and divisions of Community Oral Health and Pediatric Dentistry in Penn’s School of Dental Medicine and co-corresponding author on the study. “You have to brush your teeth, then floss your teeth, then rinse your mouth; it’s a manual, multistep process. The big innovation here is that the robotics system can do all three in a single, hands-free, automated way.”
Hyun (Michel) Koo is a professor in the Department of Orthodontics and divisions of Community Oral Health and Pediatric Dentistry in the School of Dental Medicine, co-director of the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry, and member of the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group at the University of Pennsylvania.
Edward Steager is a senior research investigator in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Koo and Steager’s coauthors on the paper are Penn Dental Medicine’s Min Jun Oh, Alaa Babeer, Yuan Liu, and Zhi Ren and Penn Engineering’s Jingyu Wu, David A. Issadore, Kathleen J. Stebe, and Daeyeon Lee.
This work was supported in part by the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research (grants DE025848 and DE029985), Procter & Gamble, and the Postdoctoral Research Program of Sungkyunkwan University.
Kevin Johnson is used to forging his own path in the fields of healthcare and computer science.
A picture of Johnson as a child, from his children’s book “I’m a Biomedical Expert Now!”
If you ask him to locate his niche within these fields, Johnson, David L. Cohen and Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor with appointments in Penn Engineering and the Perelman School of Medicine, would say “informatics.” But that doesn’t tell the whole story of the board-certified pediatrician, who has dedicated his career to innovations in how patients’ information is created, documented and shared, all with the goal of improving the quality of healthcare they receive.
Informatics, the study of the structure and behavior of interactions between natural and computational systems, is an umbrella term. Within it, there’s bioinformatics, which applies informatics to biology, and biomedical informatics, which looks at those interactions in the context of healthcare systems. Finally, there is clinical informatics, which further focuses on the settings where healthcare is delivered, and where Johnson squarely places himself.
“But you can just call it ‘informatics,’” says Johnson. “It will be easier.”
He mainly studies how computational systems can improve ambulatory care — sometimes known as outpatient care, or the kind of care hospitals give to patients without admitting them — in real time. If you’ve ever heard your doctor complain about the amount of time it takes them to input the information they get from you during your visit, or wondered why they need to capture this information during the visit in the first place, these are some of the questions Johnson is investigating.
“We’re taking care of patients but we’re getting frustrated by things that we thought these new computers should be able to fix,” says Johnson.” I think there’s a very compelling case for using engineering principles to reimagine electronic health records.”
Kevin Johnson is the David L. Cohen University of Pennsylvania Professor in the Departments of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics and Computer and Information Science. As a Penn Integrates Knowlegde (PIK) University Professor, Johnson also holds appointments in the Departments of Bioengineering and Pediatrics, as well as in the Annenberg School of Communication. Johnson is the Vice President for Applied Informatics for the University of Pennsylvania Health System and has been elected to the American College of Medical Informatics (2004), the Academic Pediatric Society (2010), the National Academy of Medicine (Institute of Medicine) (2010), and the International Association of Health Science Informatics (2021).
