awards – Page 6 – Penn Bioengineering Blog

April 27, 2023May 1, 2023

2023 Undergraduate Awards for Bioengineering Students

Congratulations to the Bioengineering student recipients of undergraduate awards from the School of Engineering and Applied Science for the 2022-2023 academic year. These awards are given annually by the school and the department in recognition of outstanding scholarship and service. Read the full list of Bioengineering undergraduate award winners below.

The Wolf-Hallac Award: Sofia Mouchtaris. This award was established in October 2000 to recognize the graduating female senior from across Penn Engineering’s departments who is seen as a role model, has achieved a high GPA (in the top 10% of their class), and who has demonstrated a commitment to school and/or community.

The Management and Technology Scholarship Award: Savan Patel. This prize is awarded by the SEAS faculty to that member of the senior class in the Jerome Fisher Management and Technology Program who has created an innovative system and attained high scholastic achievement.

The Hugo Otto Wolf Memorial Prize: Joshua Freedman & Le He. This prize is awarded to one or more members of each department’s senior class, distinguishing students who meet with great approval of the professors at large through “thoroughness and originality” in their work.

The Herman P. Schwan Award: Laila Norford. This department award honors a graduating senior who demonstrates the “highest standards of scholarship and academic achievement.”

Exceptional Service Awards recognize students for their outstanding service to the University and their larger communities: Dylan Hurok, Julia Lottman, Caroline Magro & Grace Qian.

The Student Leadership Award: Moses Zeidan. This award is given annually to a student in Bioengineering who has demonstrated, through a combination of academic performance, service, leadership, and personal qualities, that they will be a credit to the Department, the School, and the University.

Additionally, the Bioengineering Department also presents a single lab group with the Albert Giandomenico Award which reflects their “teamwork, leadership, creativity, and knowledge applied to discovery-based learning in the laboratory.” This year’s group consists of Ella Atsavapranee, Jake Becker, Ruoming Fan & Savan Patel, aka Team StablEyes.

The awardees above were recognized at the annual Penn Engineering Awards Ceremony held Wednesday, March 29, 2023 in the Harrison Auditorium, Penn Museum.

Three Bioengineering Senior Design teams were chosen for recognition in the Bioengineering Senior Design Competition:

Team BAMBI: Ria Dawar, Pallavi Jonnalagadda, Jessica Ling, & Grace Qian. BAMBI (Biointelligent Apnea Monitor for Bradycardia-Prone Infants) is a tripartite system that leverages machine learning and automated mechanical stimulation to detect and treat apnea of prematurity in the NICU.

Team StablEyes: Ella Atsavapranee, Jake Becker, Ruoming Fan, & Savan Patel. StablEyes consists of a stabilization mount that provides fine, motorized control of the handheld OCT to improve ease of use for physicians and machine learning-based software to aid in diagnosis from retinal images.

Team inSPIRE: Jackson Dooley, Joshua Freedman,Yi-An Hsieh, Isabella Mirro, & Parth Mody. inSPIRE is the first smart incentive spirometer, used post-operatively to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs associated with complications and readmissions.

These teams will compete in the Penn Engineering Senior Design Competition on Friday, April 28, 2023.

Research for these projects was conducted in the George H. Stephenson Foundation Education Laboratory & Bio-Maker Space. Learn about all the 2023 Senior Design projects and view their final presentations on the Stephenson Bio-MakerSpace website here.

A full list of Penn Engineering award descriptions and recipients can be found here.

April 26, 2023April 25, 2023

Engheta, Margulies Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Two faculty affiliated with the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania have been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. They join nearly 270 new members honored in 2023, recognized for their excellence, innovation, leadership, and broad array of accomplishments.

Nader Engheta is the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor, with affiliations in the departments of Electrical and Systems Engineering (primary appointment), Bioengineering (secondary appointment) and Materials Science and Engineering (secondary appointment) in the School of Engineering and Applied Science; and Physics and Astronomy (secondary appointment) in the School of Arts & Sciences. His current research activities span a broad range of areas including optics, photonics, metamaterials, electrodynamics, microwaves, nano-optics, graphene photonics, imaging and sensing inspired by eyes of animal species, microwave and optical antennas, and physics and engineering of fields and waves. He has received numerous awards for his research, including the 2023 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering, the 2020 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics (U.K.), the 2020 Max Born Award from OPTICA (formerly OSA), induction to the Canadian Academy of Engineering as an International Fellow (2019), U.S. National Academy of Inventors (2015), and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor from the Ellis Island Honors Society (2019). He joins four other Penn faculty elected to the Academy this year.

Read the announcement and the full list of Penn electees in Penn Today.

Susan Margulies, Ph.D. (Photo: Jack Kearse)

Susan Margulies, Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech, was also elected. Margulies is both Professor Emeritus in Penn Bioengineering and an alumna of the program, having earned her Ph.D. with the department in 1987. Margulies is an expert in pediatric traumatic brain injury and lung injury. She previously served as Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech/Emory University and in 2021 became the first biomedical engineer selected to lead the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate of Engineering.

Read the announcement of Margulies’ elected to the Academy at Georgia Tech.

April 23, 2023April 20, 2023

Puneeth Guruprasad Wins 2023 Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students

Front, from left to right: Lucy Andersen, Vice Provost for Education Karen Detlefsen, Derek Yang, Ann Ho, and Arianna James. Back, from left to right: Ritesh Isuri, Adiwid (Boom) Devahastin Na Ayudhya, Oualid Merzouga, and Puneeth Guruprasad.

Ten winners of the 2023 Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students were announced at a ceremony held April 13 at the Graduate Student Center. The recipients, who represented five of Penn’s 12 schools, were recognized among a pool of 44 Ph.D. candidates and master’s students nominated primarily by undergraduates—a quality unique to and cherished about this Prize.

“It’s a particularly authentic expression of gratitude from undergraduates, and that’s really the pleasure [of presenting these awards],” says Vice Provost for Education Karen Detlefsen, who was present to announce the winners and award them with a certificate. (They also receive a monetary award.) “I’m so proud of our students: Our undergraduates, for taking the time to recognize what it is our graduate students contribute to the student body, and the graduate students who are contributing to the life of the University.

“Students are the lifeblood of the University and without them, we wouldn’t be here.”

The Prize began in the 1999-2000 academic year under former Penn President Judith Rodin. It was spearheaded by then-doctoral-candidate Eric Eisenstein and has been issued every year since. Nominations for the Prize often mention how graduate teaching assistants were able to take a complex subject and make it relatable or craft a course like philosophy or mathematics into an enjoyable—even highly anticipated—experience for students.

“Many nominations show how much students value a TA or a graduate instructor of record who shows that they care for their learning and for them as people, and who makes themself readily available to assist,” says Ian Petrie, director of graduate student programming for the Center for Teaching and Learning, who organizes the selection committee for the Prize. “Typically, however, committee members are also interested in seeing nominations that really point to how a graduate student instructor taught or gave feedback—not just how responsive they were to emails or how many office hours they had.”

He also emphasizes that many winners this year were not just teachers, but mentors—often helping undergraduates or new graduate students navigate not only the course but also Penn as an institution.

One of the winners, Puneeth Guruprasad, hails from Penn Bioengineering. Guruprasad is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Bioengineering who conducts research in the lab of Marco Ruella, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Perelman School of Medicine. Ruella is also a member of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies (CCI) and the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group.

Guruprasad studies mechanisms of resistance to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for cancer. He has served as a teaching assistant for five semesters: three for Intro to Biotransport Processes (BE 3500) taught by Alex Hughes, Assistant Professor in Bioengineering, and two for Cellular Engineering (BE 3060), taught by Daniel Hammer, Alfred G. and Meta A. Ennis Professor in Bioengineering and in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Both courses are a part of the core curriculum for undergraduate bioengineering students. His doctoral thesis focuses on how a specific interaction between CAR T cells and tumor cells limits their function across a range of cancers.

“I make myself approachable outside the classroom, and I think that’s one aspect of being a TA: having responsibilities that extend beyond the classroom,” says Guruprasad. “Dozens of times, I’ve spoken to students over coffee, or over some lunch, about what direction they want to take in their life, what they want to do outside of the course, and give them my two cents of advice. I try to individualize.”

This post was adapted from an original story by Brandon Baker in Penn Today. Read the full story and list of 2023 winners here.

April 18, 2023

Carl H. June, MD, FAACR, Honored with 2023 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the largest cancer research organization in the country and based in Philadelphia, will bestow its 2023 Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research to Carl June, Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Penn Medicine. June is also Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, and member of the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group. He is recognized for his groundbreaking work in developing the first gene-editing cell therapy for cancer and for his pioneering work with CAR T cell therapy.

Read the press release on the AACR website.

April 12, 2023

LeAnn Dourte Receives the Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence by Non-Standing Faculty

by Olivia J. McMahon

LeAnn Dourte, Practice Associate Professor in Bioengineering, has been awarded a 2023 Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence by Non-Standing Faculty.

“This award reflects LeAnn’s innovation and dedication in teaching our students in Bioengineering’s biomechanics, biomaterials and biomechatronics classes and labs,” says Ravi Radhakrishnan, Professor and Chair of Bioengineering. “She is a core member of our teaching faculty, spearheading the Department’s initiatives to improve experiential learning and classroom experiences through the SAIL model of education.”

The Structured, Active, In-Class Learning (or SAIL) model of education emphasizes teamwork and dynamic problem-solving. According to Penn’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), SAIL “provides students with the opportunity to struggle through the application of course ideas and material, often the most difficult part of learning for students, with guidance from instructors as well as help from their peers.”

In addition to her pedagogical interests, Dourte serves on the Bioengineering Climate Committee and is also highly involved in student wellness programming, serving as the Department’s Wellness Ambassador for the School.

The Provost’s Awards for Teaching Excellence by Non-Standing Faculty were established in 1988.

Read “Two Penn Engineers Receive 2023 Provost’s Teaching Awards” in Penn Engineering Today.

April 10, 2023

Sharon Kuo Receives Inaugural Madison ‘Maddie’ Magee Award for Undergraduate Excellence

Sharon Kuo, a graduating senior in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM), is the inaugural recipient of the Madison “Maddie” Magee Award for Undergraduate Excellence.

Kuo, who is also minoring in Mathematics, comes to Penn from Taipei, Taiwan. Her interests within her major include mechanical design and product design, and she is passionate about space exploration and advancing human spaceflight.

This award will continue to be presented each year to a Penn Engineering senior who best exemplifies the energy, enthusiasm and excellence that was Maddie.

Read the full story in Penn Engineering Today.

The award for Undergraduate Excellence was established in honor of Madison “Maddie” N. Magee, who graduated with both a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) and a master’s degree in Bioengineering (BE) in 2021. Maddie passed away while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail on May 28, 2022. Read more about this award here.

April 4, 2023April 3, 2023

Penn Bioengineering Student Angela Song Named Goldwater Scholar

by Amanda Mott & Louisa Shepard

Four University of Pennsylvania undergraduates have received 2023 Goldwater Scholarships, awarded to second- or third-year students planning research careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, or engineering.

They are among the 413 students named 2023 Goldwater Scholars from more than 5,000 students nominated by 427 academic institutions in the United States, according to the Barry Goldwater Scholarship & Excellence in Education Foundation. Each scholarship provides as much as $7,500 each year for as many as two years of undergraduate study.

Penn has produced 59 Goldwater Scholars since Congress established the scholarship in 1986 to honor U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater.

Angela Song, from Princeton Junction, New Jersey, is a third-year majoring in bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. She is interested in engineering molecular therapeutics for disease. She works in Douglas C. Wallace’s lab in the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, focusing on designing engineered proteins with mitochondrial applications. At Penn, Song is the vice president of design for UnEarthed, a student-published educational magazine for West Philadelphia elementary school children, and president of the Penn American Red Cross Club. After graduating, Song plans to continue pursuing research through a Ph.D. in bioengineering.

Read the full list of Penn 2023 Goldwater Scholars in Penn Today.

Read about previous Penn Bioengineering Goldwater Scholars here.

April 3, 2023

Brit Shields Wins Inaugural Penn Engineering Student Advocacy Award

Penn Engineering announced the faculty recipients of the 2023 Student Choice Awards (formerly the Teaching and Advising Awards). Each year, the Penn Engineering undergraduate student body thoughtfully selects the recipients of these awards for their dedication in teaching, mentorship and student advocacy. This year also features two new awards, the Student Advocacy Award and the Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award.

Brit Shields, Senior Lecturer in Bioengineering, is the inaugural recipient of the Student Advocacy Award. This award is presented to a member of the Penn Engineering faculty by the Underrepresented Student Advisory Board in Engineering in recognition of their outstanding commitment to women and underrepresented student advocacy, equity and inclusion.

Dr. Shields poses with her award at the annual Penn Engineering Awards Ceremony.

Shields completed a Ph.D. at Penn in 2015 in History and Sociology of Science, with a dissertation on scientific diplomacy through the example of Richard Courant and New York University, where Shields completed an M.A. in Humanities and Social Thought: Science Studies.

She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Bioengineering in 2019. She has brought her expertise in the history and sociology of science to her leading role in developing and improving the ethics curriculum for all students in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Read other stories featuring Brit Shields in the BE Blog.

Read the full list of 2023 Penn Engineering Student Choice Award Winners in Penn Engineering Today.

March 28, 2023

César de la Fuente Named AIMBE Fellow

by Holly Wojcik

César de la Fuente, Presidential Assistant Professor in Psychiatry, Microbiology, Bioengineering and in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been named an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Fellow. The only faculty member inducted this year from the University of Pennsylvania, de la Fuente is one of the youngest members ever to have been selected as an AIMBE Fellow.

Election to the AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer, with AIMBE Fellows representing the top 2% of medical and biological engineers. College membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering and medicine research, practice, or education” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of medical and biological engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to bioengineering education.”

Nominated and reviewed by peers and members of the College of Fellows, de la Fuente was elected Fellow “for the development of novel antimicrobial peptides designed using principles from computation, engineering and biology.”

A formal ceremony will be held during the AIMBE Annual Event in Arlington, Virginia on March 27, 2023, where de la Fuente will be inducted along with 140 colleagues who make up the AIMBE College of Fellows Class of 2023.

AIMBE Fellows are among the most distinguished medical and biological engineers, including 3 Nobel Prize laureates and 17 Fellows having received the Presidential Medal of Science and/or Technology and Innovation, along with 205 having been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, 105 into the National Academy of Medicine and 43 into the National Academy of
Sciences.

This story was originally posted in Penn Engineering Today.

Read more stories featuring César de la Fuente here.

March 23, 2023March 22, 2023

2022 PIP/PEP Prize Winners: Where are they now?

by Brandon Baker

William Danon and Luka Yancopoulos pose in front of College Hall in April 2022. They are co-founders of Grapevine and the winners of the 2022 President’s Innovation Prize. (Photo: Eric Sucar)

In April 2022, three President’s Prize-winning teams were selected from an applicant pool of 71 people to develop projects that promote engagement and innovation. Each project received $100,000, as well as a $50,000 living stipend per team member.

The President’s Innovation Prize and President’s Engagement Prize winners included Grapevine, which aims to better connect buyers and suppliers to stabilize the medical supply chain market; IF Ventures, with its mission to scale impact by supporting college students with early-stage startup ideas that have measurable social and environmental impact; and Cosmic Writers, which organizes writing workshops to cultivate K-12 students to be better writers and communicators — and, therefore, better citizens.

“In less than a year, these three PIP and PEP prize-winning teams have already proven their commitment to making a difference in the world,” says President Liz Magill. “Their projects are ambitious and inspiring, and I am proud the University has been able to provide financial and networking support for these determined changemakers.”

Grapevine, 2022 President’s Innovation Prize Winners

After graduating in May 2022, Luka Yancopoulos, an Environmental Studies major and a Bioengineering major in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and William Danon, a History major, relocated to an office space in Westchester, New York, and got to work on a research and validation process — first, by spending a day at a Penn Medicine facility, Lancaster General Health, then by committing hundreds of hours to interviewing distributor and procurement teams alike, along with potential client companies. The mission, as any researcher knows, was to understand key pain points. They also onboarded veterans in logistics, technology, and payment security and processing while devising an organizational structure in which Yancopoulous leads on technology and design solutions while Danon interfaces with customers to know what needs remain unmet.

Grapevine soft launched in fall 2022 and, they say, has interfaced with 30 companies through its digital platform to facilitate sales among 40 suppliers, amounting to more than $20,000 in transactions. The appeal of the platform, they say, remains the concept of the “digital supply chain network,” which Yancopoulos says partners can use to connect with resellers, hospitals, distributors, and others to reduce the risk of supply chain disruption that is not just a product of the pandemic, he adds, but “forever ongoing.”

“It’s driven by the principle that together we’re stronger, and I mean that in every aspect of my life,” he says. “That people are stronger, and with Grapevine we work to [bolster] supply chains and increase the accessibility of health care products — together.”

Since winning the President’s Innovation Prize, they’ve focused on working with small- to medium-sized businesses — whether local clinics or high-quality, specialized resellers — that struggle to compete with or pay for traditional, large-scale distributors that are better-resourced or too expensive. It’s allowed them to also find new users, like health care-adjacent businesses including funeral homes and tattoo parlors.

Their current tagline: “Grow with us,” Danon says.

Watch a video overview of Grapevine’s progress since receiving the PIP prize and read more about the other PIP/PEP prize winners at Penn Today.

Read more stories featuring Grapevine.