Among shots of a towering thunderstorm reaching into the stratosphere, the moon Daphnis peeking through Saturn’s rings, and an extremely close-up of a highly-endangered pangolin in Mozambique, one of Science’s favorite photos of 2019 was taken in Penn Engineering’s Raisler Lounge.
There, Danielle Bassett, J. Peter Skirkanich Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, poses underneath a giant visualization of the brain’s structural connections, projected on the wall behind her. Bassett’s research combines elements of physics, mathematics, engineering and neuroscience to provide a new look at how brain function arises from these networks of neurons.
Kelly Servick of Science profiled Bassett last year, revealing how a child whose parents discouraged her from attending college went on to become a pioneer in a highly interdisciplinary way of understanding the brain.
Read Bassett’s profile in Science here, and see the rest of the journal’s favorite photos of the year here.
Ravi Radhakrishnan has been named Chair of the Department of Bioengineering.
Radhakrishnan holds joint appointments in the Department of Bioengineering and the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He is a founding member and the current Director of the Penn Institute for Computational Science, as well as a member of the Penn Physical Sciences in Oncology Center, Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, and several graduate groups, including Materials Science and Engineering, Genomics and Computational Biology, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics.
In addition to these roles at Penn, Radhakrishnan holds many editorial board positions in the research community, including Nature Publishing’s Scientific Reports.
Beyond being a passionate teacher and advocate for his students, Radhakrishnan’s research interests lie at the interface of chemical physics and molecular biology. His lab’s goal is to provide molecular level and mechanistic characterization of biomolecular and cellular systems and formulate quantitatively accurate microscopic models for predicting the interactions of various therapeutic agents with innate biochemical signaling mechanisms.
David F. Meaney, Solomon R. Pollack Professor of Bioengineering, has been named the Senior Associate Dean of Penn Engineering, effective January 1, 2020. This newly created leadership position will have oversight responsibilities in budget, space and infrastructure planning; facilities and research services; and will create and cultivate new interschool partnerships that will expand Penn Engineering’s footprint on campus.
Meaney is well known not only for his scholarship and innovation in neuroengineering and concussion science, but also for his leadership during his highly successful tenure as Chair of the Department of Bioengineering.
“Dave’s strong connections to the health schools will help strengthen Penn Engineering’s initiatives throughout campus,” says Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering. “He will have oversight of Penn Health-Tech, the Center for Engineering MechanoBiology and other efforts between engineering and the health schools, and Dave brings his unique creativity, energy and leadership experience to these collaborative efforts.”
A collaborative study conducted by researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Penn Engineering and Pennsylvania State University has uncovered new information about how chromosomal material in cell nuclei reorganizes itself after cell division.
While a deep understanding of the cell cycle is a cornerstone of biology and health sciences, research into the complex relationship between three-dimensional chromatin structure and gene transcription is still in its infancy. The results of this study will contribute to a more robust understanding of chromatin rebuilding after mitosis and potentially aid in the treatment of genetic diseases.
Jennifer E. Phillips-Cremins, Ph.D.
Jennifer E. Phillips-Cremins, Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, contributed to the study alongside Gerd A. Blobel, Frank E. Weise III Endowed Chair in Pediatric Hematology at CHOP and Ross C. Hardison, an expert in gene regulation at Penn State.
Phillips-Cremins’ research uses genetic engineering approaches to discover the mechanisms regulating chromatin organizing principles in cells, as well as computational approaches to investigate cellular function. Her lab’s techniques provide ways of mapping the three-dimensional organization of genes while they are folded together in the genome and how those spatial relationships impact gene expression.
The research team performed their experiments in blood-forming cells from a well-established mouse model. They used sophisticated techniques called high throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C) that detect and map interactions across three-dimensional space between specific sites in chromosomal DNA. These maps also allowed the scientists to measure such interactions at different time points in the cell cycle. In all, the tools detected roughly 2 billion interactions during mitosis and thereafter, when the daughter nuclei are rebuilt.
Members of the Cremins Lab, Daniel J. Emerson, Thomas G. Gilgenast and Katelyn R. Titus, also contributed to the study, which was published in Nature.
We hope you’ll join us for our next Penn Bioengineering seminar!
Kara L. Spiller, Ph.D.
Speaker: Kara Spiller, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems
Drexel University
Date: Thursday, February 6, 2020
Time: 12:00-1:00 pm
Location: Room 337, Towne Building
Title: “Immunomodulatory Biomaterials for Limb Salvage”
Abstract:
Diabetes and peripheral arterial disease affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Patients with these conditions frequently develop chronic wounds on the lower limbs that lead to amputation, with a 5-year mortality rate as high as 77%. Macrophages, the primary cell of the innate immune system, are critical regulators of angiogenesis and wound healing. Their dysfunction is strongly implicated in arterial dysfunction, limb ischemia, and poorly healing chronic wounds. The goal of the Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory at Drexel University is to understand the mechanisms by which macrophages orchestrate successful angiogenesis and tissue regeneration and to develop novel biomaterial strategies that apply these principles to pathological situations, in order to ultimately prevent limb amputation. This talk will focus on the effects of temporal changes in macrophage phenotype on angiogenesis, the design of biomaterials and drug delivery systems to modulate macrophage phenotype for enhanced angiogenesis, and the development of macrophage phenotype-related biomarkers to assist in clinical decision making for a personalized medicine approach to wound care.
Bio:
Dr. Kara Spiller is an Associate Professor in Drexel University’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems. Her research interests include the role of immune cells in tissue regeneration, the design of immunomodulatory biomaterials, and international engineering education. Her research is funded by the NIH, the NSF, and private foundations. Her awards include a Fulbright fellowship, the NSF CAREER award, and the United States nomination for the ASPIRE prize.
This past spring, we congratulated the founders of InstaHub, one of the winners of the President’s Innovation Prize. The initial development work for InstaHub was also done in the George H. Stephenson Foundation Educational Laboratory & Bio-MakerSpace here in Penn Bioengineering. Check out the article and video below to learn more about InstaHub’s efforts to fight climate change.
By Lauren Hertzler
As he processed down Locust Walk the day of Commencement, Michael Wong didn’t miss a beat. He took in with pride all his interactions with friends, every cheer from the crowd, and each step on his final day as an undergraduate at Penn.
The first in his family to go to college, Wong would not only graduate that day with a degree from the Wharton School. Thanks to a President’s Innovation Prize (PIP), he’d also graduate with a full-fledged startup and significant funding in hand, ready and willing to take on his next chapter.
“The whole day of graduation I was like ‘Wow, this is amazing,’” recalls Wong. “It’s one of my favorite moments.”
Wong, from Oakland, California, founded InstaHub in 2016. Working with Dayo Adewole, a doctoral candidate in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the pair designed a snap-on motion sensor device that attaches onto existing light switches. It is battery powered, with occupancy sensing capabilities, and is easy to install. With PIP, which awarded Wong $100,000 (plus $50,000 for living expenses), he says he’s been able to do rapid prototyping to move InstaHub forward.
Jason Burdick, Robert D. Bent Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), an award of high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors. Elected Fellows have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.
Burdick’s research interests include developing degradable polymeric biomaterials that can be used for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and fundamental polymer studies. His lab focuses on developing polymeric materials for biomedical applications with specific emphasis on tissue regeneration and drug delivery. Burdick believes that advances in synthetic chemistry and materials processing could be the answer to organ and tissue shortages in medicine. The specific targets of his research include: scaffolding for cartilage regeneration, controlling stem cell differentiation through material signals, electrospinning and 3D printing for scaffold fabrication, and injectable hydrogels for therapies after a heart attack.
On the second floor of the Pennovation Center, Strella Biotechnology is hard at work turning their student-led startup into a full-fledged company that’s ready to make a major impact in the agricultural sector.
May graduates Katherine Sizov and Malika Shukurova, respectively the CEO and head of R&D at Strella, share a 2019 President’s Innovation Prize, which includes $100,000 of financial support, a $50,000 living stipend for both awardees, and a year of dedicated co-working and lab space at the Pennovation Center. The alumnae and their company are now poised to take on the challenge of $1 trillion worth of food waste.
Strella’s biosensors are designed to give packers real-time data on how ripe their fruits are while being stored between harvesting and selling. Using bio-inspired sensors that measure the ethylene gas produced by fruits as they ripen, Strella successfully “hacked the fruit” to create their patent-pending biosensors. Now, only six months after graduation, Strella has six paying customers and is aiming for $100,000 in sales by the end of the season.
Beyond the work needed to deploy their first paid product, Strella also has a clear view of what needs to be done for future progress of the company. This means running experiments in the lab to refine their current sensors while conducting other experiments that will help the company be able to monitor other types of fresh foods. It’s a job that Shukurova says involves a lot of multitasking and requires an “all-hands” approach to problem solving.
“We set up experiments that run for several days, and during that period we work on different tasks. I prepare for the next set of experiments, Jacob [Jordan] and Katherine travel to our customers to deploy sensors, and Zuyang [Liu]]works on IoT [Internet of Things]. At the end of the day we all come together to discuss results and future plans,” says Shukurova about their company’s work flow.
Danielle Bassett has been named the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Bioengineering.
Dr. Bassett is a Professor in the department of Bioengineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Science. She holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before joining Penn in 2013.
Dr. Bassett has received numerous awards for her research, including an Alfred P Sloan Research Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and, most recently, an Erdos-Renyi Prize in Network Science to name but a few. She has authored over 190 peer-reviewed publications as well as numerous book chapters and teaching materials. She is the founding director of the Penn Network Visualization Program, a combined undergraduate art internship and K-12 outreach program bridging network science and the visual arts.
Last spring, we congratulated Penn Bioengineering graduating senior Oladunni Alomaja (BSE ’19) and her partners at Rebound Liberia on their President’s Engagement Prize. Check out the article and video below on their exciting project.
By Brandon Baker
Fueled by the encouragement and support they received this spring and summer, the three Penn alumni behind Rebound Liberia are now laser-focused on carrying their mission of promoting education and empowerment straight to the basket.
The Rebound Liberia team is led by Princess Aghayere, Oladunni Alomaja, and Summer Kollie, all May Penn graduates who received the President’s Engagement Prize — a $100,000 project prize and $50,000 living stipend per team member, awarded for post-graduation projects that make a positive, lasting difference in the world. The trio, each of whom has connections to West Africa and strives to give back, proposed an NGO that would bridge the literacy gap in post-conflict Liberia between male and female youth through workshops and a basketball program for women.
On Sept. 4, after months of preparation, the team relocated to Monrovia, Liberia, and is settling in.
“I think there’s some cultural shock,” says Aghayere, musing about the adjustment. “But Penn is a great place to travel and a lot of us took advantage of opportunities to travel. I’m not surprised, because this is not my first time on the continent, but there are things unique about Liberia. Getting used to the accents, the weather, the currency — but it’s fun.”
Aghayere and Alomaja were born in Nigeria, while Kollie is from Liberia.
Their days so far, they explain, have been consistently jam-packed with meetings. At present, they’re planning an inter-school basketball tournament to introduce their program to Liberia; in recent weeks, they’ve made connections with school administrators, found their footing in the community, and worked through the logistics of organizing a tournament — which, they note, they had some practice with in 2018, creating a summer basketball clinic in Monrovia, Liberia, for girls that was hosted twice a week.
The upcoming tournament, which will include 120 female players on Nov. 22–24, represents a first step toward their larger intention to build a basketball court and program, and marry that with literacy resources. They aim to serve approximately 60 girls in their program.
“We didn’t think it would be wise to move in September and not have an event until the next June or so, so we thought [of] the tournament,” says Aghayere, explaining the origins of the tournament. “At first, we were thinking we’d have a team and foster the game amongst girls here in Monrovia, and we wanted to include a lot more girls and create this sort of league of our own while introducing ourselves as this new social enterprise in Liberia. We thought a tournament would be a launch of Rebound Liberia and introduce us to the community here.”
