The last week of April is when classes end at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s was an especially busy week for students in Penn’s Department of Bioengineering. In addition to university- and school-wide events, students enjoyed our department picnic and Senior Sendoff.
On Monday and Tuesday, junior Bioengineering students in BE 310 (Bioengineering Modeling, Analysis, & Design Laboratory II) participated in Demo Day, with presentations of groups’ solutions to a problem posed in the class to crate a spectrophotometer. The students’ creativity was on full display, with designs based on the McDonalds logo, Star Wars, and Hogwarts (see below).
Anthony Azagidi, Malika Shukurova, Mary Zhuo Ke, and Kathryn Khaw with their Hogwarts-inspired spectrophotometer
Wednesday was the Bioengineering Spring Picnic. Although the event had to be moved inside due to rain, students, faculty, and staff were able to enjoy a catered lunch. Thursday was Hey Day (April 26), the day on which Penn juniors across the university “officially” become seniors.
(Kate Panzer, Karol Szymula, Nick Stiansen, and Jacqueline Valeri) for winning 2nd honorable mention at the SEAS Senior Design competition! — with Karol Szymula, Nick Vigilante, Nick Stiansen and Jacqueline Valeri.
Finally, on Friday, the school-wide Senior Design competition was held among the teams who won the previous week’s department-wide competition. One of our Bioengineering teams (see above) won second honorable mention. Congratulations to them and all of the winners!
The University of Pennsylvania Department of Bioengineering is proud to announce that our faculty member Beth Winkelstein, PhD, has been named the Eduardo D. Glandt President’s Distinguished Professor by the Penn School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). The endowed professorship is named for Eduardo D. Glandt, PhD, former Dean of SEAS and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering.
An undergraduate alumna of Penn, Dr. Winkelstein earned her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Duke in 1999. Recruited by Dr. Glandt himself, Dr. Winkelstein returned to Penn as a Bioengineering faculty member in 2002, with tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2007 and promotion to Professor in 2011. Beginning that same year, she has taken on a series of increasingly important administrative positions, first as Bioengineering Graduate Group Chair (2011-12), then as Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in SEAS (2012-2015), and now as Vice Provost for Education (since 2015).
Dr. Winkelstein is the principal investigator at the Spine Pain Research Lab, which studies and seeks to better understand chronic pain syndromes. On the basis of her research, she has received multiple awards and honors, including the NSF Career Award, the Y.C. Fung Award from the American Association of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and election as a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the ASME. Most recently, Dr. Winkelstein was elected as a councilor in the World Council of Biomechanics.
“Receiving an endowed chair represents a recognition of an individual’s contributions to their field, their leadership, and the legacy of their trainees,” said David Meaney, PhD, Chair of the Bioengineering Department. “Beth’s research program continues to flourish, and her leadership in national societies grows constantly.”
The University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Bioengineering is proud to announce that Professor Jason Burdick, PhD, has been named the Robert D. Bent Chair. Robert Bent is an internationally recognized nuclear physicist who spent most of his career at Indiana University.
A PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado (2002), Dr. Burdick was a postdoc in Robert Langer’s lab at MIT before coming to Penn in 2005 as Wilf Family Assistant Professor. He was tenured with a promotion to Associate Professor in 2010 and subsequently promoted to Professor in 2013. His research, which focuses on the development of polymeric biomaterials for tissue engineering and drug delivery, has earned him recognition including an NSF Career Award, the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award, and most recently the Heilmeier Research Award and Clemson Award for Basic Research.
“This chair recognizes Jason’s prolific and deep scholarly contributions to the field of biomaterials, in addition to his leadership at Penn and beyond,” said David Meaney, PhD, Chair of the Bioengineering Department. “For anyone who saw Jason’s Heilmeier lecture, you know how impactful his work has been in the field.”
You might have heard reporting over the last few years that honeybees are dying at faster-than-usual rates. Over the last decade, colony collapse rates increased significantly, causing precipitous losses in the overall bee population. The consequences could be grave: in addition to providing honey, bee pollination is an important factor in agriculture, affecting major crops such as melons. squashes, and several kinds of nuts. Loss of this factor could substantially increase prices or even result in shortages.
To address this crisis, scientists at Washington State University focused on the role played by pesticides in colony collapse disorder. These poisons are particularly toxic to bees in tiny amounts, with the problem compounded by the ability of these toxins to build up in the bees’ bodies. A group of students led by Waled Suliman, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in WSU’s Department of Biological Systems Engineering, developed a powder that acts like a magnet to draw pesticide out of the insects’ bodies. The bees then excrete the pesticide-laden particles like any other kind of waste.
The initiative, called Gaminus, has already tested its material in bees and found that the design works as planned. In coming months, they intend to continue their research by measuring toxin levels in the excreted particles.
Advances in Visualization
An important field within bioengineering is visualization, or the ability to use technology to enable scientists to see biological processes not normally visible to the naked eye. If you’ve seen a fetal ultrasound, for instance, then you’ve seen how one part of this area has advanced enormously in recent years. However, integrating visualization technologies with surgery remains a major challenge, particularly for minimally invasive surgeries. One key obstacle is that surgeons must rely on video screens during surgery, rather than being able to look down and feel the tissue with their hands.
A startup at the Cleveland Clinic is attempting to integrate perioperative visualization with HoloLens, a brand of smart glasses developed by Microsoft, to produce “mixed reality,” i.e., a combination of actual vision and virtual reality. With a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute awarded to Centerline Biomedical, the Cleveland Clinic startup, and to Karl West, Director of Medical Device Solutions at Cleveland Clinic and a staff member in the Lerner Research Institute’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, the integrated visualization device will be tested in a preclinical model of cardiac stent placement.
Elsewhere in the Midwest, Nathan Gianneschi, PhD, Professor of Chemistry, Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, has been leading an effort to augment transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In its common form, TEM provides highly detailed images of submicroscopic organisms and structures and can provide visualization of nanomaterials as they grow. Gianneschi’s new approach, called liquid cell TEM (LCTEM), uses an irradiated region of a liquid cell to facilitate real-time visualization. The work is detailed in a recent article in ACS Central Science. You can see video posted online at the journal website.
Turning Red
Ultraviolet and infrared light appear beyond either end of the visible light spectrum. Past work using either ultraviolet or infrared light to activate fluorescent proteins can help visualize biochemistry in vivo, but it can also damage cells because of the activating light or the chemicals produced by illuminating the proteins. Recently, Young L. Kim, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue, led a team of scientists who produced red fluorescent silk to kill harmful bacteria when the protein is activated by external green light. Dr. Kim and his colleagues report their findings in Advanced Science. The silk requires further testing, but if ultimately proved successful, it could overcome a current limitation of the use light-activated fluorescent biomaterials in controlling pathogens, which is that the light itself, often in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, comes with its own potentially negative effects on health.
Absorbable Stents for Cardiac Care
Vascular stents to reopen blocked coronary arteries are usually the treatments used for patients with mild coronary artery disease. These simple devices are a small tube, sometimes coated with a drug to prevent clotting, inserted into the artery to restore flow. Stents can fail over time, requiring reimplantation, and the stents may also narrow over time and reduce blood flow to the surrounding tissue. To overcome this problem, Donghui Zhu, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Texas, developed a stent that is fully biodegradable and disappears over time as the damaged tissue heals. Dr. Zhu recently won a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to test the stent in a series of trials.
People and Places
Penn State University has won a research grant from the American Heart Association, which will be used to support its 10-week Penn State Summer Translational Cardiovascular Science Institute (STCSI). Led by Keefe Manning, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Penn State, the STCSI will provide $4,000 stipends for undergraduate students to conduct summer research on cardiovascular disease.
Finally, here at Penn Bioengineering, we are immensely proud to announce that our PhD student Jina Ko was named one of 14 PhD candidates in the inaugural class of Schmidt Science Fellows. Schmidt Fellows are each awarded a $100,000 stipend to cover the cost of living while conducting postdoctoral research. Congratulations, Jina!
Jina Ko, a PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, was among the 14 PhD candidates from the U.S., Canada, and Germany to be named to the inaugural class of Schmidt Science Fellows. The announcement was made on April 23 at the Apella Alexandria Center for Life Science in New York. Jina will receive a $100,000 to cover living expenses while working as a postdoctoral fellow under the auspices of the Rhodes Trust, which also administers the Rhodes Scholarships for student-athletes. The placement is preceded by a five-week orientation at the University of Oxford beginning this July.
An alumna of Rice University in Houston, Jina came to Penn in 2013 and has worked in the lab of Professor David Issadore, working on microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip technologies. “Jina is the ideal person for the Schmidt Fellowship,” Dr. Issadore said, “and I am very pleased that Eric and Wendy Schmidt agreed! Her work in my lab has brought together microfluidics with machine learning to develop diagnostics for diseases that do not have conventional biomarkers. By working with collaborators at Abramson Cancer Center and Presbyterian hospital, Jina demonstrated an ability to accurately diagnose pancreatic cancer at its earliest stages and prognose specific states of traumatic brain injury, both of which were not possible with previous technology. This fellowship will allow Jina to take a much deeper dive into machine learning and its application to next generation medical diagnostics during her post-doc, and I can’t wait to see what she develops.”
A STEM graduate degree can be a gateway to an amazing career, but many undergraduate students are unaware that these opportunities exist or how to navigate the grad school admission process. Guests Christina Fuentes and Shaheen Jeeawoody join Sally and Kayla to discuss strategies for enabling students to learn about and successfully apply to graduate school. Shaheen and Christina are both leaders in Graduate Pathways to STEM, a grad student-run organization that brings students from non-research institutions to Berkeley or Stanford for a 1-day conference to learn about the opportunities a graduate degree presents, what grad school is like, and how to navigate the admissions process. Conference attendees are paired with peer mentors and have the opportunity to interact with STEM leaders. They also discuss strategies for successful grad school applications, writing strong essays that advocate for yourself, Shaheen and Christina’s pathways to graduate school, and the value of peer mentorship: “Peer mentorship kept me in the PhD.” If you’re considering applying to graduate school, want to improve your writing, or want to understand how your community can be more welcoming to graduate students of all backgrounds, you will LOVE this episode.
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Last night, Daniel A. Hammer, PhD, Alfred G. and Meta A. Ennis Professor of Bioengineering and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, was recognized withthe 2018 Provost’s Award For Distinguished PhD Teaching and Mentoring. This University-wide honor has been awarded annually to two Penn faculty members for the last 15 years.
With an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton and a PhD from Penn, Dr. Hammer joined the faculty at Cornell in Chemical Engineering after a short postdoctoral appointment in 1988. He was awarded tenure there and came to Penn in 1996. He holds a joint appointment in Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering, and he spent almost seven years as department chair, including serving as Principal Investigator of Penn’s Whitaker Foundation Leadership-Development Award, which led to the hiring of 8 faculty members in Bioengineering and provided seed money for the construction of Skirkanich Hall.
Among Dr. Hammer’s previous honors are an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1982, election as a Fellow of the AIMBE in 1997, and the Penn SEAS Heilmeier Faculty Award for Excellence in Research in 2004. Dr. Hammer has mentored a total of 51 PhD students, many of who have become faculty members themselves, including three recipients of NSF Career Awards.
“I am deeply honored to win the PhD mentoring award, which is a testament to the quality, inventiveness, and drive of my doctoral students. I have very much enjoyed training these young people in Penn’s fertile scientific environment, and it’s been a singular joy to see their careers flourish.”
Every year the Penn Bioengineering Department presents several awards to students. Last week, we featured our NSF scholarship winners and Rothberg Catalyzer first-prize winners. Here, we present more awards given to students for their service, originality, leadership, and scholarship.
The Albert Giandomenico Award, presented to four students who “reflect several traits that include teamwork, leadership, creativity, and knowledge applied to discovery-based learning in the laboratory,” was given to Jessica Rose, Michael Roth, Singh Gurjeet, Nicholas Vigilante. The Herman P. Schwan Award, named for a former faculty member in Bioengineering, was given to Anna Branch. In addition, Nicholas Stiansen received the Bioengineering Student Leadership Award and four students —Shira Rieke, Karol Szymula, Kate Panzer, and Michael Patterson — won the Penn Engineering Exceptional Service Award.
The Wolf-Hallac Award was established in October 2000 to be awarded to the best graduating female senior from Penn Engineering who is seen as a role model, has achieved a high GPA (top 10%) of class and who has demonstrated a commitment to school and or community. This year’s award was given to two stands: Jacqueline Valeri from Bioengineering and Anna Estep from Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. The Ben and Bertha Gomberg Kirsch Award, given by the Undergraduate Affairs Committee for achievement in applied science, went to BE’s Harvey Huang.
Last but certainly not least are our senior design and project award winners. This year’s Biomedical Applied Science Project Award was given to Bioengineering major Emily Bachner. The department’s Senior Design competition was held on April 16 and 18, and three teams were selected to continue to the school-wide competition this Friday. The three teams had the following members:
• Kate Panzer, Jackie Valeri, Nick Stiansen, and Karol Szymula
• Eric Helfgott, Margaret Schroeder, Manjari Ganti, and Kyle O’Neil
• Jessica Rose, Michael Roth, Gurjeet Singh, and Nick Vigilante
Since the late 1970s with the advent of computed tomography (CT), medical imaging has grown exponentially. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers some of the clearest pictures of human anatomy and pathology, particularly as the strength of the magnetic field used (measured in units called Teslas) increases. However, MRI machines are expensive, and the costs increase as one uses a machine with higher field strength to ‘see’ the human more closely. Therefore, it is often more useful (and certainly less expensive) to modify existing MRI technology on hand, rather than acquire a new machine.
A recent example is the work of Tamer Ibrahim, PhD, Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Ibrahim used a series of multiple NIH grants to develop a coil system for Pitt’s 7T-MRI — one of only approximately 60 worldwide — enabling it to more accurately image the brain’s white matter. Dr. Ibrahim is interested in seeing how hyperintensity in the white matter is related to depression, which is one of the highest-burden but least-discussed diseases in the world. Called a “tic-tac-toe” radiofrequency coil setting, the device that Dr. Ibrahim created is a network of antennas fitted to the head that minimize concerns such as coil heating and radiofrequency intensity losses, as well as safety concerns.
Dr. Ibrahim has more NIH funding on the way to continue optimizing his device and apply it in other psychiatric and neurological disorders. Rather than purchasing a new MRI machine with higher field strengths to achieve this image quality, Dr. Ibrahim’s coil design can be used on existing machines. One possible outcome is more clinicians using this new coil to study how changes in the brain’s white matter structure occur in a broad range of brain diseases, leading to both earlier detection anfor ad more effective treatment.
Smart Shunt for Hydrocephalus
Hydrocephalus, once more commonly known as “water on the brain,” is a condition marked by abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the skull. If unchecked, the accumulation of fluid will create dangerous pressures in the brain that can result in brain damage. Hydrocephalus occurs in one in every 1,000 births, and nearly 400,000 adults in the US suffered at least on episode of hydrocephalus. For both infants and adults, hydrocephalus is often treated surgically with the installation of a shunt to channel the excess CSF out of the cranium. These shunts are simple but effective devices that operate mechanically. However, since they’re entirely mechanical, they fail over time. Being able to determine that such a failure was imminent could allow patients to receive a replacement shunt before complications arise.
To meet this clinical need, a group of scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) updated existing shunt systems with microsensing technology, creating a “smart shunt” that can tell clinicians how an installed shunt is functioning and alert the clinician that a replacement is needed. The group, including Ellis Fan-Chuin Meng, PhD, Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering, Dwight C. and Hildagarde E. Baum Chair, and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering-Electrophysics, has created a start-up called Senseer to produce these smart shunts.
The shunt currently measures pressure, flow, and occlusion using miniature microelectronics sensors. If device approval comes, the company hopes to move on to developing smart sensors for other organ systems.
DNA-based Drug Testing
Drug and alcohol testing is a controversial topic, partly because of the balance between individual rights to use legal drugs and potential for societal harm if these drugs are abused or if patients transition into illegal drug use and dependence. Inventing technology to determine when, and how much, a person has been drinking or using drugs (including tobacco) would probably increase, rather than decrease, the controversy involved in the topic.
New technology reported recently adds a new element to this discussion. According to Robert Philibert, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, his company’s tests, which rely on epigenetic markers of substance use, could be used, for example, to inform a primary care physician about the actual history of substance use, rather than relying solely on patients’ self-reported use.
Dr. Philibert’s tests are currently pending approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Marketing for the products will begin in the coming weeks.
People and Places
Recognizing the changing priorities in engineering and the growing role of data sciences, Boston University has decided to adapt its curriculum by adding data science requirements for all majors. According to John White, PhD, Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, “Advances in data sciences and computing technology will allow us to make sense of all these data.”
The Biomedical Science Program at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, has received a $200,000 grant from the James A. “Buddy” Davidson Charitable Foundation to endow a scholarship in Davidson’s name, as well as to refurbish the program’s Winebrenner Memorial Hall of Science.
Finally, we offer our congratulations this week to James C. Gee, PhD, Professor of Radiologic Science in Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and a Graduate Group faculty member in Penn’s Department of Bioengineering. Dr. Gee was named a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Many students arrive in college under-prepared for success, and professors have the responsibility– and opportunity — to help them gain skills to enable their success and find belonging in STEM. However, few professors are trained to help students develop these skills, so Double Shelix’s guest, Sherri Messersmith, incorporates them into her series of developmental math textbooks! On this episode, Sherri shares her journey in math, from besting elementary school bullies on every math test, to high school math teacher, to college math professor, and now author of 15 college math textbooks. Kayla and Sally discuss with Sherri how staying true to your passions outside your main focus area — like writing, cooking, and travel, for Sherri — can make you better at your job, and even open the door to new opportunities — like textbook authorship! Sherri tells Sally and Kayla what departments can do to engage with students in introductory courses and how to build students’ confidence in difficult material. As Sherri says, life is not linear, so follow your passions, work hard, and be ready if fortune strikes with an amazing opportunity! Sherri is an experienced educator and speaker on the topic of enabling student success, and Double Shelix was honored to have her.
Also on this episode, Sally and Kayla hear from a listener who was told by professors that they didn’t belong in their grad program because they went to a small liberal arts college, not a big research institution — what?! We discuss how students take these kinds of comments from faculty really harshly, and how faculty can do better. Also, the importance of peer support in making it through trying times when you’re singled out or are the “only one.”
Upcoming #YouDoBelongInScience episodes will feature your stories! Fill out this form or call Double Shelix’s voicemail, 415-895-0850, to share your story of (dis)belonging in STEM. Sally and Kayla are hoping to share a diverse set of experiences from our listeners, but they need your help to make that happen!
The Albert Giandomenico Award, presented to four students who “reflect several traits that include teamwork, leadership, creativity, and knowledge applied to 
