Tag: awards

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Ning Jenny Jiang Appointed Associate Professor in Penn Bioengineering

Jenny Jiang, Ph.D.

We are thrilled to announce the appointment of Ning Jenny Jiang, Ph.D. as the tenured Peter & Geri Skirkanich Associate Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Jenny Jiang comes to Penn from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She obtained her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology and did her postdoctoral training at Stanford University.

Jiang’s research focuses on systems immunology by developing technologies that enable high-throughput, high-content, single cell profiling of T cells in health and disease and she is recognized as one of the leading authorities in systems immunology and immunoengineering. She is a pioneer in developing tools in biophysics, genomics, immunology, and informatics and applying them to study systems immunology in human diseases. Her early work on the development of the first high-throughput immune-repertoire sequencing technology opened up a brand new field of immune-repertoire profiling. Her laboratory developed the first high-throughput in situ T cell receptor affinity measurement technology and she pioneered the development of integrated single T cell profiling technologies. These technological innovations have changed the paradigm of T cell profiling in disease diagnosis and in immune engineering for therapeutics. Using these technologies, her laboratory has made many discoveries in immunology, from unexpected infants’ immunity in malaria infection to “holes” in T cell repertoire in aging immune systems in elderly, from dysregulated T cells in HIV infection to high-throughput identification of neoantigen-specific T cell receptor for cancer immunotherapy.

Dr. Jiang was also recently elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows for her outstanding contributions to the field of systems immunology and immunoengineering and devotion to the success of women in engineering. A virtual induction ceremony was held on March 26, 2021.

Additionally, Jiang is a recipient of numerous other awards, including the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, an NSF CAREER award, and a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Neurodegeneration Challenge Network Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Award. She was selected as one of National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Scholars in 2019.

Jiang’s appointment will begin June 1, 2021. Welcome to Penn Bioengineering, Dr. Jiang!

N.B.: Edited 7/2/21 with full endowed chair title.

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David Meaney Receives 2021 Lindback Award

David F. Meaney, PhD

David F. Meaney is among the recipients of the 2021 Lindback Awards.

The Lindback Awards, announced annually, are the most prestigious teaching awards that full-time faculty members at the University can receive.

Meaney is the Solomon R. Pollack Professor in Bioengineering and Senior Associate Dean of Penn Engineering and his research areas span from traumatic brain injury to brain network theory. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering from Penn Engineering.

The Lindback Awards were established in 1961 with the help of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation.

Congratulations to Dr. Meaney from everyone in Penn Bioengineering for this well-deserved honor!

Read more stories on the BE blog featuring Dr. Meaney.

Originally posted in Penn Engineering Today.

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Hao Huang Named AIMBE Fellow

Hao Huang, Ph.D.

Hao Huang, Research Associate Professor of Radiology in the Perelman School of Medicine and member of the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group, has been named an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Fellow.

Election to the AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer. “The College of Fellows is comprised of the top two percent of medical and biological engineers in the country. The most accomplished and distinguished engineering and medical school chairs, research directors, professors, innovators, and successful entrepreneurs comprise the College of Fellows. AIMBE Fellows are regularly recognized for their contributions in teaching, research, and innovation.”

Huang was “nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows for contributions to the development and applications of innovative MR methods to study the developing brain.”

A formal induction ceremony will be held during AIMBE’s virtual 2021 Annual Event on March 26. Huang will be inducted along with 174 colleagues who make up the AIMBE Fellow Class of 2021.

Read the full press release.

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Arjun Yodh Named 2021 Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award Recipient by The Optical Society

Arjun Yodh, Ph.D.

The Department of Phsyics in the Penn School of Arts & Sciences has announced that Arjun Yodh, Professor in Physics and Astronomy and member of the Bioengineering Graduate Group, was awarded the 2021 Michael S. Biophotonics Award by the Optical Society (OSA):

“He was selected for his ‘pioneering research on optical sensing in scattering media, especially diffuse optical and correlation spectroscopy and tomography, and for advancing the field of biophotonics through mentorship.’

The award ‘recognizes innovative and influential contributions to the field of biophotonics, regardless of career stage.'”

Read more about the award and Yodh’s research here.
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Danielle Bassett and Jason Burdick are Among World’s Most Highly Cited Researchers

Danielle Bassett and Jason Burdick
Danielle Bassett and Jason Burdick

The nature of scientific progress is often summarized by the Isaac Newton quotation, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Each new study draws on dozens of earlier ones, forming a chain of knowledge stretching back to Newton and the scientific giants his work referenced.

Scientific publishing and referencing has become more formal since Newton’s time, with databases of citations allowing for sophisticated quantitative analyses of that flow of information between researchers.

The Institute for Scientific Information and the Web of Science Group provide a yearly snapshot of this flow, publishing a list of the researchers who are in the top 1 percent of their respective fields when it comes to the number of times their work has been cited.

Danielle Bassett, J. Peter Skirkanich Professor in the departments of Bioengineering and Electrical and Systems Engineering, and Jason Burdick, Robert D. Bent Professor in the department of Bioengineering, are among the 6,389 researchers named to the 2020 list.

Bassett is a pioneer in the field of network neuroscience, which incorporates elements of mathematics, physics,  biology and systems engineering to better understand how the overall shape of connections between individual neurons influences cognitive traits. Burdick is an expert in tissue engineering and the design of biomaterials for regenerative medicine; by precisely tailoring the microenvironment within these materials, they can influence stem cell differentiation or trigger the release of therapeutics.

Bassett and Burdick were named to the Web of Science’s 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list as well.

Originally posted in Penn Engineering Today.

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Nader Engheta Awarded Isaac Newton Medal and Prize

 

Nader Engheta, PhD

Nader Engheta, H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor in Electrical and Systems Engineering, Bioengineering and Materials Science and Engineering, has been awarded the 2020 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics (IOP). The IOP is the professional body and scholarly society for physics in the UK and Ireland.

Engheta has been recognized for ” groundbreaking innovation and transformative contributions to electromagnetic complex materials and nanoscale optics, and for pioneering development of the fields of near-zero-index metamaterials, and material-inspired analogue computation and optical nanocircuitry.”

Read the full story in Penn Engineering Today.

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Yale Cohen and Douglas Smith Awarded 2020 Penn Medicine Awards of Excellence

Yale Cohen, Ph.D.
Douglas H. Smith, M.D.

The Perelman School of Medicine has announced the winners of the 2020 Penn Medicine Awards of Excellence. The Office of the Dean says:

“These awardees exemplify our profession’s highest values of scholarship, teaching, innovation, commitment to service, leadership, professionalism and dedication to patient care. They epitomize the preeminence and impact we all strive to achieve. The awardees range from those at the beginning of their highly promising careers to those whose distinguished work has spanned decades.

Each recipient was chosen by a committee of distinguished faculty from the Perelman School of Medicine or the University of Pennsylvania. The contributions of these clinicians and scientists exemplify the outstanding quality of patient care, mentoring, research, and teaching of our world-class faculty.”

Two faculty members affiliated with Penn Bioengineering are among this year’s recipients.

Yale Cohen, PhD, Professor of Otorhinolaryngology with secondary appointments in Neuroscience and Bioengineering, is the recipient of the Jane M. Glick Graduate Student Teaching Award. Cohen is an alumnus of the Penn Bioengineering doctoral program and is currently the department’s Graduate Chair.

“Dr. Cohen’s commitment to educating and training the next generation of scientists exemplifies the type of scientist and educator that Jane Glick represented. His students value his highly engaging and supportive approach to teaching, praising his enthusiasm, energy, honesty, and compassion.”

Douglas H. Smith, MD, Robert A. Groff Endowed Professor of Research and Teaching in Neurosurgery and member of the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group, is the recipient of this year’s William Osler Patient Oriented Research Award:

“Dr. Smith is the foremost authority on diffuse axonal injury (DAI) as the unifying hypothesis behind the short- and long-term consequences of concussion.  After realizing early in his career that concussion, or mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), was a much more serious event than broadly appreciated, Dr. Smith and his team have used computer biomechanical modeling, in vitro and in vivo testing in parallel with seminal human studies to elucidate mechanisms of concussion.”

Read the full story in Penn Medicine Communications.

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Brian Litt Receives NIH Pioneer Award to Develop Implantable Neurodevices

Brian Litt, MD

Brian Litt, professor in Engineering’s Department of Bioengineering and the Perelman School of Medicine’s departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery, has received a five-year, $5.6 million Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health, which will support his research on implantable devices for monitoring, recording and responding to neural activity.

The Pioneer Award is part of the agency’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program honoring exceptionally creative scientists. It challenges investigators to pursue new research directions and develop groundbreaking, high-impact approaches to a broad area of biomedical or behavioral science. Litt’s neurodevice research represents a new frontier in addressing a wide variety of neurological conditions.

In epilepsy, for example, these devices would predict and prevent seizures; in Parkinson’s patients, implants will measure and communicate with patients to improve mobility, reduce tremor and enhance responsiveness. Other implants might improve hearing or psychiatric symptoms by querying patient perceptions, feelings, and altering stimulation patterns algorithmically to improve them

Continue reading about Litt’s Pioneer Award at Penn Medicine News.

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César de la Fuente on AIChE’s 35 Under 35 List

César de la Fuente, PhD

César de la Fuente, Presidential Assistant Professor in Psychiatry, Microbiology, and Bioengineering, was named one of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AIChE) 35 members under 35 for 2020.

“The AIChE 35 Under 35 Award was founded to recognize young chemical engineers who have achieved greatness in their fields,” reads the 2020 award announcement. “The winners are a group of driven, engaged, and socially active professionals, representing the breadth and diversity that chemical engineering exemplifies.”

De la Fuente was named in the list’s “Bioengineering” category for his his lab’s work in machine biology. Their goal is to develop computer-made tools and medicines that will combat antibiotic resistance. De la Fuente has already been featured on several other young innovators lists, including MIT Technology Review’s 35 under 35 and GEN’s Top 10 under 40, both in 2019. His research in antibiotic resistance has been profiled in Penn Today and Penn Engineering Today, and he was recently awarded Penn Health-Tech’s inaugural NEMO Prize for his proposal to develop paper-based COVID diagnostic system that could capture viral particles on a person’s breath.

In addition to being named on the 2020 list, the honorees will receive a $500 prize and will be celebrated at the 2020 AIChE Annual Meeting this November.

Learn more about de la Fuente’s pioneering research on his lab website.

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Postdoctoral Fellow Linden Parkes Wins BBRF Young Investigator Grant

Linden Parkes, PhD

The Department of Bioengineering at Penn is thrilled to congratulate Linden Parkes on receiving a Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) Young Investigator Grant for 2021-2022. This grant will support Parkes’ continued postdoctoral research under the supervision of Danielle S. Bassett, J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Bioengineering and Electrical and Systems Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS),  Theodore D. Satterthwaite, Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM), and Raquel E. Gur, the Karl and Linda Rickels Professor of Psychiatry in PSOM.

Originally from Australia, Parkes did his undergraduate B.Sc. (Hons.) in Psychology and Psychophysiology at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University (also in Melbourne) under the supervision of Murat Yucel, Professor of Psychology, Alex Fornito, Professor of Psychology, and Ben Fulcher, Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. After finishing his doctorate, Parkes moved to Philadelphia to take up a position as a postdoctoral fellow in Danielle Bassett’s Complex Systems Lab.

Parkes will use the BBRF’s support to continue his research examining the link between the symptoms of mental illness and the brain. In particular, he seeks to uncover how individual patterns of abnormal neurodevelopment link to, and predict, the emergence of psychosis symptoms through childhood and adolescence using longitudinal data. In turn, Parkes’ work will discover prognostic biomarkers for the psychosis spectrum that will help inform clinical outcome tracking.

“I am honored to have been selected for a Young Investigator Grant from the BBRF this year,” Parkes says. “This award will support me to conduct research that I believe will make real inroads into understanding the pathways that link abnormalities in neurodevelopment to the symptoms of psychosis. I feel grateful for the opportunity to complete my postdoctoral training at Penn. Penn has connected me with wonderful people who I’m sure will be lifelong mentors, colleagues, and peers.”

The BBRF Young Investigator Grants are valued at more than $10.3 million and are awarded annually to 150 of the world’s most promising young scientists to support the work of early career investigators with innovative ideas for groundbreaking neurobiological research seeking to identify causes, improve treatments, and develop prevention strategies for psychiatric disorders.

Read more about the BBRF 2020 Young Investigators here.