Tag: faculty

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Brit Shields Promoted to Senior Lecturer

by Sophie Burkholder

Brit Shields, Ph.D.

We would like to congratulate Brit Shields, Ph.D., of the Penn Department of Bioengineering, on her recent promotion to Senior Lecturer. Shields got her start at Penn by completing her Ph.D. here 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. Following the conclusion of her doctorate, Shields immediately joined Penn as a lecturer in the Department of Bioengineering, teaching core undergraduate classes like the Senior Thesis course for B.A.S. degree candidates, and Engineering Ethics, one of the courses that fulfills the ethics requirement for all Penn engineering students. Furthermore, Shields has served as an advisor for undergraduate students on senior thesis in the History and Sociology of Science as well as Bioengineering.

In her new position, Shields will have the chance to further develop the engineering ethics curriculum for SEAS students. She will also take on a direct role with freshman bioengineering students as one of two bioengineering faculty members in charge of advising the incoming classes. Through these opportunities to better connect with students, Shields will be able to continue improving the ethics curriculum for all engineering majors, and increase its efficacy in imparting lessons that all engineers should take to the workforce with them. Beyond her roles in the classroom and as an advisor, Shields will also continue her research in the history and sociology of science and technology focusing on both scientific diplomacy and educational programs for engineers. She says that she “look[s] forward to collaborating with the school’s administration, faculty and students to further develop the engineering ethics curriculum.  Being able to innovate in this field with such talented students is incredibly rewarding.”

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Penn Bioengineering at BMES 2019

The annual meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) will be held in our hometown of Philadelphia  October 16-19, 2019. The professional society for bioengineers and biomedical engineers will be taking over the city of Brotherly Love, and lots of faculty and students from Penn’s Bioengineering will be attending and presenting their research.

As previously mentioned here, Jason Burdick, Ph.D., the Robert D. Bent Professor of Bioengineering, is one of three chairs of the 2019 annual meeting. He shares this position with two other local faculty: Alisa Morss Clyne, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics at Drexel University; and Ruth Ochia, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Instruction in Bioengineering at Temple University. They have worked together since their appointment in 2017 to plan and chair the Philadelphia conference. Check out the video below with details of what to expect from BMES in Philly.

For those of you who have never been to BMES, the event is comprised of a mixture of academic and networking events, including keynote talks from top researchers, thousands of oral and poster presentations, participants from around the world, and social receptions. To plan your itinerary, click here for the program and agenda and here for the schedule at a glance. With the meeting being held locally this year, there are far too many presentations by Penn Bioengineering faculty and staff to list here, so check out BMES’s searchable scientific program or our searchable schedule of Penn faculty student activities at this year’s meeting (separated by day).

In addition to our academic participation, Penn Engineering and Bioengineering are also proud to sponsor this year’s meeting. Registered participants will have several venues to meet and mingle with Penn Engineering faculty, staff, and students and learn about its programs. Staff and volunteers will run a Penn Engineering booth (Booth #824) which will have literature on Penn departments and programs such as the Department of Bioengineering, the Center for Engineering MechanoBiology (CEMB), the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), The Mahoney Institute for Neurosciences (MINS), and the Perelman School of Medicine’s Biomedical Graduate Studies group (BGS) and will be open 9:30am-5:00pm Thursday and Friday, and 9:30am-1:00pm during the conference.

For those interested in social events and networking, check out two back-to-back events on Friday night. From 6:30-8:30 pm, Penn’s Department of Bioengineering, CEMB, and LRSM will host a reception at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Salon E. This will be followed by the meeting’s big BMES Dessert Bash at the Franklin Institute from 8:30-10:30 pm. (Please note: These events are open to registered conference participants only.) For those sticking around, there are no shortage of things to do in Philly, whether you are looking to site-see, shop, or dine.

We hope everyone has a wonderful time at the conference and enjoys Philadelphia! Let us know what activities you are enjoying most by tagging us on Twitter @pennbioeng or Instagram (pennbioengineering) and using the hashtag #pennbioengineering.

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BE Welcomes New Grad Chair Dr. Yale Cohen

by Sophie Burkholder

Yale Cohen, Ph.D.

We would like to congratulate Dr. Yale Cohen, Ph.D., on his recent appointment as the new Graduate Group Chair for Penn’s Department of Bioengineering. The Graduate Group is a group of faculty that graduate students in bioengineering can choose from to collaborate with on lab research. The Group includes members from nearly all of Penn’s schools, including Penn Engineering, Penn Dental, Penn Medicine, Penn Vet, and the School of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Cohen specializes in otorhinolaryngology as his primary department, with research areas in computational and experimental neuroengineering. He will take over the role of Graduate Group Chair from Dr. Ravi Radhakrishnan, Ph.D, professor of bioengineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering, whose research specializes in cellular, molecular, and theoretical and computational bioengineering. During his tenure as Graduate Group Chair, Dr. Radhakrishnan says that “the most enjoyable part was the student talks during bioengineering seminars, and the talks at the bioengineering graduate student research symposium,” noting the way they made him realize the “depth and breadth of our graduate group, and how accomplished our students are.”

Also during his time as chair, Dr. Radhakrishnan says he was proud to expand the course BE 699 — the Bioengineering Department’s required seminar for all Ph.D. candidates — to include discussions of leadership and soft-skills, as well as instituting individualized development plans to help students track their work. In looking forward to Dr. Cohen’s appointment to the role, Dr. Radhakrishnan says that he is “a natural and accomplished scientist, educator, and amazing leader who connects so readily and well with our students and faculty.”

Dr. Cohen, looking forward to taking on his new role, says that he hopes to improve programs like the Graduate Association of Bioengineers (GABE) and the mentoring of graduate students so that they can access the wide range of wisdom that comprises the faculty, students, staff, and alumni associated with the Graduate Group. “I am thrilled to be the new chair of the BE Graduate Group and welcome your input and comments on how to improve an already outstanding program,” says Dr. Cohen.

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Blinking Eye-on-a-Chip is One of NSF’s ‘4 Awesome Discoveries’

Each week, the National Science Foundation highlights “4 Awesome Discoveries You Probably Didn’t Hear About” — a kid-friendly YouTube series that highlights particularly eye-popping NSF-supported research.

This week, one of those stories was literally about an eye, or rather, a synthetic model of one.

Dan Huh, associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering, and graduate student Jeongyun Seo, recently published a paper that outlined their new blinking eye-on-a-chip. Containing human cells and mechanical parts designed to mimic natural biological functions, including a motorized eyelid, the device was developed as platform for modeling dry eye disease and testing drugs to treat it.

See more of the series at the NSF’s Science360 site, and read more about Huh’s blinking-eye-on-a-chip research here.

Originally posted on the Penn Engineering Medium blog.

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Penn Researchers’ Model Optimizes Brain Stimulation Therapies, Improving Memory in Tests

The researchers’ model involves mapping the connections between different regions of an individual’s brain while they performed a basic memory task, then using that data to predict how electrical stimulation in one region would affect activity throughout the network. Individuals’ improved performance on the same memory task after stimulation suggests the model could eventually be generalized toward a variety of stimulation therapies.

Brain stimulation, where targeted electrical impulses are directly applied to a patient’s brain, is already an effective therapy for depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s and other neurological disorders, but many more applications are on the horizon. Clinicians and researchers believe the technique could be used to restore or improve memory and motor function after an injury, for example, but progress is hampered by how difficult it is to predict how the entire brain will respond to stimulation at a given region.

In an effort to better personalize and optimize this type of therapy, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and Perelman School of Medicine, as well as Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and the University of California, Riverside, have developed a way to model how a given patient’s brain activity will change in response to targeted stimulation.

To test the accuracy of their model, they recruited a group of study participants who were undergoing an unrelated treatment for severe epilepsy, and thus had a series of electrodes already implanted in their brains. Using each individual’s brain activity data as inputs for their model, the researchers made predictions about how to best stimulate that participant’s brain to improve their performance on a basic memory test.

The participants’ brain activity before and after stimulation suggest the researchers’ models have meaningful predictive power and offer a first step towards a more generalizable approach to specific stimulation therapies.

Danielle Bassett and Jennifer Stiso.

The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, was led by Danielle Bassett, J. Peter Skirkanich Professor in Penn Engineering’s Department of Bioengineering, and Jennifer Stiso, a neuroscience graduate student in Penn Medicine and a member of Bassett’s Complex Systems Lab.

Read the full post on the Penn Engineering Medium blog. Media contact Evan Lerner.

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Penn Engineering Announces Four New Scholarly Chairs

Penn Engineering is pleased to announce the names of the recipients of four scholarly chairs: Drs. Danielle Bassett, Russell Composto, Boon Thau Loo and Mark Yim. These are all well-deserved honors and we celebrate the privilege of having each of these scholars among us. Two of the recipients, Drs. Bassett and Composto, are members of the Bioengineering Department.

Danielle Bassett has been named the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Bioengineering.

Danielle Bassett, Ph.D.

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.

Dr. Bassett’s research is in the area of complex systems and network science, with applications to biological, physical and social networks. She examines dynamic changes in network architecture, the interaction between topological properties of networks, and the influence of network topology on signal propagation and system function. To learn more about Dr. Bassett and her research, please visit her faculty profile.

The J. Peter Skirkanich Professorship was established to honor J. Peter “Pete” Skirkanich, an alumnus, trustee and member of the School of Engineering and Applied Science Board of Overseers who also served as co-chair of Penn Engineering’s “Making History through Innovation” capital campaign and was a member of the University’s “Making History” steering committee. His generous support for Penn Engineering paved the way for Skirkanich Hall.

Russell Composto has been named the Howell Family Faculty Fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Russell J. Composto, Ph.D.

Dr. Composto is a Professor in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Science with secondary appointments in Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He joined Penn in 1990 after an appointment as a Research Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Massachusetts. He is an alumnus of Cornell University, where he received his doctoral degree in 1987.

Dr. Composto is a member of a number of centers and institutes and is the director of Research and Education in Active Coatings Technologies (REACT) for human habitat, a Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Composto is a previous recipient of the Provost’s Award for Distinguished PhD Teaching and Mentoring. He also serves at the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at Penn Engineering.

Dr. Composto’s research is in the area of polymer science and biomolecular engineering. His interests extend to polymer surfaces and interfaces, adhesion and diffusion, and nanocomposite polymer blend and copolymer films. His biomaterials work centers around manipulating the surface of polymers to elicit control over protein adsorption, as well as cell adhesion, orientation, and function, and he has an active research program at the interface of polymer science and biomolecular engineering, which combines block copolymer self-assemble as a basis for orienting stiff biological molecules. To learn more about Dr. Composto and his research, please visit his faculty profile.

The Howell Family Faculty Fellow was established to provide financial support to a faculty member in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. This faculty fellow helped launch the dean’s strategic goal to increase the School’s number of named, endowed faculty positions.

Read the full article on the Penn Engineering blog.

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Michael Mitchell Receives Chinese Association for Biomaterials Young Investigator Award

Michael Mitchell, Ph.D.

Michael Mitchell, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, has received a Young Investigator Award from the Chinese Association for Biomaterials.

Mitchell received the Young Investigator Award at the Biomaterials Science Excellence and Technology Translation Workshop in collaboration with the Society for Biomaterials at the 2019 Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington.

According to the Chinese Association for Biomaterials, “The CAB Young/Mid-Career Investigator Awards recognize the individuals who have successfully demonstrated significant achievements in the field of biomaterials research.”

The Chinese Association for Biomaterials was founded in 2015 at the Society for Biomaterials Annual Meeting. It is a non-profit professional organization that aims to facilitate exchange of research ideas and to promote collaboration among scientists in the fields of biomaterials research.

Mitchell joined the Department of Bioengineering at Penn in 2018 as Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation. Previously, he was an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow with Institute Professor Robert Langer at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. His research interests include biomaterials, drug delivery, and cellular and molecular bioengineering for applications in cancer research, immunotherapy, and gene therapy. Since joining Penn in 2018, Mitchell has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, a Rising Star Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the T. Nagai Award from the Controlled Release Society.

Originally posted on the Penn Engineering Medium blog.

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Penn Bioengineering Faculty Member Paul Ducheyne Receives the European Society for Biomaterials’ International Award

Ducheyne
Paul Ducheyne, Ph.D.

by Sophie Burkholder

We would like to congratulate Paul Ducheyne, Ph.D., a Professor in the Bioengineering Department and a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery Research at Penn, on being selected for the International Award by the European Society for Biomaterials (ESB). The International Award is one of the ESB’s highest honors, recognizing scientists who have spent the majority of their careers outside of Europe. They are internationally recognized, have a high scientific profile, and have made  major contributions to the field of biomaterials. Those nominated for the award typically also have had strong collaborations with the scientific community in Europe throughout their careers.

Beyond being a professor at Penn, Ducheyne is also the founder of XeroThera, a spin-out from Penn that develops novel concepts for tissue engineering and drug delivery based on his group’s twenty years of fundamental studies of sol gel-processed, nanoporous, oxide-based materials. XeroThera’s first product formulations focus on prophylaxis and treatment of surgical infections. A pipeline is being developed building from his group’s breakthrough data   that demonstrate the utility of sol-gel synthesized silica-based nanoporous materials for therapeutic use. These materials may well represent a next generation of agents for delivery of drugs, including antibiotics, analgesics, and osteogenic and anti-inflammatory molecules.

In being selected for the International Award, Ducheyne joins only five previous recipients of it so far, a group of scientists that represents those at the top of the field in biomaterials worldwide. Ducheyne will give a presentation and award lecture for the ESB at its next annual meeting this September in Dresden, Germany. Read more about the ESB’s awards here and see the full list of 2019 awardees here.

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Bioengineering Welcomes New Faculty Member Cesar de la Fuente

Cesar de la Fuente, PhD

by Sophie Burkholder

The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania is excited to welcome César de la Fuente, Ph.D., as an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. De la Fuente, who is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine and was recently named a Penn Presidential Professor, is the principal investigator of the de la Fuente Lab with current projects including the development of computer-made antibiotics, microbiome engineering technologies, and synthetic neuromicrobiology tools.

Dr. de la Fuente has wanted to learn the mysteries of the world around him from a young age, from the origins of life and human consciousness to how diseases can affect the body. His dream of understanding the building blocks of life began to take shape when he enrolled as a graduate student at the University of British Columbia to study microbiology, immunology, and protein engineering. After earning his Ph.D. in these subjects, de la Fuente went on to complete a post doctorate in synthetic biology and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Recently, MIT recognized Dr. de la Fuente on its “35 Innovators Under 35” list, which honored de la Fuente as one of the world’s top 35 innovators and as a pioneer for his use of technology to improve antibiotics. Furthermore, GEN recently listed Dr. de la Fuente on its “Top 10 Under 40” list of young leaders in the life sciences, noting his development of transformative biotechnologies as a potential solution to antibiotic resistance. De la Fuente refers to this latest research as “Machine Biology,” a crossover of life and technology that “brings together elements of machines in order to computerize biological systems.”

His creativity in the merging of so many domains of science echoes throughout de la Fuente’s general approach to research and academia as well. While he emphasizes a thinking-from-the-ground-up approach, he also feels that “heterogeneous groups make better ideas,” and thus strives to maintain diversity in his lab — currently his entire lab is made up of international students and postdocs. In the future, de la Fuente hopes to extend his love of mentorship to the classroom in a course exploring the intersection of microbiology and synthetic biology, overlapping in a way similar to his research. We can’t wait for all of the innovation and creativity in engineering that de la Fuente will undoubtedly bring to our department.

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Six Penn Engineers Receive Tenure

Brian Chow, David Issadore, Dongeun (Dan) Huh, Linh Thi Xuan Phan, Amish Patel and Aleksandra Vojvodic

The School of Engineering and Applied Science has granted tenure to six faculty members, including three from the Department of Bioengineering.

Tenured faculty at Penn Engineering demonstrate teaching excellence and international leadership in their fields of study and research collaborations.

Brian Chow
Associate Professor in Bioengineering
Chow’s research focuses on the discovery and engineering of photoreceptors and sensory proteins for manipulating and monitoring the physiology of genetically targeted cells, and the application of these tools to reveal principles of cellular dynamics. His work has advanced the rational design of light activated proteins and the use of optogenetic reagents to study cell signaling.

David Issadore
Associate Professor in Bioengineering
Issadore’s research combines microelectronics, microfluidics, and nanomaterials to create miniaturized platforms for the diagnosis of disease. His work has the potential to radically change the way we diagnose and treat diseases by bringing the technologies out of the lab and directly to the point of care.

Dongeun (Dan) Huh
Associate Professor in Bioengineering
Huh’s research aims to develop innovative bioengineering tools and technologies using biologically inspired design principles and micro- and nano-scale engineering techniques to create systems that mimic the structure and function of human physiological systems.

Linh Thi Xuan Phan
Associate Professor in Computer and Information Science
Phan’s work focuses on making cyber-physical systems (CPS) safer, faster, and more secure, both by strengthening the theoretical foundations and by developing practical solutions. Her recent projects include a cloud platform with real-time capabilities, a new diagnosis technique for timing-related faults, and new ways to defend CPS against attacks from insiders and/or external attackers.

Amish Patel
Associate Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Patel’s research strives to achieve a molecular-level understanding of solvation and transport in aqueous and polymeric systems, with applications ranging from the prediction of protein interactions to the design of advanced materials for water purification and energy storage. His group combines principles of statistical mechanics and liquid state theory with state-of-the-art molecular modeling and atomistic simulation techniques to study these biological, nanoscopic and polymeric systems.

Aleksandra Vojvodic
Associate Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Vojvodic’s research focuses on theory and computation-driven materials design. Her lab uses computational frameworks to obtain fundamental understanding of surface and interface properties of complex materials that can be used to develop theoretical models for chemical transformations and energy conversion. These models have been used to predict new catalyst materials for several chemical reactions which have been experimentally synthesized and tested, validating the desired properties of the computationally predicted catalyst material.

Originally posted on the Penn Engineering Medium blog.