Danielle Bassett, Eduardo D. Glandt Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor in theDepartment of Bioengineering, grew up in central Pennsylvania where she and her 10 siblings were homeschooled. Back then, Bassett had aspirations to become a professional pianist, a dream shattered by stress fractures in her arm at age 16.
Now, Bassett is a renowned physicist and MacArthur fellow who has pushed the field of network science, which studies connections and interactions between parts of a whole, to new realms. Bassett’s research focuses on brain function, including work on how brains of people with schizophrenia are organized, how brain communication changes with learning, and how the brain is able to switch between tasks.
Kelly Servick of Science sat down with Bassett to talk through her incredible journey from child pianist to leading network scientist:
““By 17, discouraged by her parents from attending college and disheartened at her loss of skill while away from the keys, she expected that responsibilities as a housewife and mother would soon eclipse any hopes of a career. ‘I wasn’t happy with that plan,’ she says.
Instead, Bassett catapulted herself into a life of research in a largely uncharted scientific field now known as network neuroscience. A Ph.D. physicist and a MacArthur fellow by age 32, she has pioneered the use of concepts from physics and math to describe the dynamic connections in the human brain. ‘She’s now the doyenne of network science,’ says theoretical neuroscientist Karl Friston of University College London. ‘She came from a formal physics background but was … confronted with some of the deepest questions in neuroscience.’”
Continue reading about Bassett’s career path and evolving research interests at Science.
The Acta Biomaterialia Silver Medal is an award from the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal Acta Biomaterialia that recognizes leaders in academia, industry, and the public sector for mid-career leadership in and significant contribution to the field of biomaterials engineering. Dr. Burdick is the third recipient of the award so far, which includes a silver medal, an inscribed certificate, and reward of $5000. As the principal investigator of the Polymeric Biomaterials Laboratory in Penn’s Department of Bioengineering, Dr. Burdick leads research with a focus in polymer design, musculoskeletal tissue engineering, the control of stem cells with material cues, and the control of molecule delivery with polymers.
The Silver and Gold Medalists (Dr. Burdick and Dr. Antonios G. Mikos respectively) were presented with their own brand of wine in celebration of their achievement.
Specifically, Dr. Burdick’s innovation in the application of hydrogels to the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems brought him recognition for this award. His recent publications in Acta Biomaterialia include a study of bioactive factors for cartilage repair and regenesis in collaboration with fellow Penn Professor of Bioengineering Robert Mauck, Ph. D, and a study of adhesive biolinks that mimic the behavior of the extracellular matrix. The Acta Biomaterialia Silver Medal is only the most recent of several awards that Dr. Burdick has received, including both the George H. Heilmeier Faculty Award for Excellence in Research and the Clemson Award for Basic Research, and we can’t wait to see where his continued innovation in biomaterial engineering will take him next.
Graduate student Andrei Georgescu and Assistant Professor Dan Huh in Huh’s lab. Adapting the organ-on-a-chip technology for a trip to the International Space Station presented Huh’s team with a number of engineering challenges. (Photo: Kevin Monko)
Throughout the 60-year history of the U.S. space program—from the Mercury capsules of the 1960s to today’s International Space Station—astronauts have been getting sick. Researchers know being in orbit seems to suppress their immune systems, creating a more fertile ground for infections to grow. But nobody really understands why.
Early on the morning of April 26, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a cargo mission to the ISS from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Along with fresh water, food, and other necessities for the crew, the craft will be carrying two experiments designed by Penn scientists that could help shed light on why bugs have bedeviled space travelers.
For more than a decade, Dan Huh, the Wilf Family Term Assistant Professor of Bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been developing super-small devices that use living cells to stand in for larger organs. These organs-on-a-chip hold great promise for all kinds of research, from diagnosing disease to curing them. They’re also a way to test things, including drugs and cosmetics, in a way that mimics real life without relying on animal subjects.
Each spring, the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania hosts an awards recognition dinner to honor exceptional work in the school: The Faculty honor students for outstanding service and academics, while the students choose faculty members for their commitment to teaching and advising. This year, the Department of Bioengineering won big with honors for both our Department Chair and our undergraduates. Read about each of the award winners and see photos from the awards ceremony below. Congratulations to all the winners!
David F. Meaney, Ph.D.
Dr. David F. Meaney, Solomon R. Pollack Professor and Chair of Bioengineering, was awarded with the Ford Motor Company Award for Faculty Advising, which recognizes “dedication to helping students realize their educational, career and personal goals.” Dr. Meaney is beloved by the students in BE for his engaging teaching style, his commitment to student wellness and advancement, as well as his weekly Penn Bioengineering spin classes, and so we are delighted to see him recognized in this way by the wider student body Read more about the award here and Dr. Meaney here.
Eshwar Inapuri (BAS 2019), a graduating senior completing his Bachelor of Applied Science degree in BE with minors in Biophysics and Chemistry, was awarded the Ben and Bertha Gomberg Kirsch Prize. This competitive award is decided by the SEAS faculty from among the Engineering undergraduate body and distinguishes a member of the B.A.S. senior class in who “in applying the flexibility of the program, has created a personal academic experience involving the most creative use of the resources of the University.”
The Hugo Otto Wolf Memorial Prize, awarded to one or more members of each department’s senior class, distinguishes students who meet with great approval of the professors at large through “thoroughness and originality” in their work. This year, BE chose to share the award between Ethan Zhao (BSE 2019) and Shelly Teng (BSE 2019).
The Herman P. Schwan Award is decided by the Bioengineering Department and honors a graduating senior who demonstrates the “highest standards of scholarship and academic achievement.” The 2019 recipient of the Schwan Award is Joseph Maggiore (BSE 2019).
Every year, four BE students are recognized with Exceptional Service Awards for their outstanding service to the University and their larger communities. Our winners this year are Dana Abulez (BSE 2019), Daphne Cheung (BSE 2019), Lamis Elsawah (BSE 2019), and Kayla Prezelski (BSE 2019). All four of these recipients are also currently in the Accelerated Master’s program in BE.
And finally, BE also awards a single lab group (four students) 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 Caroline Atkinson (BSE 2019), Shuting (Sarah) Cai (BSE 2019), Rebecca Kellner (BSE 2019), and Harrison Troche (BSE 2019).
A full list of SEAS award descriptions and recipients can be found here.
According to the CRS website, “The Controlled Release Society T. Nagai Postdoctoral Research Achievement Award has been established to recognize an individual postdoctoral candidate who has recently completed outstanding postdoctoral research in controlled release science and technology, and the postdoc’s advisor who played an integral role in those achievements.”
Mitchell and his postdoctoral advisor at MIT, Robert Langer, will receive the award at the 2019 CRS annual meeting this July in Valencia, Spain.
The sole recipient of this award, Mitchell was recognized for his work on engineering controlled release technologies for cancer gene therapy and immunotherapy. Mitchell focuses on improving the way drugs are delivered within the body by combining approaches from engineering, biology, machine learning, and data science to better target diseased cells. Mitchell’s work helps to lay the foundation for a new class of therapeutic strategies against hematologic cancers such as multiple myeloma and leukemia.
For this research, Mitchell also received the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface in 2016, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in 2018, and a Rising Star Award in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering from the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2019. He joined the Penn faculty in January 2018 after completing an NIH NCI postdoctoral fellowship at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania would like to congratulate LeAnn Dourte, Ph.D. on her recent promotion to Practice Associate Professor. Formerly a Senior Lecturer, this promotion reflects Dr. Dourte’s innovative approaches to pedagogy since arriving at Penn in 2011. The title of Practice Associate Professor reflects exceptional accomplishment in teaching, leadership, and educational programs. As an official member of the faculty, this formalizes Dourte’s role as a leader in pedagogy and educational scholarship, furthering empowering her to think creatively and progressively about higher education.
As a key member of the BE teaching faculty, Dourte has regularly taught core undergraduate subjects such as Intro to Biomechanics (BE 200) and Biomaterials (BE 220) as well as popular graduate electives Biomechanics and Biotransport (BE 510) and Biomechatronics (BE 570). In particular, she spearheaded the department’s initiative to improve classroom and learning experiences through experimentation with the Structured, Active, In-Class Learning (or SAIL) model of education which emphasizes teamwork and dynamic problem-solving. Dourte worked with the Center for Teaching and Learning to understand this model and assess how it would best be applicable for BE students, and then presented her findings at national conferences and to the BE faculty, helping to introduce them to these techniques and advise them on best practices. Other BE faculty such as Chris Fang-Yen, Ph.D., Jennifer Philips-Cremins, Ph.D., and Danielle Bassett, Ph.D., have experimented with and incorporated these ideas into their courses. Thanks to Dourte’s efforts, BE has been integral in demonstrating the success of SAIL classes to the School of Engineering and then spreading this philosophy to other schools at Penn. In addition to her pedagogical interests, Dourte is also highly involved in the Department’s student wellness initiative, serving on the Department’s Climate Committee and as the Wellness Ambassador.
Now that she has achieved this latest milestone, Dourte has set her sights on goals for the future. She intends to work with Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Dr. Russ Composto to strengthen initiatives to assist SEAS’s First-Generation, Low-Income (FGLI) students. She will be working with Dr. Bassett, who specializes in network science, to learn more about how students learn, and what tools can be developed to assess students in addition to traditional exams and homework; to tell more easily when students are missing key concepts; and to intervene sooner in moments of crisis. And finally, Dourte will also be one of three representatives from Penn at an upcoming national education summit this May to discuss the future of Bioengineering curricula.
“Our best educators are teachers for the rest of the faculty, as well as the students,” says Department Chair Dr. David Meaney. “We are enormously proud of the prestige and expertise that LeAnn shares with all of us. I was fortunate to teach biomechanics with LeAnn for many years, and saw her outstanding ability as an educator in person.”
Once again, we would like to extend hearty congratulations to Dr. Dourte on this well-deserved recognition of her leadership and both in and out of the classroom.
Dr. Shaffer’s research is is focused on understanding how differences present in single-cells can generate phenotypes such as drug resistance in cancer, oncogenesis, differentiation, and invasion. Our approach leverages cutting-edge technologies including high-throughput imaging, single-molecule RNA FISH, fluorescent protein tagging, CRISPR/Cas9 screening, and flow cytometry to investigate rare single-cell phenomena. Further information can be found at www.sydshafferlab.com.
In addition to her exciting research, Dr. Shaffer will be an enthusiastic new member of the Bioengineering Department community. In the short term, she will be taking over the popular class BE 400 (Preceptorships in Bioengineering) which gives undergraduates the rare chance to shadow renowned physicians over a period of ten weeks. She will also serve as a faculty advisor as well as a mentor to the lucky students in her classes and lab.
Dr. Shaffer says that, “With my research interests and training at the interface of engineering and medicine, I am thrilled to be part of the highly interdisciplinary community of Penn Bioengineering.”
“Sydney has a unique combination of creativity and impact in her work,” says Solomon R. Pollack Professor and Chair Dr. David Meaney. “Her work to untangle the secrets of how single cancer cells can develop resistance to a cancer drug — therefore leading to a return of the cancer — is nothing short of stunning. We are incredibly fortunate to have her on our faculty. ”
In a paper recently published in Biochemistry, a group of University of Pennsylvania Bioengineering students describe the results of their work designing a new, open-source, low-cost microplate reader. Plate readers are instruments designed to measure light absorption and fluorescence emission from molecules useful for clinical biomarker analyses and assays in a diverse array of fields including synthetic biology, optogenetics, and photosensory biology. This new design costs less than $3500, a significantly lower price than other commercially available alternatives. As described in the paper’s abstract, this design is the latest in a growing trend of open-source hardware to enhance access to equipment for biology labs. The project originated as part of the annual International Genetically Engineering Machine Competition (iGEM), an annual worldwide competition focusing on “push[ing] the boundaries of synthetic biology by tackling everyday issues facing the world” (iGEM website).
The group consists of current junior Andrew Clark (BSE ’20) and recent graduates Karol Szymula (BSE ’18), who works in the lab of Dr. Danielle Bassett, and Michael Patterson (BSE ’18), a Master’s student in Bioengineering and Engineer of Instructional Laboratories. Assistant Professor of Bioengineering Dr. Brian Chow served as their faculty mentor alongside Director of Instructional Labs Sevile Mannickarottu and Michael Magaraci, a Ph.D. candidate in Bioengineering, all of whom serve as co-authors on the published article. The research and design of the project was conducted in the Stephenson Foundation Bioengineering Educational Laboratory here at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Bioengineering.
Michael Mitchell, PhD, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering at Penn, has been honored with a Rising Star Award in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering from the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). According to the BMES website, “The BMES Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Special Interest Group brings together researchers with diverse scientific and clinical interests with a common goal of understanding and engineering molecules, cells, their interactions and microenvironments in the pursuit of controlling biological processes and improving the practice of medicine.” Dr. Mitchell received the award and delivered a lecture at the 2019 Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Conference in San Diego, California in January, 2019.
One of six early-stage investigators from across the nation to receive the honor, Dr. Mitchell was recognized for his work on engineering delivery technologies for cancer gene therapy and immunotherapy, which is helping to lay the foundation for a new class of therapeutic strategies against hematologic cancers such as multiple myeloma and leukemia. In 2018, Dr. Mitchell was awarded the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award for this research, and received the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface) in 2016. He joined the Penn faculty in January 2018 after completing an NIH NCI postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Robert Langer at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.
White fat stories calories and provides the body with insulation.
There are two types of fat in the human body: brown and white. Brown fat, the “good” fat, is rich in mitochondria, which gives it its brown appearance. Whereas white fat stores calories and acts as an insulator, mitochondria-rich brown fat burns energy to produce heat throughout the body and maintains body temperature. White fat, conversely, uses its stored energy to insulate the body and keep its temperature level. While all fat serves a purpose in the body, an excess of white fat cells causes obesity, a condition affecting one in three adults in the U.S. and the root cause of many potential health problems. Finding ways to convert white fat to brown opens a possibility of treating this problem naturally.
A new study in Scientific Reports proposes a clever way to convert fat types. Professor of Biomedical Engineering Samuel Sia, PhD, of the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science, led a team which developed a method of converting white fat into brown using a tissue-grafting technique. After extracting and converting the fat, it can then be transplanted back into the patient. White fat is hard-wired to convert to brown under certain conditions, such as exposure to cold temperatures, so the trick for Dr. Sia’s team was finding a way to make the conversion last for long periods. The studies conducted with mice suggested that using these methods, newly-converted fat stayed brown for a period of two months.
Dr. Sia’s team will proceed to conduct further tests, especially on the subjects’ metabolism and overall weight after undergoing the procedure, and they hope that eventual clinical trials will result in new methods to treat or even prevent obesity in humans.
Cremins Lab Student Appointed Blavatnik Fellow
Linda Zhou is currently pursuing her MD/PhD in Genomics and Computational Biology under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer Phillips-Cremins.
The Perelman School of Medicine named Linda Zhou, a student in BE’s Cremins Laboratory, a Blavatnik Fellow for the 2018-2019 academic year. The selection process for this award is highly competitive, and Linda’s selection speaks to the excellent quality of her scholarship and academic performance. The fellows will be honored in a special ceremony at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Linda received her B.S. in Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and is currently pursuing her M.D./Ph.D. in the Genomics and Computational Biology Program at Penn. “I am honored to be named a Blavatnik Fellow and am extremely excited to continue my graduate studies investigating neurological disorders and the 3D genome,” she said. “This support will be integral to achieving my long term goal of driving scientific discovery that will help treat human disease.”
Linda’s research is overseen by Penn Bioengineering Assistant Professor Jennifer Phillips-Cremins, PhD. “Linda is an outstanding graduate student,” said Dr. Cremins. “It is a true delight to work with her. She is hard working, intelligent, kind, and has extraordinary leadership ability. Her unrelenting search for ground-state truth makes her a shining star.”
The Blavatnik Family Fellowship in Biomedical Research is a new award announced by the Perelman School of Medicine in May of this year. This generous gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation awards $2 million to six recipients in the Biomedical Graduate Studies Program at Penn for each of the next four years.
Growing Lungs in a Lab
As the demand for lung transplants continues to rise, so does the need for safe and effective transplanted lungs. Bioengineered lungs grown or created in labs are one way of meeting this demand. The problem – as is ever the case with transplants – is the high rate of rejection. The results of success are always better when cells from the patient herself (or autologous cells) are used in the transplanted organ.
Recently Joan Nichols, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine, and Microbiology and Immunology, at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, successfully bioengineered the first human lung. Her latest study published in Science Translational Medicine describes the next milestone for Dr. Nichols’ lab: successfully transplanting a bioengineered lung into a pig.
These advances are possible due to Dr. Nichols’ work with autologous cells, continuing the trend of “on demand” medicine (i.e. medicine tailor for a specific patient) which we track on this blog. Dr. Nichols’ particular method is to build the structure of a lung (using the harvested organs of dead pigs in this case), de-cellularize the tissue, and then repopulate it with autologous cells from the intended recipient. This way, the host body recognizes the cells as friendly and the likelihood of acceptance increases. While further study is needed before clinical trials can begin, Dr. Nichols and her team see the results as extremely promising and believe that we are on the way to bioengineered human lungs.
Nanoparticles Combat Dental Plaque
Combine a diet high in sugar with poor oral hygiene habits and dental cavities likely result. The sugar triggers the formation of an acidic biofilm (plaque) on the teeth, eroding the surface. Early childhood dental cavities affect one in every four children in the United States and hundreds of millions more globally. It’s a particularly severe problem in underprivileged populations.
Dr. David Cormode is Assistant Professor of Radiology and Secondary Faculty in Bioengineering at Penn. His research includes Bioengineering Therapeutics, Devices and Drug Delivery and Biomaterials.
The flu virus is notoriously contagious, but there may be a way to stop it before it starts. In order for the influenza virus to successfully transport itself into the cells of a human host, it needs a certain protein called hemagglutinin which mediates its entry. By interfering with this vital ingredient, researchers can effectively kill the virus.
A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discusses a method of disrupting the process by which this protein causes the virus to infect its host cells. This discovery could lead to more effective flu vaccines that target the flu virus at its root, rather than current ones which have to keep up with the ongoing changes and mutations of the virus itself. Indeed, the need for different vaccines to address various “strains” of the flu is moot if a vaccine can stop the virus from infecting people in the first place.
This breakthrough results from grants provided by the NSF, the Welch Foundation, and the NIH to Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine. Lead researchers José Onuchic, PhD, Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Chair of Physics and Professor of Chemistry and BioSciences at Rice University; Jianpeng Ma, PhD, Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University and Lodwick T. Bolin Professor of Biochemistry at Baylor College of Medicine; and Qinghua Wang, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Baylor College of Medicine. Their team will continue to study the important role proteins play in how the flu virus operates.
People and Places
This week, we congratulate a few new leadership appointments in bioengineering. First, the Georgia Institute of Technology appointed Penn BE alumnus Andréas García, PhD, the new Executive Director of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. In addition to his new role, Dr. García is also the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Regents Professor. He conducts research in biomolecular, cellular, and tissue engineering and collaborates with a number of research centers across Georgia Tech. Dr. García graduated with both his M.S.E. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Bioengineering.
Secondly, the University of Minnesota Institute for Engineering in Medicine (IEM) named the Distinguished McKnight University Professor John Bischof, PhD, their new director. This follows Dr. Bischof’s recent position as interim director for the IEM. Dr. Bischof earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, and is currently a faculty member in both the Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Departments at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Bischof holds the Carl and Janet Kuhrmeyer Chair in Mechanical Engineering.
At an earlier, but no less impressive, point in his academic career, Tanishq Abraham became the youngest person to graduate with a degree in biomedical engineering. The fifteen year old recently graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Davis. As part of his graduating research, Abraham – a first-generation Indian-American – designed a device to measure the heart rates of burn victims. Abraham has already been accepted by U.C. Davis for his Ph.D. and plans to continue on to his M.D.
Finally, the work continues to create affordable and well-fitted prosthetics, especially for remote, rural, and underfunded areas both in the U.S. and abroad. Unfortunately, recent studies published by the Centre for Biomedical Engineering at the India Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT) demonstrate the uphill nature of this battle; stating that India alone contains over half a million upper limb amputees. To address this explosive population, researchers and entrepreneurs are using new bioengineering technologies such as digital manufacturing, 3D scanning and printing, and more. The best innovations are those that save time, resources, and money, without sacrificing quality in the prosthetic or patient comfort. Penn Engineering’s Global Biomedical Service (GBS) program similarly responds to this need, as each year students follow an academically rigorous course with a two-week immersive trip to China, where they learn how to create and fit prosthetic limbs for local children in conjunction with Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
