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• December 17, 2010

  Danielle Benoit Featured on WXXI Healthy Friday

  

  Dr. Danielle Benoit was featured on WXXI's Healthy Friday on December 17, discussing Polymers and biomedical materials in health related issues Vitamin D Guidelines.

• December 10, 2010

  Hocking & Dalecki Research Image Featured on Cover of Tissue Engineering

  

  Immunofluorescence image captured by two-photon microscopy showing cell nuclei (blue), fibronectin (green), and actively proliferating cells (red) in a three-dimensional tissue body. Featured on the cover of Tissue Engineering (2010).

  An immunofluorescence image captured by two-photon microscopy by Carlos Sevilla, has been featured as the cover for the December issue of Tissue Engineering. The image is featured in an article by BME graduate student Carlos Sevilla, co-authored by Dr. Dalecki and Dr. Denise Hocking.

  The article entitled, Extracellular Matrix Fibronectin Stimulates the Self-Assembly of Microtissues on Native Collagen Gels, demonstrates a novel role for cell-mediated fibronectin fibrillogenesis in the formation and vertical assembly of microtissues, and provide a novel approach for engineering complex tissue architecture.

• December 2, 2010

  Erin Michelle Schnellinger Awarded the Iota Book Award

  BME Sophomore Erin Michelle Schnellinger has been awarded the Iota Book Award. This award is co-sponsored by the Iota Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and The College at the University of Rochester. The award was first conceived and presented in 2003, as a way of recognizing excellence at the very beginning of a student's college experience. Awardees are selected for their scholarly achievement, humanistic values, co-curricular activity, and leadership potential.

• November 15, 2010

  Professor Laurel Carney Receives a 2010 R01 Grant

  Biomedical Engineering and Neurobiology & Anatomy Professor Laurel Carney has received funding for her 2010 R01 grant entitled: Developing and Testing Models for the Auditory System with & without Hearing Loss. This study involves testing listeners with both normal hearing and hearing loss. The project focusses on the development of computational models that will assist in the testing of signal processing strategies for hearing aids.

  She also received a renewal for five years of support from the NIH-NIDCD to study Auditory Processing of Complex Sounds; this renewal extends this research program to 20 consecutive years of NIH funding. Her research has resulted in better understanding of the physiological response to sound in the healthy auditory system, and may contribute to the improvement of hearing aids for those with hearing loss.

• November 12, 2010

  Ellen Coleman was named the UAA Women's Soccer Player of the Year

  Junior BME student Ellen Coleman was named the University Athletic Association Women's Soccer Player of the Year as a result of voting by the UAA's head coaches. When contacted, Coleman said, The UAA is an amazing conference to play in, and being recognized for this award is a great way to show how hard our team worked all season!

• November 3, 2010

  Kirsten Ross Receives Garnish Scholar Award

  

  Kirsten Ross, BME Class 2011

  Congratulations to Kirsten Ross (BME Class of 2011), who was one of ten outstanding student-athletes to receive the Garnish Scholar Award. Each year, the Garnish Program, created in honor of Lysle Spike Garnish, coach and mentor to many Rochester student-athletes from 1930 to 1948, awards students who display an excellent balance of academic achievement and athletic accomplishment.

  Kirsten, who is captain of the soccer team, is an Honorable Mention All-UAA choice in 2009 and also has NCAA playoff experience. She is focusing her work in biomechanics research. In the summer of 2009, she was a RISE program participant and did bone fracturing healing research at the Julius Wolff Institute in Berlin, Germany.

• November 1, 2010

  'Smart Bandage' Diagnoses Danger Before Infection Takes Hold

  Benjamin Miller, professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University, and Philippe Fauchet, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have devised a sand-grain sized wafer that can differentiate between two classes of bacteria, called Gram-positive and Gram-negative.

  The sensor, the first substantial improvement in identifying Gram-positive and negative bacteria since Hans Christian Joachim Gram developed the original staining technique in 1884, is reported in the upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The accomplishment is evidence that it's indeed possible to accurately identify bacteria with a silicon sensor, spurring Miller's team to expand the research to several other types of bacteria, including salmonella, listeria and enteropathogenic E. coli, all of which can cause serious disease in humans.

• October 8, 2010

  BME Student Chapter wins Commendable Achievement Award

  At the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas this week, our student BMES chapter received a Commendable Achievement Award. Last year, the chapter received the Meritorious Achievement Award, which recognizes the best student chapter in the nation for achievements during the academic year. This is the first time in the history of the awards that a chapter from the same school has been recognized for excellence in two consecutive years, says Rick Waugh, BME department chair, and newly elected president of BMES.

• October 4, 2010

  Dr. Danielle Benoit Receives Funding From the I Care I Cure Foundation.

  

  Dr. Danielle Benoit's ALSF grant has received co-funding from the I Care I Cure Foundation. The Benoit lab was one of three chosen from all 2010 ALSF grants. The I Care I Cure Foundation supports the development of, and raises public awareness about, cutting-edge, targeted therapies for childhood cancer, so the treatment of childhood cancer will be gentler and more tolerable.

• October 1, 2010

  BME Graduate Featured in Rochester Business Journal

  

  Erin Harner, UR BME Graduate

  Erin Harner recently received her master's degree from the UR BME program, and launched a new career as a health counselor focusing on nutrition. Although her training in cutting edge biomedical engineering may seem worlds away from her new business, Second Nature Wellness, she thinks her UR experience has helped her in many ways - both directly and indirectly.

  During my time at the University of Rochester, I learned many life lessons that serve me everyday in my new career as a health and nutrition coach. There is so much confusion and misinformation in the field of health and nutrition, and I feel that my education in biomedical engineering and immense background in biology, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, and a systems-approach to the body help me to look beyond the new idea of the day and back to the science. I constantly ask myself, with everything I know, does this make sense? Being an independent thinker is extremely important, and I credit the UR with helping to cultivate that in me, says Erin.

  Erin's story has been featured in this month's Rochester Business Journal.

• September 27, 2010

  2010 Future of Health Technology Award Presented to Professor Benjamin Miller

  Professor Benjamin L. Miller (Dermatology, Biomedical Engineering, and Biochemistry & Biophysics) has been named the recipient of the 2010 Future of Health Technology Award for his pioneering work in the development of super-sensitive diagnostic devices.

  The award was presented during the annual Future of Health Technology Summit, in Cambridge from Sept. 27-28. The summit will focus on the development of new health technologies across the globe.

  Miller's work is exemplified by the development of new biosensors and diagnostic devices, including the DNA NanoLantern and sensors sensitive enough to detect single viruses. The award is given to those whose work can help reduce suffering, maximize the potential for self-realization and extend human potential with technology. Professor Miller's efforts truly improve the human condition and will revolutionize the way we live, said Renata Bushko, director of FHTI.

• September 17, 2010

  BME Alumna Laura Klebanow Gives Seminar on Advancements in Prosthetics and Orthotics

  

  Laura Klebanow explains one of Touch Bionics new prosthetic devices.

  Speaking to a standing-room only crowd, Laura Klebanow (formerly Katzenberger) told students, faculty, and staff members about her education at the UR and her journey since receiving her undergraduate degree in BME in 2005.

  While at the UR, Laura did an internship with Prosthetic & Orthotic Associates during summer breaks. Her research Project was Osseointegration - the direct structural and functional connection between ordered living bone and the surface of a load-carrying implant, and her senior design project was to design an Ergometer for individuals with various disabilities. The project won first place in the National Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center Competition for design of Accessible Medical Instrumentation. Laura than did a Take 5 by studying The Language of the Body Through Art in Florence, Italy.

  In December 2005 she graduated from Northwestern University's certificate program from the Prosthetics-Orthotics Center followed by a one-year prosthetic residency with Prosthetic & Orthotic Associates in Middletown, New York.

  In 2009 she became a Clinical Consultant for Touch Bionics and Prosthetic & Orthotic Associates, and in 2010 she was promoted to Clinical Operations Director for Touch Bionics and Clinical Consultant for Prosthetic & Orthotic Associates. In this role, she manages seven North American Touch Life Centers (Columbus, New York City, Chicago, Toronto, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Placerville) and a clinical team of ten including prosthetists and occupational therapists. She also participates in clinical grand rounds twice a month, treats patients in New York City and Palm Beach, and helps train orthopedic, hand and plastic surgeons; occupational and hand care therapists; and nurse case managers.

• August 20, 2010

  Investigators from Pontificia Universidad Catolica and UR meet with Dos de Mayo hospital directors in Peru

  

  Researchers from UR and Peru meet to discuss biomedical technology projects.

  A delegation from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP) and the University of Rochester (UR), led by Dr. Ing Aphanes Benjamin Castañeda, Director of Medical Imaging Laboratory, at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru met with Mr. Johnny Sanchez, head of the Office of General Services to coordinate the presentation of the progress of the project Health Technologies for Generating Peruvian Reality.

  This project aims to detect problems in the health sector of our country that can be solved with biomedical technology. A year ago a team (including students) from both universities visited the Peruvian institution and in coordination with hospital professionals identified areas where technology could develop proposals to help provide better service to patients.

  For further reading please see the original or translated article.

• August 17, 2010

  Dr. Kelley Madden Receives Two-Year NIH Grant

  Dr. Kelley Madden, BME Research Assistant Professor, and current member of the Brown Lab, has been awarded a two year, $232,943, grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The title of this R21 grant is 'Stress, Sympathetic Activation and Breast Tumor Growth and Metastasis and focuses on studies that will connect stress exposure and the stress hormones norepinephrine and epinephrine to cancer growth and spread in two mouse models of breast cancer. This work will provide immediate insight into how long-term stress exposure influences breast cancer growth and metastasis, and will lead to additional options for the treatment of breast cancer.

• August 10, 2010

  BME Graduate Student Javier Lapeira Soto Receives DoD Predoctoral Traineeship Award

  BME graduate student, Javier Lapeira Soto, a current member of the Brown Lab, has been awarded a 2010 Predoctoral Traineeship Award from the Department of Defense (DoD) Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP) based on the high scientific merit of his application, Breast Cancer Endothelial Cell Calcium Dynamics Using Two-Photon Microscopy, and its relevance to the programmatic goals of the BCRP.

• July 26, 2010

  BME Students Participate in the David T. Kearns Symposium

  Six current BME students participated in the summer session of the David T. Kearns Research Symposium for Leadership and Diversity in the Arts, Sciences, and Engineering by presenting posters about their research. The symposium was held on Thursday July 29, 2010 in the Sloan Auditorium at Goergen Hall, and was sponsored by the David T. Kearns Center for Leadership and Diversity in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering.

  Threshold of Non-Eye Movement Vestibular Cells in Alert Monkeys

  Daniel Barbash, mentored by Laurel Carney

  Analysis of SHG (Second Harmonic Generation) Microscopy Sensitivity to Experimental Parameters

  Jacy Bulaon, mentored by Edward Brown III

  Investigating Acoustic Parameters that Optimize Ultrasound Standing Wave Fields for Cell Banding

  Jasmine Carvalho, mentored by Diane Dalecki

  Strategies for Erythrocyte Maturation In Vitro

  Eric Lam, mentored by Richard Waugh

  Identifying Potential Transcription Factors Regulating Cellulose Degradation in Ethanol Production in Clostridium Thermocellum

  Kathleen Maloney, mentored by J.H. David Wu

  Novel Parthenolide Delivery System for Leukemia Treatment

  Hannah Watkins, mentored by Danielle Benoit

• July 12, 2010

  Associate Professors Andrew Berger and Hani Awad Receive Provost's Multidisciplinary Award

  Associate Professors Andrew Berger (Optics) and Hani Awad (BME) were among the recipients of a 2010-2011 Provost Multidisciplinary Award (PMA) for a study entitled Noninvasive optical monitoring of bone degradation in a mouse model of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This study will develop a noninvasive optical method of measuring bone fragility in genetically modified mice developing severe RA as they receive both anti-inflammatory medication and complementary drugs that try to preserve bone health. By providing a better way of tracking bone fragility in living animals, this work will generate new understanding of how bone disorders develop and how medicines can treat them more effectively in both animals and humans.

• July 1, 2010

  Sally Child Celebrates 45^th Anniversary at the University of Rochester

  This month the RCBU recognizes Sally Child's 45 years of employment at the University of Rochester! Sally began employment at the University of Rochester in June 1965 in the Department of Electrical Engineering. She was first hired by Professor Edwin Carstensen as a technician for his laboratory that was dedicated to studying the biological effects of ultrasound and electric fields. Sally worked with Professor Carstensen for over 30 years, and in that time established herself as a key member in the broader community of scientists involved in advancing the use of ultrasound in medicine and biology. Upon the retirement of Professor Carstensen, Sally began to work with Professor Diane Dalecki and moved to the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2000. Again, her efforts focused on researching the use of ultrasound in diagnostic imaging and developing new therapeutic applications of ultrasound.

  Currently, Sally is a Senior Technical Associate, an author of approximately 70 publications, and a recognized expert in biomedical ultrasound. Sally has been a member of the Rochester Center for Biomedical Ultrasound since its founding. Throughout her career, Sally has provided expert training and guidance to numerous graduate and undergraduate students. Sally has made significant contributions to our understanding of the interaction of ultrasound with biological tissues and systems. Her ingenuity and technical skill are invaluable to progress in our lab, said Professor Diane Dalecki, Director of the Rochester Center for Biomedical Ultrasound. The field of biomedical ultrasound and the University of Rochester community are indebted to her dedicated efforts and contributions throughout her 45 years of service.

• June 30, 2010

  Scientists Rate University a Best Place To Work

  The University has been ranked one of the top 15 institutions in the nation for scientists to work, according to The Scientist magazine, which has published its annual survey of Best Places to Work for Scientists in Academia.

• June 22, 2010

  Scientists Explore Why Some Psoriasis Patients Suffer Joint Damage

  A new grant from the National Psoriasis Foundation could help University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) scientists find ways to forecast which patients with the red, flaky skin disorder are most likely to suffer from an arthritic disease that sometimes follows.

  With the $200,000 grant, Christopher Ritchlin, M.D., M.P.H. and colleagues plan to spend two years following between 60 and 100 patients with both psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Over that time, they'll track how popular medications (like methotrexate and newer anti-TNF drugs) affect participants' levels of DC-STAMP - a molecule that plays a role in autoimmunity and the formation of osteoclasts, or bone-absorbing cells. Ritchlin's team, in concert with URMC professor of Orthopedics Edward Schwarz, Ph.D., was the first ever to implicate DC-STAMP as a potential biomarker for any form of arthritis, igniting a blaze of similar research in the field.

• June 3, 2010

  Anne Luebke, Ph.D. and Loisa Bennetto, Ph.D. Awarded Collaborative Pilot Grant

  Anne Luebke, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Neurobiology & Anatomy and Biomedical Engineeering, and Loisa Bennetto, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Clinical and Social Psychology, have been awarded a collaborative pilot grant to study whether physiological-based biomarkers of cochlear efferent strength will be impaired in the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) population.

  The specific aim of the project is to determine efferent feedback strength in children and adolescents with ASD when compared with typical controls (age, gender, and IQ matched). The project will build on existing measures of MOC strength using two different otoacoustic emission-based tests with short and sustained binaural broadband suppression to obtain maximal efferent feedback strength in both ears of all participants.

• May 28, 2010

  Engineering Enrollment, Job Prospects Continue to Be Strong

  Enrollment is up, more women are pursuing engineering as a field, starting salaries continue to climb, and career options are expanding, says Robert Clark, dean of the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

• May 25, 2010

  BME Faculty Have Big Designs

  BME faculty members Amy Lerner and Scott Seidman know about design. In fact, they have "designed" a program that allows senior BME students to tackle real-world challenges. Now in its tenth year, the two-semester Senior Design program, overseen by Lerner and Seidman, provides seniors with hands-on experience working with real clients. Lerner and Seidman guide the students to apply everything they've learned to solve problems faced by clinicians and industry.

• May 20, 2010

  Denise Hocking Wins University Dean's Award

  Denise Hocking (Pharmacology and Physiology, BME) was recognized with the University Dean's Award for Meritorious Service in Ph.D. Defenses. She was one of four faculty members so honored for their commitment to graduate education. Recognition and presentation of this award occurred at the commencement ceremony of Doctoral degree candidates held on May 15^th.

• May 6, 2010

  BME Undergraduate Daniel Barbash Awarded a Xerox Undergraduate Fellowship

  Daniel Barbash, a junior in BME, has received a Xerox Undergraduate Research Fellowship. He will join a collaborative project focusing on the analysis of the responses of vestibular neurons to novel stimuli with Prof. Shawn Newlands, Chair of Otolaryngology, and Prof. Laurel Carney, BME and NBA. This project is associated with the Center for Navigation and Communication Studies (CNCS). The UR SEAS Xerox Undergraduate Fellows Program is a highly competitive program that provides engineering students with research experience. The program begins during the summer preceding the senior year, and continues as an independent research course in the fall and spring semesters of the senior year.

• May 6, 2010

  BME Sweeps this Year's Forbes Entrepreneurial Competition

  Teams involving BME seniors won all four awards at the annual Forbes Entrepreneurial Competition. Business plans were based on projects completed as part of the Senior Design class, a two-semester class offered by Amy Lerner and Scott Seidman.

  First place went to Arm Embrace, second place to DPN Diagnostics, third place to Injector Perfectors, and fourth place to Radiation Analysis Dosimetry. The primary goal of the Charles and Janet Forbes Entrepreneurial Award is to encourage current, full-time UR undergraduate engineering students to consider the commercial potential of their design project or research. The competition is open to any students in the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and may involve interdisciplinary teams of students. This year, two teams in the competition included students from Computer Science and Biochemistry.

  All fifteen of the BME senior design teams will present their prototypes on May 11th in the Munnerlyn Atrium of Goergen Hall.

  More coverage on this story can be found at Your News Now (YNN) and Rochesterhomepage.net.

• May 5, 2010

  BME Graduate Diana Ladkany Awarded Tau Beta Pi Graduate Fellowship

  Diana K. Ladkany, BME class of 2009, has received a graduate fellowship from Tau Beta Pi for the 2010-11 year. Tau Beta Pi, the world's largest engineering society, awarded Ladkany a cash stipend of $10,000 to pursue her medical education at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. An honors student, Ladkany is the president of the New York Kappa Chapter of Tau Beta Pi, a member of the Rochester Early Medical Scholars, a member of Phi Beta Kappa Academic Honor Society, and a Girl Scout Gold Award Recipient. Tau Beta Pi membership represents the highest honor that can be obtained by an engineering student and is awarded on the basis of high scholarship and exemplary character. Tau Beta Pi Fellowships are awarded on the basis of high scholarship, campus leadership and service, and the promise of future contributions to the engineering profession.Through her junior and senior years, Diana has been involved in research on the effects of biomedical ultrasound on cellular processes as a member of Professor Diane Dalecki's laboratory.

• April 29, 2010

  Dr. Danielle Benoit Receives Grant From ALSF Foundation

  

  Dr. Danielle Benoit's ( BME) Young Investigator Grant titled: Targeted polymeric parthenolide carriers to treat childhood AML, has been selected by ALSF's Scientific Advisory Board for funding. Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation (ASLF) has raised over $30 million dollars for pedatric cancer research since 2004, and is committed to finding a cure for all types of childhood cancers.

• April 28, 2010

  Kelley Garvin Wins Best Student Paper Competition

  Kelley Garvin won the Best Student Paper Competition at the 159^th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America held in Baltimore, MD from April 19-23. Her invited paper, titled Ultrasound standing wave fields induce endothelial cell sprouting within three-dimensional engineered tissues was recognized as the Best Student Paper in the Biomedical Ultrasound/Bioresponse to Vibration Technical Section. This was the second year in a row that Kelley has won this award. Kelley presented her recent work demonstrating the use of ultrasound standing wave fields to spatially organize cells and induce endothelial cell sprouting in three-dimensional engineered tissues.

  Kelley is a graduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and her thesis research is co-advised by Dr. Diane Dalecki and Dr. Denise Hocking. Kelley is also a student member of the Rochester Center for Biomedical Ultrasound (RCBU) and organizer of the Ultrasound Journal Club. Kelley's research is part of a larger, multidisciplinary project, led by Drs. Dalecki and Hocking and funded by the NIH that aims to develop novel ultrasound technologies for the field of tissue engineering.

• April 27, 2010

  BMES Annual Banquet Honors Students and Faculty

  At the BMES Annual Banquet, several undergraduate students were recognized for their achievements in leadership, research, academics, service and teaching. The banquet, held on April 9^th in the Munnerlyn Atrium of Goergen Hall, also offered an opportunity for students to honor Professor Laurel Carney as the BME faculty member of the Year.

• April 26, 2010

  BME Undergraduate Nicholas Berry Wins Research Award

  Nicholas Berry (UR BME class of 2010) was awarded the Professors' Choice Award for Undergraduate Research in Engineering at the UR Undergraduate Research Expo held on April 23, 2010. Nick was awarded this honor for his scientific poster titled, High Frequency Pulse-Echo Ultrasound for Three- Dimensional Engineered Tissue Characterization. In his research, Nick has developed a high-frequency ultrasound system to be used to characterize the biological, structural, and mechanical properties of three-dimensional engineered tissues. Nick has been working on this project for a summer and two semesters. His coauthors on this work are Diane Dalecki, Maria Helguera, and Denise Hocking.

• April 13, 2010

  Dr. Kevin Parker named Engineer of the Year

  Dr. Parker, dean emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, past director of the Rochester Center for Biomedical Ultrasound (RCBU), and the William F. May professor of engineering in the department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) has received the 2009 Engineer of the Year Award given by the Rochester Engineering Society.

• April 13, 2010

  Dr. Diane Dalecki honored as Professor of the Year in Engineering

  During the Undergraduate Research Exposition, on April 23^rd, an awards ceremony will be held, in part, honoring Dr. Diane Dalecki as Professor of the Year in Engineering. This award is presented by the University of Rochester Students' Association for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

• April 1, 2010

  BME Undergraduate Nicholas Huang Receives 2010 Goldwater Scholarship

  Nicholas James Huang '11, was named a 2010 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. Each year, the foundation awards only 300 outstanding students across the country up to $7,500 in financial aid. The award was created in 1986 to alleviate a critical current and future shortage of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers and to provide a continuing source of highly qualified individuals to those fields of academic study and research. Huang, a Take-Five scholar with a double major in Biomedical Engineering and Music, plans to use his fifth year to study The Intricate Puzzle of the Mind.

  I originally came to Rochester to study at the Eastman School of Music, says Nick, a native Montanan. But the University offered so much more than music; I'm interested in a wide scope of disciplines-I want to know how the mind works, how the brain functions. That's what I like about BME-it combines everything I love learning about-neuroscience, audiology, and even music, says Nick.

• March 22, 2010

  BME Undergraduate Jasmine Carvalho Awarded a Xerox Undergraduate Fellowship

  BME undergraduate student Jasmine Carvalho has been awarded a Xerox Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Jasmine will be working in the laboratory of Diane Dalecki, RCBU Director and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, on a project related to the use of ultrasound in cell and tissue engineering. The UR SEAS Xerox Undergraduate Fellows Program is a highly competitive program that provides engineering students with research experience. The program begins during the summer preceding the senior year, and continues as an independent research course in the fall and spring semesters of the senior year.

• March 5, 2010

  New NIH Training Grant for Hearing, Balance, and Spatial Orientation Research

  The University of Rochester has recently been awarded a Training Grant (T32) from the NIH National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders entitled Training in Hearing, Balance, and Spatial Orientation. This Training Grant involves the collaborative efforts of the Departments of Otolaryngology, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurobiology & Anatomy. The Grant will support PhD students, MD-PhD students, Post-doctoral fellows and Medical Residents in BME, Neuroscience, and Otolaryngology who are involved in research related to the auditory and vestibular systems. This Training Grant is an important resource for the University of Rochester's Center for Navigation and Communication Sciences, which provides technical and administrative support for 25 faculty members who are conducting research in this area. The 5-year grant will provide approximately $1.5 million dollars of support for several trainees each year. In association with the Training Grant, a new graduate-level course entitled Hearing and Balance: Structure, Function and Disease will be offered starting in Fall 2010. This new Training Grant is an exciting advance for the strong and growing community of auditory and vestibular researchers at the University of Rochester.

• March 4, 2010

  BME Senior Design Class Students Tackle Radiation Research Project

  Students in the BME Senior Design class are participating in a project inspired by a radiation research contract recently awarded to URMC by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. BARDA would like a quick, easy blood test that accurately measures radiation exposure. A team of students for the Senior Design Class is developing an early prototype for the project as a proof-of-concept. BME seniors Katie Litts, Camile Enriques, Jonathon Kung, and Sean Virgile are working to develop RAD Radiation Analysis Dosimetry, a high throughput device to measure radiation in blood samples. The customer is Walter O'Dell, Ph.D., from the departments of Radiation Oncology and Biomedical Engineering, and one of the co-investigators on the contract. The team is supervised by Richard Waugh, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

• March 1, 2010

  BME Undergraduate Stephen Antos Receives the Susan L. Costa Memorial Scholarship

  Stephen Antos, a junior biomedical engineering major, will be receiving the Susan L. Costa Memorial Scholarship, given by the Rochester Engineering Society this year. The $1,500 scholarship is merit-based, and well deserved. In addition to maintaining a very high GPA, Stephen has demonstrated a commitment to his field through his lab work and internship, and has shown his charitable spirit through his volunteerism.

• February 25, 2010

  BME Undergraduate Hannah Watkins Awarded Prestigious Xerox Undergraduate Fellowship

  The SEAS Xerox Undergraduate Fellows Program is a highly competitive program to provide engineering undergraduates with an opportunity to participate in a research experience in SEAS during the summer preceding their senior year. Additionally, students will receive independent study course credit for the continuation of their work during the fall and spring semesters of their senior year. Selection criteria include research interests, competitive academic performance, and intellectual ability and curiosity. Hannah will continue her work in the Benoit Lab focusing on Hydrogel Culture Environments for Regenerative Medicine Applications.

• February 8, 2010

  RCBU Member Develops Collaborative Research Opportunities with UR BME and Peru

  In 2009, RCBU member Ben Castaneda successfully defended his PhD thesis, Extracting Information from Sonoelastogrphic Images. He returned to his home country of Peru, where he accepted a new faculty position in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP). He was also appointed as the director of a newly created Medical Imaging Research Laboratory. In that capacity, Ben heads PUCP’s new master's degree program in Signal and Digital Image Processing. The program is research oriented, with an emphasis on developing new mathematical models and their application to solving real problems.

• February 1, 2010

  Dr. Kelley Madden Receives Department of Defense IDEA Award

  Dr. Kelley Madden has received funding from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program for a 2-year study that seeks to understand how an important stress pathway, the sympathetic nervous system, influences breast tumor growth and metastasis. Specifically, this study will determine if the sympathetic nervous system encourages growth of blood vessels into a tumor (angiogenesis). A unique aspect of this project is to determine if the sympathetic nervous system alters the effectiveness of therapy targeting and destroying tumor blood vessels (antiangiogenic therapy). Understanding how a stress pathway influences tumor growth will open the door to therapeutic options targeting the sympathetic nervous system. Importantly, therapies targeting sympathetic nervous system signaling pathways are already in use in the clinic for safe, chronic treatment of heart disease, offering the possibility of rapid clinical application of our findings. This project continues work that has been previously funded by the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester.

• January 31, 2010

  Adarza is Changing the Future of Diagnostic Testing

  

  Ben Miller, of Adarza BioSystems (Courtesy of Carlos Ortiz, Democrat and Chronicle staff photographer)

  Adarza BioSystems Inc., a University of Rochester innovation being turned into an everyday, commercially applicable medical device, is at a point somewhere between the defrosting and the baking.

  Like Kodak's camera and Xerox's copier, Adarza, based at the High Tech Rochester new business incubator, is really one core product upon which success will rise or fall. Essentially, it's a biomedical screen or sensor that at microscopic levels uses reflecting laser light to pick out particular biomarkers, or molecules.

  More broadly, Adarza, a Sanskrit word meaning reflected image, feeds Rochester's economic future with the prototypical recipe of imaging innovation, optical precision and engineering brilliance that is calibrated to a mobile, do-it-now medical culture. Benjamin Miller, a faculty member and biomedical research scientist at UR, did the heavy intellectual lifting on Adarza technology in partnership with UR chemist Lewis Rothberg.

• January 21, 2010

  Promotions within the Office of Technology Transfer Widen Opportunities for BME Entrepreneurship

  Gail Norris, formerly the director of the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) for the College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering, will assume a newly created position of vice-provost of the OTT. Former deputy director Corine Farewell has been promoted to director of the office. The promotions underscore the University's commitment to increase the commercialization of research and design by staff and students.

  In the past, Farewell has worked closely with the Department of Biomedical Engineering's senior design classes to help students learn how to protect intellectual property while presenting their projects to industry and the community.

• January 6, 2010

  Members of the BME Graduate Program Vie for Top Place in the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge Championship

  

  Representing UR in the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge Championship will be Jessica Snyder (left and far right in inset photo) and (from left in inset photo) Luke Mortensen, Christina Devries and Chris Hiner.

  Jessica Snyder, a biophysics graduate student and member of Jim McGrath's biomedical engineering lab, credits her work as an elite cross-country skier in helping her become the third place female finisher in the Rochester Chase Corporate Challenge last May, which contributed to the University of Rochester (UR) team's win of the mixed team title. The four-member team will now travel to Johannesburg, South Africa for the Championship in March.

  Joining Jessica will be Luke Mortensen, a graduate student in Biomedical Engineering; Chris Hine, a graduate student in biochemistry and biophysics; and Christina Devries, a technical associate at the Center for Human Genetics and Molecular Pediatric Disease.