UW Bioengineering eNews – Fall/Winter 2016

In this issue: Innovation and Impact | Faculty Honors and Awards | Student Highlights | Community Highlights | Featured Publications

Welcome to UW Bioengineering’s Fall/Winter 2016 Innovation and impact!

I’m pleased to send you this update on our advances in bioengineering research, education, translation and outreach, and recognize the recent achievements of our students and faculty.

Season’s greetings and warm wishes for a happy new year.

Sincerely,

Cecilia Giachelli, Ph.D.
W. Hunter and Dorothy Simpson Endowed Chair, Professor
Department of Bioengineering
University of Washington

Mark your calendars: 2017 Distinguished Lecturer Series!

We are excited to invite internationally recognized leaders in the field of bioengineering to present their work and to engage with our faculty, students and trainees. In 2017, we will welcome:

Christine Schmidt, University of Florida
January 19, 2017
Talk title: Engineering materials for functional nerve regeneration

Karl Deisseroth, Stanford University
May 4, 2017
Talk title: TBD

Innovation and Impact

New hires build global excellence in neuroengineering and immunoengineering research

New faculty Andre Berndt, Amy Orsborn and Azadeh Yazdan-Shahmorad will create a complementary cluster of research expertise in the area of neuroengineering. Assistant Professor Hao Yuan Kueh, an expert in immunoengineering, joined the department in August.

 

For the first time in humans, UW researchers use brain surface stimulation to provide ‘touch’ feedback to direct movement

Ph.D. students Jeneva Cronin, James Wu and Devapratim Sarma, along with faculty co-authors from the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, have demonstrated how direct stimulation of the human brain surface can provide basic sensory feedback through artificial electrical signals.

UW, Academia Sinica researchers develop “drug capture system” to treat limb ischemia

Faculty James Lai, Suzie Pun and Patrick Stayton, and Ph.D. alumnus and affiliate faculty member Patrick Hsieh, are among contributing authors of a paper describing a novel treatment for limb ischemia.

 

Pun lab researchers win national cancer treatment nanotech challenge

The team is one of 10 selected by the National Cancer Institute’s Nanotech Startup Challenge for their proposal to develop a targeted drug delivery system for breast cancer that targets tumor-associated macrophages.

 

Buddy Ratner co-directs new Center for Dialysis Innovation

The CDI hopes to improve the health and well-being of people with advanced kidney disease as they initiate and receive dialysis. Its vision is that future dialysis therapy will be complication-free and completely restorative of kidney health.

Online Master of Pharmaceutical Bioengineering prepares working professionals to drive drug discovery, development

In this professional master’s degree program, students gain cutting-edge knowledge in basic bioscience, drug discovery and pharmaceutics, and learn how to apply their expertise to market-based demands of pharmaceutical industry.

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Faculty Honors and Awards

Kelly Stevens receives NIH Director’s New Innovator Award

In her project “Thermogenetic activation of engineered tissue for cardiac repair,” Kelly Stevens, assistant professor of bioengineering and pathology, aims to build “smart” human heart tissue using stem cells that can be remotely controlled following implantation in a patient.

 

Allan Hoffman, David Baker and Miqin Zhang recognized among 2016’s ‘Highly Cited Researchers’

Professor Emeritus Allan Hoffman, and adjunct faculty David Baker and Miqin Zhang are among 29 UW researchers to be included on 2016’s ‘Highly Cited Researchers’ report by Clarivate Analytics, formerly the Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters.

 

Lara Gamble elected to AVS Board of Directors for 2017-18

Lara Gamble is a research associate professor of bioengineering. AVS (American Vacuum Society) is an international community of scientists, engineers and instrument manufacturers which promotes research and advances knowledge in surface, interface, vacuum and thin film
science/technology.

Cecilia Giachelli Elected to Washington State Academy of Sciences

Cecilia Giachelli joined 12 University of Washington faculty inducted to the Washington State Academy of Sciences in 2016. UW faculty make up half of the 24 new members, who were inducted in September during an annual meeting at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

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Student Highlights

Ph.D. grad Joshua Buser engineers low-cost diagnostics, mentors next generation

A drive to engineer solutions to global health problems drove recent Yager lab Ph.D. graduate Joshua Buser to pursue bioengineering. He aims to bring crucial diagnostic testing to low-resource settings – and increase access to affordable health care closer to home.

 

Nuttada Panpradist wins $50,000 Third Place APF Student Technology Prize

Nuttada, a fourth year Ph.D. student in Associate Professor Barry Lutz’s lab, leads development of OLA-SIMPLE, a rapid, instrument-free device that emulates the diagnostic capabilities of a laboratory to determine HIV viral load and drug resistance at the point of care.

 

Bioengineers without Borders team creates anesthesia delivery device for developing countries

The team, which recently secured a $15,000 grant from Seattle’s PATH, is working to make anesthesia delivery accessible to low-resource regions where critical medical procedures are often not performed.

 

Anna Blakney, Mary Wallingford selected for MIT’s Rising Stars in Biomedical

Recent Ph.D. graduate Anna Blakney (Woodrow lab) and senior fellow Mary Wallingford (Giachelli lab) participated in MIT’s Rising Stars in Biomedical, held November 9-10. The career development workshop unites female and URM postdocs and senior graduate students whose research focuses on biomedical applications.

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Community Highlights

BioE families foster community, mentoring, leadership for undergraduates

As BioE’s undergraduate program increases in popularity and cohort size, BioE ‘families’ seek to maintain a close sense of community while offering undergrads opportunities for leadership and mentorship.

 

BioE honors undergrads train clinicians in toy adaptation

BioE’s WHAT! (Washington Has Adapted Toys!) Bioengineering Honors team recently trained clinicians at Valley Medical Center how to adapt toys to be more accessible to children with disabilities. Their efforts will establish the first adapted toy library in Washington state.

 

Neuroscience in India: Eric Chudler travels to Sherbaling Monastery to teach Tibetan monks

This fall, Research Associate Professor Eric Chudler traveled to Sherbaling Monastery, near Bir, India to teach Tibetan Buddhist monks about neuroscience. Each year since 2011, Dr. Chudler has made the journey to visit the Tibetan monastic community through the nonprofit Science for Monks program.

 

2016 BioE Summer Camp offers high school students opportunity to investigate global health solutions

Since 2014, BioE Summer Camp has provided Seattle-area high school students the opportunity to explore bioengineering and learn how bioengineers are solving problems in global health. Following 2016’s successful camp, BioE looks forward to offering the program again in 2017.

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Featured Publications

Microvascular injury and perfusion changes induced by ultrasound and microbubbles in a machine-perfused pig liver

Keravnou CP, De Cock I, Lentacker I, Izamis ML, Averkiou MA. Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology.

Runx2 deletion in smooth muscle cells inhibits vascular osteochondrogenesis and calcification but not atherosclerotic lesion formation

Lin ME, Chen TM, Wallingford MC, Nguyen NB, Yamada S, Sawangmake C, Zhang J, Speer MY, Giachelli CM. Cardiovascular Research.

A rapid, instrument-free, sample-to-result nucleic acid amplification test

Lafleur LK, Bishop JD, Heiniger EK, Gallagher RP, Wheeler MD, Kauffman P, Zhang X, Kline EC, Buser JR, Kumar S, Byrnes SA, Vermeulen NM, Scarr NK, Belousov Y, Mahoney W, Toley BJ, Ladd PD, Lutz BR, Yager P. Lab on a Chip.

Mechanical stress conditioning and electrical stimulation promote contractility and force maturation of induced pluripotent stem cell-derived human cardiac tissue

Ruan JL, Tulloch NL, Razumova MV, Saiget M, Muskheli V, Pabon L, Reinecke H, Regnier M, Murry CE. Circulation.

Virus-inspired polymer for efficient in vitro and in vivo gene delivery

Cheng Y, Yumul RC, Pun SH. Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

A stimuli-responsive, binary reagent system for rapid isolation of protein biomarkers

Nehilla BJ, Hill JJ, Srinivasan S, Chen YC, Schulte TH, Stayton PS, Lai JJ. Analytical Chemistry.

Detecting default mode networks in utero by integrated 4D fMRI reconstruction and analysis

Seshamani S, Blazejewska AI, Mckown S, Caucutt J, Dighe M, Gatenby C, Studholme C. Human Brain Mapping.

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