BME core faculty member, Dr. Caterina Gallippi, has been awarded a TraCS $2k grant from the UNC Chapel Hill based North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute. This support is for a project titled “The feasibility of ARFI bleeding rate and time to hemostasis measures in hemostatically normal dogs with antithrombotic therapy.” Their project will start shortly, will run for up to a year. The TraCS Research Navigator for Dr. Gallippi’s project will be Dr. Thomas Egan. TraCS Research Navigators are faculty members with backgrounds in translational and clinical research who help researchers navigate resources both within TraCS and across campus, as well as connect researchers with potential collaborators. Congratulations Caterina for receiving this endorsement and support from the NC TraCS Institute.

 

As the 2011-2012 academic year closes, BME notes the 16 BME Undergraduate majors who were honored as Abrams Scholars or Lucas Scholars. Abrams and Lucas Scholars are outstanding BME undergraduate students who conduct research with a faculty mentor.

The Abrams Scholar program honors C. Frank Abrams, Jr., a BME and BAE emeritus faculty member. Dr. Abrams led the development of the first courses in Biomedical Engineering at NCSU and was instrumental in the creation of the Joint BME department. He was the first senior design instructor as well as the first Director of Graduate Studies of the department. He was a founding faculty member of the NC State University Biomedical Engineering department and was instrumental in forming first a joint graduate program in biomedical engineering with UNC-Chapel Hill and subsequently a joint department of biomedical engineering.

The 2011-2012 Abrams Scholars are:
Michael Browne; Brenton Coburn; Abigail Fulp; Chris Gardner; Ahsan Mahmood; Andrew Miller; John Miller; Daniel Salo; William Stoy

The Lucas Scholars were named to honor Carol Lucas a former chair of the BME department at UNC from 1989 to 2001. She joined the BME faculty in 1973 after completing her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and Math at UNC. The goal of this program is to encourage interaction between UNC and NCSU through undergraduate research. Lucas Scholars work over the spring, summer and fall semesters of 2012. In the spring, the Scholars will become familiar with lab techniques, background research and other important aspects of the research project. They work full-time over the summer for 8 weeks in a UNC lab.

The 2011-2012 Lucas Scholars are:
Charlie Brady; Naucika Desouza; Travis Eason; Sara Oliver; Connor Puett; Kristen Sheerer; Emma Tucker

BME is pleased to announce the selection of three BME UNC-Chapel Hill Undergraduate majors, Connor Puett, Kristen Sheerer, and Sara Oliver, as recipients of support for undergraduate research, mentored scholarship and creative performance during the summer of 2012. Connor, Kristen, and Sara were selected for one of the limited numbers of Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) awards by the Office for Undergraduate Research and will receive a minimum of $3,000 to support their summer research. They will engage in undergraduate research, scholarship or performance for at least 9 weeks this summer under the supervision of BME faculty research advisors. Connor Puett will be working in Paul Dayton's lab, Kristen Sheerer in Nancy Allbritton's lab, and Sara Oliver in Rich Goldberg's lab. BME joins the Office of Undergraduate Research in offering Connor, Kristen, and Sara congratulations for this achievement.

The Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network, Carolina KickStart of the NC TraCS Institute, Innovate@Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Office of Technology Development and RENCI are presenting the 2012 Emerging Company Showcase on April 18, 2012 from 6:00pm - 8:30pm at the Friday Center. The Emerging Company Showcase highlights early-stage companies spinning out of UNC. Showcased companies present short pitches about their big idea. Five of the eight companies presenting in the Scientific track are spin-outs by Biomedical Engineering students, faculty or affiliates: Augment Medical (Richard Daniels and Tim Martin; graduate students), Cell Microsystems (Nancy Allbritton and graduate student Pavak Shah), Cortical Metrics (Bob Dennis, Mark Tommerdahl), Katharos (Marian McCord), and RealTromins (Keith Kocis, Steve Quint).

For more information and to register for this event:

http://tracs.unc.edu/events-other-training/event/591/individualregister.html

FARRIS RECEIVES NCSRR FELLOWSHIP FOR 10 WEEKS AT STANFORD THIS SUMMER!
Dr. Dominic J. Farris, a postdoctoral scholar working with Dr. Greg Sawicki in BME's Human PoWeR Lab has been named a 2012 Visiting Scholar at the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research (NCSRR) at Stanford University (http://opensim.stanford.edu/about/index.html). Dr. Farris was selected from a large and highly competitive applicant pool and his proposal was judged to have great potential to have a significant impact in the fields of biomechanical simulation and rehabilitation.

Dr. Farris will join the other NCSRR Visiting Scholars and the OpenSim software team on the Stanford University campus for 10 weeks this summer (mid-June to end August) with a stipend of 15,000$ to support his stay. Using the Stanford-based OpenSim software, Dr. Farris will work on developing the first ever forward dynamics computer simulation of human locomotion with a wearable robot (i.e. passive elastic ankles). Dr. Farris will bring a large data set, including functional ultrasound images, that he has collected in Dr. Sawicki's Human PoWeR Lab over the last year to drive his simulations. The resulting simulations will improve our understanding of how mechanical assistance from such devices influences individual muscle behavior and will form the basis for computer-based optimization of assistive robots to aid locomotion in clinical populations (e.g stroke, spinal cord injury).

On April 2, 2012 BME’s Administrative Manager, Rekha Balasubramanyam, received NC State University’s Pride of the Wolfpack Award. The Pride of the Wolfpack award is an "on the spot" award designed to recognize NC State employees for a special or unique contribution to their college or the University. The criteria for selection includes: Leadership; Customer focus; Business results; Quality of service; Delivery of service to students, staff and faculty; and Quantity/Quality of work over period of time. Rekha was nominated by Joint Biomedical Engineering Chair, Dr. Nancy Allbritton, for excelling in all of these criteria. As a winner, Rekha received a framed award certificate and was honored at the most recent Joint Biomedical Engineering Department meeting for her extraordinary efforts on BME’s behalf. Congratulations to Rekha for receiving this well deserved award!

Last September NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson launched a faculty hiring initiative, the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence program. He set aside $5 million to partner with NCSU academic colleges to bring either individual scholars or clusters up to 3 faculty to campus in strategically important areas; with an emphasis given to attracting scholars with diverse disciplinary skills representing more than one academic department and preferably college. The Chancellor solicited groups of faculty to propose strategic areas for hire. BME core faculty member, Elizabeth Loboa, along with her BME affiliate collaborators Kyle Mathews (Clinical Sciences), Jorge Piedrahita (Molecular Biomedical Sciences), Behnam Pourdeyhimi (Associate Dean, COT), and Richard Wysk (Industrial and Systems Engineering) submitted a proposal titled “Translational Regenerative Medicine Initiative - From Bench to Clinics.” This proposal has been selected to receive funding for three positions. Over 70 Faculty Excellence proposals from faculty in all 10 NCSU colleges were submitted and 17 were selected for funding in 12 cluster areas in this round. The Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering congratulates this team for their achievement and looks forward to the outstanding BME related faculty who will be recruited and supported as a result of their effort!

BME affiliates Dr. Ola Harrysson and Dr. Denis Marcellin-Little design, build, and implant artificial knee in Cat cancer survivor.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/01/26/1807099/cat-10-and-cancer-free-to-get.html

The Rehabilitation Engineering Center announces the awards of two pilot grants totaling $50K to facilitate collaboration between UNC and NCSU faculty for attaining larger grants, and to foster collaboration between undergraduate engineers at NCSU/UNC and Health Sciences students at UNC. These two grants will foster advancement of clinically relevant rehabilitation engineering research.

 

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