UIC Engineering 2014 Spring

A Department on the Rise Spring/Summer 2014

Largest Gift in College’s History Promotes Excellence Jie Liang, Bioinformatician, Works the Data Engineer + Physician = Diabetes Fighting Force BioE Students Join the Medical Team The New Faces of Bioengineering

Table of Contents 1 Message from the Dean

2 A Department on the Rise

4 Jie Liang, Bioinformatician, Works the Data

6 Engineer + Physician = Diabetes Fighting Force

Alumni 8 2014 Commencement Roundup 12 BioE Students Join the Medical Team

14 The New Faces of Bioengineering

Philanthropy 16 Largest Gift in College’s History Promotes Excellence 18 Around the College

20 New Hires Spring/Summer 2014

On the Cover:

José Oberholzer, MD, and Dave Eddington, PhD, colleagues in UIC’s Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering, use microfluidics to fight diabetes.

The College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago publishes UIC Engineering.

We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please direct questions about this issue to Joel Super (jsuper@uic.edu).

Associate Director of Communications: Joel Super Publications Editor: Kirsten Gorton Photographer: Bart Harris Graphic Designer: Edward Lawler Copyright © 2014

Please direct address corrections or mailing requests to: Renata Szandra College of Engineering (MC 159) 851 South Morgan Street Chicago, Illinois 60607-7043 (312) 996-0520 or rszandra@uic.edu

Message from the Dean Dear Friends and Alumni: As some Chicago news sources noted early in the spring, this year marks the centennial anniversary of the Carl Sandburg poem “Chicago”, which introduced the world to the phrase “City of the Big Shoulders.” The citizens the poet championed in the poem worked hard at tough jobs and the images he used to evoke Chicago’s energy, vitality, and economic clout were rough, raw, and industrial.

“As Chicago continues to evolve, the city will still be full of vital, hard-working people, but this new economy will require a new kind of worker and a new category of tools, among them biotechnology tools.”

One hundred years later, the meat-packing industry (among others) is gone and the city’s business mix continues to change. In the midst of that evolution, UIC faculty, administration, and generous donors like Loan and Rick Hill (BS’74) are proposing that biotechnology should be a central part of a new vision for twenty-first century Chicago. The Hills believe so strongly in the promise of this new industry for a new age they’ve supported it with a $6.5 million gift, the largest in the College of Engineering’s history.

As Chicago continues to evolve, the city will still be full of vital, hard-working people, but this new economy will require a new kind of worker and a new category of tools, among them biotechnology tools. Even the way that these and other tools are produced is evolving: we’re particularly proud that the college will play a large role in UI LABS, a private/public consortium located here on Chicago’s Goose Island and aimed at facilitating new digital-manufacturing technology.

The project recently received a $70 million federal grant.

Fundamentally, whether it is the tools themselves or the mode of manufacturing, Chicago’s successful evolution will rely on educating highly skilled citizens who can work in these new arenas or advance the research that drives innovation. The College of Engineering has, historically, done just that and will continue its leadership role in this new age. This issue of UIC Engineering celebrates in particular the bioengineering students, teachers, researchers, and donors whose hard work, vision, and generosity will help the College of Engineering be part of a revitalized “City of the Big Shoulders.”

Sincerely,

Peter Nelson Dean, College of Engineering

1

Tom Royston, PhD, leads UIC’s Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering. His research and teaching focus on the biomedical applications of acoustics and vibration.

A Department on the Rise

by Joel Super

A

recent research collaboration among bioengineering professor Andreas Linninger, PhD, and his graduate students; neurosurgeon Ali Alaraj, MD; and UIC computer scientists will enable surgeons to more effectively visualize cerebral blood flow.

The new tool will assist them in planning complex surgical procedures, with the goal of promoting better patient outcomes. Collaboration in this context isn’t just a synonym for “collegiality” in the university. It’s the way to medical progress.

The Linninger/Alaraj/computer scientist collaboration, which spans the College of Medicine and two departments in the College of Engineering, cogently illustrates the potential for UIC’s bioengineering enterprise both to improve lives and help Chicago evolve into a biotechnology center. As Tom Royston, head of the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering, sees things, bioengineering’s very modus operandi, which applies 2

advances in science and technology

delivery, neural controls and rehabilitation,

in smart ways to improve health-care

computational systems biology,

diagnostics, therapies, and treatments, can

genomics, proteomics, bio-modeling,

be a key driver of that evolution. “And to

and advanced imaging.

be smart,” he said, “the process has to be collaborative: it has to involve engineers on the technology side and physicians on the treatment side.”

Undoubtedly, the intellectual and institutional ground at UIC is well prepared for continuing to move the department forward and increase its regional influence,

The research by Professor Linninger and

noted Professor Royston. Founded in

his graduate students, along with Dr. Alaraj,

1965, UIC’s bioengineering program is one

exemplifies Professor Royston’s principle

of the oldest in the nation, one that eventu-

that bioengineering can use technology in

ally evolved into a department within the

smart ways to improve patient care and

College of Engineering.

thereby address unmet clinical needs.

Aiming to further reduce barriers and

Linninger, Alaraj, and their teams used

facilitate collaboration between engineers

data gathered from separate sources—a

and physicians so that biomedical re-

patient’s magnetic resonance, computed

search, technology, and education could

tomography, and digital subtraction angi-

be enhanced, academic leaders at UIC

ography tests—to create a three-dimen-

began planning in 2008 for the Department

sional walk-in model of the human brain.

of Bioengineering to reside jointly within

The model data were displayed in UIC’s

the Colleges of Engineering and Medicine.

CAVE2TM, an eight-foot high installation of seventy-two stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels that encircle the viewer 320 degrees and create a 3D environment.

Immersion into the virtual reality walk-in brain model allows students and medical staff to display massive data sets, including detailed anatomical aspects that range from large cerebral arteries down to individual capillaries. It also enables the instant display and interaction with never before realized data on cerebral blood flow, including microcirculation computed with massively parallel simulations executed at the Blacklight supercomputer facilities in Pittsburgh. The UIC researchers envision a day when “mini CAVEs” will be located in individual surgical facilities, so that the exceptional computational and visualization tools based on this technology can be deployed to further improve surgical planning.

Like Professors Linninger and Alaraj with their computer science colleagues, other UIC bioengineering faculty are engaged in just such smart ways every day, doing collaborative research into regenerative medicine, transplant medicine, drug

The transition began in August 2011. The repositioning embraces a model shared by some of the premier bioengineering programs in the country, including those at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, and Georgia Tech/Emory University.

As the Linninger/Alaraj collaboration and many others demonstrate, the new model is working.

To help take this newly positioned department to the next level of excellence, Provost Lon Kaufman, the College of Engineering, the College of Medicine, and Mitra Dutta, the vice chancellor for research, committed $3.25 million in seed funding to the department over the course of fiscal years 2012–2016 for new faculty start-up expenses and upgrades to teaching and research facilities. The department’s annual base operating budget is also increasing from $2.05 million in fiscal year 2011 to $3.1 million by fiscal year 2016.

“These investments are critical to support our planned six new tenured/tenure-track faculty lines and the additional staff needed to achieve the department’s research and teaching goals,” said Royston. This insti-

tutional financial investment, along with an additional 6,000 square feet of new laboratory space, has enabled the six new faculty hires and the existing fourteen core fulltime faculty to pursue the research needed to elevate the department’s reputation.

Internal support was enormously enhanced through a recent $6.5 million endowment from alumnus Rick Hill (BS ’74) and his wife Loan. [see page 16 for the Hill’s story] The largest gift in the college’s

history, it will provide critical support for continuing to build the intellectual infrastructure needed to lay the foundation for a thriving Chicago biotechnology industry.

“Having funds in perpetuity brings both prestige and stability to the department,” said Royston. “Otherwise, all research is grant-based and we’re limited in our ability to recruit top-notch faculty in this extremely competitive market. The Hill gift gives us an unprecedented chance to up our game.”

Along with the twenty current bioengineering core faculty members, more than seventy adjunct faculty members from departments throughout UIC’s Colleges of Applied Health Sciences, Dentistry, Engineering, Liberal Arts & Sciences, Medicine, and Pharmacy are working with the bioengineering department. The Hill endowment will enable the department to continue expanding the faculty by establishing endowed positions in emerging areas that will build on current departmental strengths. New positions will, in turn, leverage strengths found at UIC and in the region to address unmet clinical needs.

Surgeons, bioengineers, computer scientists: it’s collaboration among UIC experts like them that provides the fertile environment necessary to connect the latest technological advances to some of the most challenging medical conditions. And UIC’s reenvisioned Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering is the nexus for those collaborations. Together, the work accomplished can both improve the quality of life and enhance the city’s evolution into the bioengineering center of the future. :

3

Jie Liang, Bioinformatician, Works the Data

by Joel Super

B

ioinformatics is not a crystal ball—it’s science— but it does predict medical outcomes, build theoretical models, and suggest research directions using the seemingly magical computational abilities of modern computers. Because it’s science, there’s no Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, either—there are extensively trained people like UIC’s Jie Liang, the Richard and Loan Hill Professor of Bioengineering.

One high-throughput gene test can produce between 10,000 and 30,000 measurement points. Using a computer to analyze this enormous amount of data is the only way to handle it. To make use of the data, bioinformaticians need to create a mathematical model to identify possible intervention points to develop, say, a treatment strategy or a drug. No smoke and mirrors here—interpretation requires concrete and thorough training.

Professor Liang has that training.

He grew up in Chongqing, China, son of a surgeon and a professor of biochemistry and completed his undergraduate work in biophysics

4

at Fundan University in Shanghai before coming to the United States to complete a doctorate in biophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). To feed his growing interest in bioinformatics, he decided also to complete a master’s degree in computer science at UIUC. As Professor Liang’s multiple degrees illustrate, bioinformatics is an inherently interdisciplinary field, combining the two great engines of scientific and technological change during the last half-century: molecular biology and computer science. Within the discipline, there are many subdisciplines, where computer science, statistics, mathematics, and engineering are all deployed to better understand biological processes. Integrating research from the different disciplines is an ongoing challenge and will be for a long time, he believes. “You have to make a commitment to learning the other’s language and think similarly and try to understand the problems,” he said. “You have to work together to get the right data to build the right model and

to make the right predictions—but it’s very fruitful when you do that.”

One of Professor Liang’s collaborations, for example, is with Linda Kenny, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology in UIC’s College of Medicine, who studies bacteria that is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotic treatment. His work in his “dry” lab for this project involves developing software code and theoretical models based on data from Professor Kenny’s lab, in order to make computational predictions that are, in turn, tested in a “wet” lab—i.e., with actual biological cells. Together, they have made progress in understanding how protein pores in these bacteria that control drug processes work. “I got interested in this kind of work when I was doing my first post doctoral research and realized how much you can do with computer modeling and how satisfying it is because you gain so much fundamental understanding,” he said.

As an essential part of research like Professor Kenny’s, bioinformatics ultimately holds great potential to

Professor Jie Liang (center), his research associate, and his graduate students take a break from their computer screens.

(L to R) Gamze Gürsoy; research associate Dennis Gessmann, PhD; Ke Tang; Jieling Zhao; Anna Terebus; Yun Xu, PhD; Wie Tian; and Meishan Lin.

affect patient care, Professor Liang believes, because the convergence of sophisticated inventions for biological measurement and the explosion in computing power make possible new insights into important diseases. For instance, he noted, “It was inconceivable twenty years ago that you could get your own genome mapped; that would be a $1 billion enterprise. Now we’re talking about $1,000, and imagine what you can learn from it—all the bioinformatics and future predictions!”

Despite the great promise in diagnostics and treatment, two issues in his field concern him. The first is the general overall research funding environment in the United States, which, he says, is very tough due to cutbacks in federal support. Without funds for basic research, progress in the field as a whole stalls. Historically, Professor Liang’s major funding has come from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and he has routinely written successfull grant proposals. He is grateful, too, for recent funding from the Chicago Biomedical

Consortium, a private foundation.

And the support from his Richard and Loan Hill professorship is invaluable for his research, he noted.

With it, he can bring speakers and collaborators to campus and travel to conferences himself. Creating and attending events for the exchange of ideas is critical, because where fields are highly specialized, he said, “Your colleagues are in other places. Learning from them and disseminating your research results so they can give you feedback happens a lot in personal interactions at conferences.”

In addition to maintaining funding levels, the other essential for continued progress in bioinformatics, Professor Liang believes, is education. Our society must commit to training students, starting in primary school, so they are excited about this type of work and have the expertise and intellectual capabilities to tackle very complicated problems. Not everyone needs to have a doctorate and a master’s degree to contribute, he notes. There are different levels of work, and we can learn a lot from bioinformaticians

analyzing data with the existing tools. At UIC, though, he said, the goal is to prepare graduate students to be leaders in bioinformatics, going beyond applications and coming up with their own solutions.

“Physical facilities are important, of course, but without the right people it’s fatal. Having good people is the determining factor for a good research program,” he said.

Professor Liang is a bit of the man behind the curtain in one regard: he is doing his best to educate the bioinformatics workforce of the future. He has acted as thesis advisor to thirteen successful doctoral students and is currently working with an additional seven.

And there isn’t a shortage of work for them to do to address the many health-related issues people today want confronted and where bioinformatics can be useful. A note of awe in his voice, Professor Liang said about the future, “There’s just so much data to analyze and so many things to discover.” :

5

Engineer + Physician = Diabetes Fighting Force

by Joel Super

T

he grim picture for chronic diabetes patients commonly includes kidney failure, adult blindness, and limb amputation. Fortunately, there are many good people on the case. Among them, a bioengineer from Schaumburg, Illinois, and a surgeon from Geneva, Switzerland, have combined forces because they believe that, together, they can help paint a happier picture for diabetics in the future.

UIC bioengineering faculty members Dave Eddington, PhD, and José Oberholzer, MD, are collaborating on a process to isolate islet (insulin-producing) cells from the pancreas so that the cells can be transplanted into patients whose own islet cell clusters have been “switched off” and can no longer produce the insulin that’s critical to regulating blood sugar.

Professor Eddington is the guy from Schaumburg, via a doctorate from University of Wisconsin–Madison and postdoctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves as associate professor of bioengineering and director of graduate studies for the Richard and Loan Hill Department of

6

Bioengineering, specializing in finding new applications for microfluidics, a field dealing with the behavior, control, and manipulation of fluids at a submillimeter scale.

Dr. Oberholzer is the guy from Geneva, born in Morocco to a Spanish mother and Swiss father, educated in Switzerland and at the University of Edmonton, where he completed postdoctoral studies. He is a surgeon and scientist who serves as the director of the Islet and Pancreas Transplant Program and the chief of the Division of Transplantation at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System and holds a part-time appointment in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering.

Oberholzer is passionate about finding a cure for diabetes, which currently affects some twenty million people.

“Diabetes never goes away; it is a constant burden and, though diabetics are positive about managing their disease, until they’re off insulin they don’t realize how lousy they were always feeling,” said Dr. Oberholzer. “To tell a patient ‘You no longer have to take insulin’ is hugely rewarding.”

He sees great promise in islet transplantation, a process where, under local anesthesia, islet cells purified from a donated pancreas are placed in the portal vein of the patient’s liver. The liver is the most important organ for controlling blood sugar, and the islet cells stay there, doing their critical work. “In some patients,” said Oberholzer, “one transplant cures; in others, it takes two or three tries. But 60 percent of patients are off insulin after five years.”

Microfluidic Devices in the Battle Against Diabetes Dr. Oberholzer’s expertise meets Professor Eddington’s, so to speak, on some very small microfluidic devices, which Eddington and his doctoral students design and produce in Eddington’s lab. Because the mixing and diffusion of molecules has to work only in a very small place, these microfluidic devices allow the testing of islet cells as if in the body, in real time under a microscope.

This device to help ascertain the suitability of islet cells for transplantation is the most complicated device his lab produces, said Eddington. It is made based on the microelectronics semiconductor fabrication process but produces a tiny three-layer mold made out of light-sensitive epoxy.

The mold is then filled with a silicon rubber and is peeled off to produce a microfluidic device that can be stuck to a glass slide and used for Dr. Oberholzer’s islet research.

Because diffusion occurs at the microscale in a matter of seconds to minutes, they can do lots of interesting things with these devices, Eddington noted, such as showing that islet cells behave differently under low oxygen conditions than at higher ones.

“We used that to show that when you cycle

are currently good ways of determining

labs where advances like these can

patient tissue matches, there is no good

happen, since industry primarily focuses

test to determine the quality of the islet

on profit-making products rather than

cells themselves—how well they are

basic research. Having said that, both

functioning or whether insulin secretion

also agree that, essentially, they run little

is adequate. Oberholzer’s lab is using the

“businesses” in the pursuit of publishable

device to collect data that will then feed into

knowledge that ultimately can improve

a statistical analysis of the outcomes. It will

health. Eddington currently directs the work

take hundreds of patients and years to do,

of five doctoral candidates while Oberholzer

but that, at its core, Eddington

oversees ten students, six of them pursuing

and Oberholzer agree, is what defines

doctoral degrees. All Oberholzer’s students

basic science.

are bioengineers, most are working on

The islet cell testing that Oberholzer can now perform with a microfluidic device designed in Eddington’s lab specifically illustrates the general promise for the healing collaborations possible in bioengineering. Eddington notes that his collaboration with Oberholzer, like most of his work with others, addressed an unmet experimental need that his lab could specifically solve using a microfluidic device to do something new and interesting that had not been done before or could not be done in any other way.

It’s one application of the potential superiority of microfluidic devices to obtain better data and generally improve diagnostics over older analysis methods when working with very small samples from biopsies, blood tests, or any bodily fluid. “Potentially better data if you do it right,” emphasized Eddington, who believes there is also great commercial potential for microfluidics in medical diagnostics.

Oberholzer’s islet cell research, he noted, is a sort of diagnostics for the clinic, adding that their collaboration defines for him the essence of his own work: “For me, engineering means creating to unveil new insights and to heal.”

the oxygen you can precondition islet

The Business of Research

cells to the hypoxic insult produced

The device Oberholzer needed—and

at transplantation.”

The cumulative knowledge gained from Oberholzer’s experiments using Eddington’s device shows significant potential for improving the transplant physician’s ability to predict patient outcomes. While there

Eddington created with his team—has great scientific potential but little commercial potential. Even though the device can facilitate research that will have life-saving effects in the long run, there are only a handful of transplant labs that can use it.

Both men agree that it is only in university

microfluidics, and some are planning to attend medical school.

“For me, engineering means creating to unveil new insights and to heal.”

Dave Eddington, PhD As with any business, capital is key, although unlike most businesses, an academic lab’s entire budget gets spent on research and development. And capital, Eddington and Oberholzer agree, has never been as challenging to obtain as it is today.

But they have successfully secured grant funding (nearly $2.5 million over five years) through the National Institutes of Health for their joint microfluidics work, where they are coprinciple investigators. Each also received grants from other public and private funders for this and related work.

Perhaps most high-profile, Oberholzer has raised money through his leadership of a running team called Cellmates on the Run. Their goal in 2014 is to raise $500,000 for the Chicago Diabetes Project, a world-wide group of scientists, researchers, physicians, and surgeons working to make islet cell transplantation a viable diabetes treatment option.

Struggles against complex diseases clearly involve lots of people in many roles. As a diabetes fighting force, Eddington and Oberholzer seem eminently suited to the parts they’re playing. :

7

Alumni

T

he orchestra played; parents, spouses, and the children of graduates cheered; and the floor marshals kept everything orderly as the college held its 47th annual commencement ceremony on May 10 in the UIC Pavilion. Adding to the impressive pool of more than 23,000 engineering alumni, Dean Peter Nelson and associate dean for the Graduate College Jonathan Art presented degrees in six departments to 362 baccalaureate, 250 master’s, and 45 doctoral graduates. The event featured a commencement address from Christopher Burke, president of Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd. and UIC professor of practice, and a speech to the class from Nedda Djavid (BS ’14). The dean also honored dedicated faculty with an award presentation to professors Nantaporn Ratisoontorn, PhD (UIC Silver Circle Award) and Vahe Caliskan, PhD (Harold A. Simon Award) for their excellence in teaching. :

8

Christopher Burke, PhD

9

10

Chancellor Paula Allen-Meares, PhD

11

BioE Students Join the Medical Team N

by Joel Super

obody is surprised to see white-coated young residents and interns shadowing physicians during their hospital patient rounds. It’s an essential part of medical education. But who expects engineers in the entourage?

Starting soon at University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, some patients can, indeed, expect to see senior bioengineering majors “rounding” with physicians.

The students will be studying medical product design.

Although they probably won’t be in white coats, they will, like the residents and interns, be gaining important patientcentered and physician-informed experience, thanks to a nearly $220,000, five-year National Institutes of Health grant.

Miiri Kotche, clinical associate professor in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering, wrote the grant to create Bioengineering Clinical Immersion, a six-week summer course. Her coprinciple investigators are Tom Royston, PhD, and John Hetling PhD, both colleagues in the bioengineering department. The novel course is designed to provide students hands-on experience in the clinical environment where medical devices are used; help them develop the communication skills essential to effective design; and observe real-time therapeutic treatment before they undertake the Interdisciplinary Medical Product Design (IMPD) course, a two-semester capstone project for all senior bioengineering students.

“Engineers need to understand the full context of a medical device’s use to produce the best design,” Kotche said.

“Seeing the user’s needs and challenges in a clinical situation, getting their feedback, seeing for yourself what might be useful—this opportunity is an excellent way to do that. In the short run, the class will get students up to speed for the IMPD course, making it a richer experience for them.

For the long run, the learning objective is to impart to students a methodical approach to assessing patient and user needs from a human-centered design perspective.”

Up to ten students can participate in the program, which is designed as a paid research internship. Groups of two to three students, guided by a clinical mentor, will gain real-world experience by doing two different hospital clinic rotations, each lasting three weeks. Initially, the host clinics

12

will include hematology/oncology, transplant surgery, anesthesiology, ophthalmology, and orthopaedics. Contact with UIC College of Medicine faculty members, medical students, and other clinicians in this environment will provide students with input as they identify and prioritize both clinician and patient needs.

Coprinciple investigator John Hetling noted that the extended exposure to physicians, residents, and medical students during the course provides an indispensable experiential learning opportunity for students doing medical product design. “It’s great first-hand exposure to see how the HIPPA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] training they’re required to undergo relates to patients’ privacy rights and requirements in a work and research environment. What that does for their ability to articulate issues and incorporate them into their own design work will be immeasurable,” he said.

Concurrent with their clinical rotations, students will attend weekly two-hour lecture/discussion sections to work with Kotche and Susan Sterling, an expert in design research, to help frame their clinical experiences and identify user needs.

They’ll conclude with a final presentation to their clinical mentors. Class time will be spent discussing: • How to conduct responsible research (including the ethics of human subject research) • Human-centered design research • Contextual inquiry and interviewing stakeholders • Analyzing and synthesizing research • Prioritizing user needs Kotche completed her master’s degree in engineering at UIC and worked for eight years in product design, three of those at Abbott Labs in several divisions doing medical product research and design, before returning to UIC to complete her doctorate. Today, she is delighted to be able to combine her education and her industry experience for the benefit of tomorrow’s medical-device developers and the patients they’ll benefit.

“This is my dream job,” she said. :

Miiri Kotche, PhD, is making the clinic part of the classroom for UIC bioengineering students studying medical product design. The experience is part of a new six-week summer immersion course she designed that will be funded by a fiveyear NIH grant.

13

The New Faces of Bioengineering

by Kirsten Gorton

W

hat do a former Naval of-

career at Motorola advanced. Although

work and failure were mutually exclusive.

ficer, an Ivy League alumnus,

both of her parents are electrical engineers,

And so you learn a lot of lessons

and a Cuban émigré have

she never felt pressured to follow in their

doing that.”

in common? All three are UIC-trained

footsteps. “They were very good examples,

bioengineers. How do they differ? One is

but I knew if I didn’t choose engineering it

an undergraduate, one a master’s degree

would be okay as long as I maintained the

candidate, and one a recently minted PhD.

same work ethic they have.”

Whether their work involves developing a synthetic cornea or building a therapeutic robotic hand, though, the impetus for their efforts are the same: each aims to advance human health by applying engineering principles to modern medical issues.

devices class—even though they were

how vital a healthy work ethic would be.

outside of the requirements for his major.

“It was hard, but that didn’t seem like a

That’s when he realized he wanted to be

good reason to quit,” she said. “And I

involved in the design of medical products.

found that a class was enjoyable because

Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago pro-

has been extremely inspirational,” he said.

gramming a therapeutic robotic hand for

“And the research support is unbelievable.

stroke rehabilitation. “I’ve always dreamt

I couldn’t find anywhere else that supports

about the idea of working with robots and

their master’s students like UIC does.” Cur-

people. It’s why I’m really interested in the

rently, he’s working to finish his thesis on

possibility of augmenting human perfor-

the acoustic evaluation of the artificial heart

mance with robotics and using the nervous

pumps called left ventricular assist devices

system in an artificial way,” she said.

(LVADs). The evaluation is a noninvasive

LLC, they developed a hand-strengthening device to help treat patients who have

ing where she is today. “If a toy broke we didn’t throw it away; when the arm fell off we’d fashion a joint out of ceramic play-dough to hold it back up. I think that’s where my interest in bioengineering all began,” she said.

As a child, Perez moved from Cuba to Mexico to the United States as her father’s

14

life almost surreal. “The access I have to current and developing medical technology

held in April. Sponsored by RK Inventions,

her older brother and sees it foreshadow-

Since this discovery, Yost says he finds his

Perez spent last summer interning at the

ect at UIC’s Engineering EXPO, which was

ing up playing with action figures alongside

rowing. He decided to take some bioengineering courses, including a medical

first place prize for their senior design proj-

what her interests were. She recalls grow-

something even more captivating than

UIC as a freshman, she quickly realized

Most recently, Perez and her team won a

Denisse Perez (BS ’14) figured out early on

ences at Cornell University that he found

Entering the bioengineering program at

it was difficult.”

Denisse Perez, Undergraduate Student

It was while Yost studied biological sci-

undergone hand surgery. “Experiences like this one have shown me how much I’d like to work in research and development. To be part of the whole process of creating a product or figuring out how a product should work would be a dream come true.”

Gardner Yost, Master’s Student During his undergraduate years, Gardner Yost (MS ’14) might have said that competitive rowing was his greatest passion— possibly because it taught him so much.

“It was the type of thing that the more work you put in the more results you saw.

But it also wasn’t something where hard

method of monitoring these implantable cardiac support devices.

“The work I am doing has the potential to improve detection of complications. It’s such an incredible prospect that I truly can’t wait to get to work every day.”

Gardner Yost Outside of his research in the lab, he works at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn performing in vitro experiments and listening to patients’ implanted pumps to collect clinical data for his analysis. Yost noted that he meets some patients in such severe cardiac failure that they are short

as a preclinical scientist for Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson.

As a kid, Zellander’s curiosity drew her to science, but she believes being where she is today lies partly in serendipity. “It was a huge blessing that the city of Memphis— right around the time that I was coming into school—just happened to put more focus on math and science programs,” she said.

After attending a magnet high school, Zellander went on to pursue biomedical science at the University of Pennsylvania where she joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. And later, she did master’s degree work in biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University during her active duty in the U.S. Navy as

of breath at rest. “But the LVADs restore

an oceanographer.

blood flow, including oxygen perfusion

“At first I was worried that being in the

to the brain, and patients feel better and regain some function. It’s so amazing to see.” For him, bioengineering is equally challenging and deeply satisfying.

While he remains involved in rowing as a coach for the Lincoln Park Juniors, Yost knows his future career trajectory lies in bioengineering. “The work I am doing has

Navy had nothing to do with bioengineering. I thought I had taken a wrong turn,” she said. But Zellander now sees how pivotal the Navy was in bringing her dreams to fruition. “I saw while I was in the Navy that there was just so much more that I could achieve,” she said. She believes her

Photographer: Jeff Fusco

growth there gave her the confidence to do what she always dreamt of doing: pursuing

2013. “Amelia is a remarkable woman. She

plications which affect a patient’s quality of

a doctoral degree.

readily accepts challenges and possesses

life and help physicians treat them before

And so after completing her active duty

the potential to improve detection of com-

they become life-threatening,” he said.

“It’s such an incredible prospect that I truly

in 2008, Zellander knew all signs pointed

incredible resourcefulness to overcome them,” said Dr. Cho.

to UIC. “I needed to choose a place

Zellander knows from her time at UIC that

that would allow me to do the research I

developing biomaterials is a challenge, but

wanted to do,” she said. That the program

her determination trumps any difficulty.

she had chosen was in a dynamic world

“When I’m trying to create something

in medicine. But during high school, with

city was a bonus, she thought.

that doesn’t already exist, the goal posts

exposure to laboratory work, I realized I

After working for four years—with adviser

can’t wait to get to work every day.”

Amelia Zellander, PhD Graduate “I knew for a long time that I was interested

liked to be creative in that way and began trying to find an opportunity to connect medicine and engineering,” said Amelia Zellander (PhD ’13), who now works

Michael Cho, PhD—to create a prosthetic cornea implant made of synthetic polymers that would self-adhere to the eye, she suc-

change throughout the game, and it’s stressful. But because I really love what I am doing, it’s more rewarding than anything else.” :

cessfully defended her dissertation in May

15

Philanthropy

Largest Gift in College’s History Promotes Excellence

“W

e can’t base our goals for where we want to go on what is, but on what

should be,” according to retired CEO, entrepreneur, and alumnus Rick Hill (BS ’74).

“The key to success for Chicago and its universities will be creating an environment that stimulates investment in breakthrough medical technologies, which will lead to rapid economic growth,” he said.

Hill and his wife, Loan, have pledged $6.5 million to the Department of Bioengineering to help lead the way in this vision of UIC and Chicago. The gift, the largest in the college’s history, brings the couple’s total giving to UIC to nearly $9 million. They believe more donors should get on board, invest, and make this vision of the university and of the city a reality. Passionate about medicine and education—Hill majored in bioengineering with an eye toward medical school—bioengineering at UIC is a natural for his support, he said.

Of course, how and why individuals give differ as much as they themselves do, Hill added. “Lots of people think of philanthropy as total altruism, but that isn’t the whole picture. For me, the good feeling I get through giving is important too. For others, it may be mostly about giving back, or gratitude, or pride in a great institution.”

For the Hills, there’s also a strongly practical side to the philanthropic choice to support bioengineering at UIC. They see huge potential in the convergence of technology and biology for solving growing medical problems like glaucoma and cancer that beset our aging population. Investing in research is the key to tackling those problems. By supporting new endowed chairs, professorships, fellowships, and program

16

initiatives, their gift will promote the leadingedge, multidisciplinary work that can generate revolutionary and translational discoveries. “That’s impact for your giving,” said Hill.

Hill’s career in business has attuned him to the need for efficiency while maintaining quality, and he also sees in medical technology significant potential for improving patient care while bringing down costs.

“Imagine if we did a complete body scan in fifteen minutes using an 11.4 Tesla MRI like the one we have here at UIC, along with a complete blood work-up, all for $250,” he said. “Comparing the results to data amassed from years of bioinformatics data collected at UIC, a doctor would have a great picture of the patient’s overall health.”

“Rick and Loan’s gift comes at a critical time following our strategic repositioning of bioengineering within both the College of Engineering and the College of Medicine,” said Peter Nelson, dean of the college.

“Their vision and generosity will strengthen UIC’s role as a national leader in bioengineering research.”

After working his way through his sophomore and junior years at Chicago’s Brother Rice High School because he thought he’d get the best education there, Hill graduated early from Blue Island’s public high school to earn college money and then worked his way through UIC. Following a six-month stint in the U.S. Navy (an ear infection ended his naval career) Hill was out and looking for a job in a difficult market. “That was serendipitous, because if I’d been on tour for six years, I couldn’t have gotten the start to end up where I did,” he said.

Subsequently, Hill held engineering and management positions at Hughes Aircraft, Motorola, General Electric, and Tektronix.

In 1993, he became CEO of Novellus Systems, a small semiconductor capital equipment company in Silicon Valley, which he led to become one of the top ten semiconductor equipment manufacturers in the world before stepping down in 2012.

Mrs. Hill, who is from Vietnam, was separated from her brothers and their parents during the fall of Saigon in 1975. She and her sisters escaped by a U.S. C-130 transport plane and the boys and their parents later fled by a leaky boat and were rescued by a cargo ship. All spent time in refugee camps and were, with some luck, finally reunited, before going on to build productive lives for themselves.

Comparing the challenges in their lives, Hill said, “I thought I had a tough life, growing up on the South Side and working my way through school—until I met Loan.” Mrs. Hill, says her husband, has always been a hard worker and an advocate of self-improvement. As a teenager, she, too, worked (for a butcher) while going to school and then went on to graduate from San Jose State University with a degree in computer science. She built her career in the computer industry.

Today, investing in the future occupies the Hills just about full time. They believe strongly that the world’s future lies in urbanization. “UIC is a winner and it’s in a winning position—located in a worldclass city that’s both a leading academic medical destination and has a biotechnology business base that’s poised to expand,” Hill said. “We hope our latest gift will help kick-start UIC to become a major player in the biotechnology sector: it should and can be a magnet for public-private partnerships.” :

Rick and Loan Hill have pledged $6.5 million to help UIC become a major player in the biotechnology sector.

17

Around the College Professor Sloan Writes Book on Internet Security With ongoing technological advancements, online security has become an increasingly pressing issue. Robert Sloan, professor

UIC’s CAVE2™ System, which facilitates research through visualization, is poised to play an important role in UI LABS’ Digital Lab for Manufacturing. Here, data from the National University Rail Center related to high-speed rail operations is rendered in virtual reality. Photo: Lance Long

and head of the Department of Computer Science, knew that finding solutions to the problem would involve combining disciplines. “I realized that most of the writing about security and privacy in the legal scholars’ community was somewhat technically naïve and that almost all of the writing about security and privacy in the computer science community—even some very good writing about the influence of economics— pretty much totally ignored legal issues,” Sloan said.

Teaming up with Richard Warner, professor at the

computing technologies to current manu-

• Assistant Professor Chris Kanich,

facturing challenges. UIC’s CAVE2™ Sys-

PhD, Department of Computer Sci-

tem (pictured above) can provide advanced

ence, was awarded a $596,970 NSF

visualization to facilitate the research and

CAREER Award for a project to help

promote the capabilities of the new lab.

secure our digital lives by creating a

The initiative brings together forty industry

methodology to identify an individual’s

partners; more than thirty academic, gov-

private data that is useful to cyber

ernmental, and community partners; and

criminals so that security systems can

more than 500 supporting companies and

incorporate these values using a data-

organizations, which have, combined, com-

driven, defense-in-depth approach.

mitted over $250 million in matching funds.

For updates and more information,

• Assistant Professor Ying Liu, PhD, Department of Chemical Engineering,

Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent

visit uilabs.org.

was awarded a $400,163 grant from

College of Law, the two have endeavored

New Faculty Research Funding

ment Program to conduct research with

to bridge the gap between technology and policy in understanding the issues surrounding online security. The book, Unauthorized Access: The Crisis in Online Privacy and Security, is available on Amazon.

UI LABS Lands $70M Federal Grant UI LABS has been awarded a $70 million Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) grant from the Department of Defense to help fund Chicago’s new Digital Lab for Manufacturing, a part of President Obama’s vision to revive U.S. manufacturing. UIC is among the twelve core academic partners on the DMDII grant.

UI LABS, which involves all three University of Illinois campuses, began more than two years ago with the goal of applying cuttingedge mobile, cloud, and high-performance

18

The evaluation of soybean droplets in the bloodstream, the prediction of the long-term behavior of steel-encapsulated nuclear waste, the contextual protection of private data storage, and the production of nanoparticles to detect and treat complex diseases: all these are new engineering research projects being conducted on UIC’s campus.

• Professor Ernesto Indacochea, PhD, Department of Civil & Materials Engineering, was awarded $700,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to create the first predictive model to evaluate how nuclear waste encapsulated in corrosion-resistant metals and oxides will degrade over a long period of time.

The work is a collaboration of UIC and the Chemical Science and Engineering Division of Argonne National Laboratory.

the NSF Early Faculty Career Developpromise to treat complex diseases with nanotechnology. Her work focuses on achieving a comprehensive understanding of the competitive kinetics required to design, optimize, and consistently generate polymeric nanoparticles that encapsulate water-insoluble drugs and deliver them with maximum efficacy.

• Assistant Professor Belinda Akpa, PhD, Department of Chemical Engineering, is part of an interdisciplinary group of researchers at UIC that will investigate whether a therapy currently used to treat certain drug overdoses may be protective in the event of a chemical attack.

Her portion of the $3.5 million five-year NIH CounterACT grant is $247,361 to study how droplets of soybean oil injected into the bloodstream could

rapidly trap a toxin that would otherwise

Award for Excellence in Teaching. He teach-

cause potentially fatal internal bleed-

es mathematics for engineering concepts

ing or long-term neurological injury.

to undergraduate and graduate students.

Student Teams Bring Home Trophies UIC’s Chicago Engineering Design Team (EDT) dominated the prizes at the 27th Annual Jerry Sanders Design Competition (JSDC), the Midwest robotics event held March 14­–15 at Urbana-Champaign.

The 25-member team won first place and most points in a single round with its robot, Richard, and third place with robot Glados, which earned “Most Minimal Design.”

Danilo Erricolo, PhD, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Dale Reed, PhD, clinical professor of computer science, were recognized by the UIC’s Teaching Recognition Program for their excellent classroom performance over a three-year period.

Professor Erricolo teaches modern linear optics and electromagnetic compatibility, electromagnetic scattering, and electromagnetic field theory. Professor Reed teaches the computer science introduction course and programming design, and he partners with Lane Technical College Prep to teach computer science to high school students.

New Research Holds Potential for Synthetic Gasoline Production UIC researchers have found a new way to reduce carbon dioxide using a cocatalyst system that efficiently converts carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide using inexpensive, First-place-winning robot, Richard, during production

easy to fabricate carbon-based non-fiber

This year’s success marks the third year

Khojin, professor of mechanical and indus-

in a row the team has earned first place

materials. The team is led by Amin Salehitrial engineering and includes first author

at the competition.

Bijandra Kumar, UIC research scholar, and

UIC’s chapter of the American Society of

Asadi, Davide Pisasale, Suman Sinha-Ray,

Civil Engineers (ASCE) took several prizes at the ASCE Great Lakes Conference held on April 11­–12 at Urbana-Champaign, including third place overall and first place in the environmental competition. The team also won third place in the steel bridge competition, earning them a ticket to the National Student Steel Bridge Competition.

UIC Awards Engineering Faculty Efforts Four engineering faculty members were recognized this year in the areas of research and teaching. Philip Yu, PhD, professor of computer science, was named as a 2013 Researcher of the Year recipient by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research.

Professor Yu’s work focuses on using vast sets of data to identify valuable patterns.

Ludwig Nitsche, PhD, associate professor of chemical engineering, was given the

coauthors Jeremiah Abiade, Mohammad and Alexander Yarin. They hope these findings will lead to commercially viable processes for the production of syngas, gasoline, and other energy-rich products. : (L-R) Amin Salehi-Khojin, Bijandra Kumar, Mohammad Asadi

Spring Opportunities for Students Whether it’s helping admitted students transition into college or assisting seniors with networking for their future careers, the College of Engineering supports all of its students with a variety of events each spring.

• In February, the college held its annual Engineering Career Fair, hosting sixty-eight companies to match students with internship, coop, and full-time employers. Nearly 1,300 students attended.

• Under the auspices of the Minority Engineering Recruitment & Retention Program, events in March included a black-faculty brunch for African American admitted candidates and their family members, and the first College of Engineering recruitment event for prospective women students.

• In April, UIC held its first IGNITE: Admitted Student Day, a day designed to give prospective students direct access to their college and academic programs, including college programming, financial aid seminars, and housing and campus tours.

• At the end of April, as the culmination of their undergraduate studies, seniors participated in the 25th Annual Engineering EXPO— the college’s senior design competition—completing and presenting sixty-eight projects to UIC engineering alumni and industry judges, fellow students, and visiting grade school students. :

19

New Hires José Oberholzer, MD

Professor, Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering; C. & B. Frese and G. Moss Professor of Surgery, Endocrinology, and Diabetes; Director of the Islet and Pancreas Transplant Program; Chief of the Division of Transplantation Dr. Oberholzer studied medicine at the University of Geneva, as well as at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he completed a fellowship in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery and transplantation.

He has been heading UIC’s Islet Transplant Program since 2003, leading a comprehensive multiorgan transplant program with emphasis on transplantation for diabetes, as well as on robotic surgery in living donors for kidney, liver, pancreas, and small bowel transplants. Dr. Oberholzer has dedicated his career to finding a cure for diabetes and, to this purpose,

Vuk Uskokovic, ´ PhD

Assistant Professor, Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering Professor Uskoković earned his undergraduate degree in physical chemistry from the University of Belgrade, his master’s degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Kragujevac, and his doctoral degree in nanosciences and nanotechnologies from the Jozef Stefan International Postgraduate School. He has been a research fellow of the National Institute

the heart. At UIC, she will continue her research in soft-tissue biomechanics and in multiscale mathematical modeling of tissue function, particularly as they pertain to understanding the vascular adaptations to pulmonary hypertension.

Brian Chaplin, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering Professor Chaplin holds undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota in civil engineering and a doctoral degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in environmental engineering. He became interested

Craniofacial

in electrochemistry

Research and in 2013 he was awarded a

as a postdoctoral

certificate for innovation by the American

researcher in the

Chemical Society. Professor Uskoković’s

Department of

main research interests include

Chemical and

nanostructured materials for drug delivery

Environmental

and tissue engineering applications. Here at UIC, he will continue his research in the design of a new generation of biomaterials for hard tissue engineering, particularly in the treatment of bone disease.

global collaboration for a functional cure of

Daniela Valdez-Jasso, PhD

Assistant Professor, Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering Professor Valdez-Jasso earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees in applied mathematics and her doctoral degree in biomathematics from North Carolina State University.

During her postdoctoral training, Professor ValdezJasso investigated the tissue structure

20

pressure-overloaded right ventricle of

of Dental and

founded the Chicago Diabetes Project, a diabetes through cell-based therapies.

and biomechanics of the normal and

Engineering at the University of Arizona. Professor Chaplin’s research focus is on novel electrochemical and catalytic processes for water treatment with an emphasis on developing technologies that promote water sustainability.

Benjamin O’Connor, PhD

Assistant Professor, Civil & Materials Engineering Professor O’Connor earned undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota in civil engineering. Prior to joining UIC, he worked for Argonne National Laboratory as a hydrologist and was a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. Professor O’Connor plans to continue research he began during his postdoctoral training examining the role of fluid motion on ecological processes in watersheds.

and is the recipient of the outstanding of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Professor Seferoglu earned her doctoral

Igor Paprotny, PhD

degree in electrical and computer

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

California, Irvine, her master’s degree

Professor Paprotny holds a doctoral degree in computer science from Dartmouth College, undergraduate and master’s degrees in industrial engineering from Arizona State University, and an engineering diploma in mechatronics from the NKI College of Engineering in Oslo, Norway. In addition to his UIC

Mahshid Amirabadi, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering Professor Amirabadi earned her doctoral degree from Texas A&M University, her master’s degree from the University of Tehran, and her undergraduate degree from Shahid Beheshti

Hulya Seferoglu, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

dissertation award from the Department

appointment, he is an affiliated scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and is the founder and lead of the UIC/ LBNL/UCB Air-Microfluidics group.

His research includes the applications of MEMS technologies to distributed microsensors for electric power systems,

engineering from the University of in electrical engineering and computer science from Sabanci University, and her undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Istanbul University.

Before joining the University of Illinois at Chicago, she was a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Seferoglu has worked at Microsoft Research Cambridge, Docomo USA Labs, and AT&T Labs Research as a summer research intern. Her research interests are in the general areas of network optimization and design, wireless networks, network coding, and multimedia networking. :

air microfluidics for environmental monitoring, and microrobotics.

University—all in electrical engineering. Her main research interests and experience include design, analysis, and control of power converters; renewable energy systems; and variable speed drives, publishing more than twenty papers in IEEE conferences and transactions on these topics. Professor Amirabadi is the coauthor of a book chapter, has two pending U.S. patents,

21

College of Engineering 851 South Morgan Street Chicago, Illinois 60607-7043