UIC Bioengineering Fall 2017 Newsletter

Contents

Message from the Department Head Featured News

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Industry Day Politecnico di Milano M.S. Students Dual Degree Program Empowering Women Leaders in STEM

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Investitures

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Alumni News | RetMap, Inc.

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Department News

BMES IEEE EMBS Event Fall 2017 Graduate Awards

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Student Chapters | BGS & EWH

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New Degree: B.S. Bioinformatics Credits: Front cover photo: Ronald Fernandez, Diane M. Smutny Back cover photo: Brad Cavanaugh Editor: Thomas J. Royston Design: Beiruo He, Alexandros Skouras

Message from the Department Head Dear Friends of UIC Bioengineering, In our Fall 2017 Newsletter, I’m proud to share with you the latest accomplishments of our outstanding faculty, staff, and students. As always, thank you for supporting our continued pursuit of excellence.

Gifts targeted to the department help us achieve our strategic goals, and could include opportunities to endow a named professorship, scholarship, laboratory, or special facility or program.

See our “Make a Gift” link at bioe.uic.edu. In addition to financial support, I know that the network of UIC BioE alumni and friends will continue to help our students find internship and employment opportunities.

I am always happy to meet our alumni and friends and welcome your visit.

Happy Holidays,

Thomas J. Royston, PhD

Photo: Bart Harris

Featured News | Industry Day Bioengineering Industry Day UIC Innovation Center, Nov. 17, 2017

55 Students Attended

15 Employers/Alumni Attended

Photos on the left: UIC Bioengineering alumni, faculty, and partners working in industry connected with our students.

Photo credit: Michelle Johnson

On Friday, November 17th, UIC Bioengineering alumni, faculty, and partners working in industry connected with our students at the 4th annual UIC Bioengineering Industry Day! This is a great opportunity to connect with fellow UIC alumni and former professors, while providing advice and guidance to aspiring bioengineering students.

The primary goal of the Bioengineering Industry Day is to engage with current UIC Bioengineering students in brief discussions about how to transition from college to a career in bioengineering. This is an informal and informational event. You do not have to prepare any materials or presentations. Mostly, be ready to mingle and talk about how you got to where you are today!

If you have any questions about the next UIC Bioengineering Industry Day, please contact Michelle Johnson, Associate Director, UIC Engineering Career Center, at michjohn@uic.edu.

Companies that participated:

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Featured News | Politecnico di Milano M.S. Student Dual Degree program Fall 2017 Exchange Students Since 1999 the UIC College of Engineering has welcomed graduate students, through a contract dual degree MS program, from the Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy. On average, 12 Italian exchange students joined the UIC Computer Science department each year to earn their MS degrees, while utilizing the ample scientific resources and performing research at UIC. In 2016, the program expanded to include the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering, with 17 Milano students joining the inaugural cohort and spending at least one semester at UIC and 16 in the 2nd cohort. Here are the stories from a few...

(L to R) Erika Ferrari, Giulia Gandini, Fabio Pradella, Eleonora Pensa, Beatrice Pazzucconi

Advisor: Salman Khetani Lab: Microfabricated Tissue Models Lab (mtmlaboratory.com)

Erika Ferrari

Fabio Pradella

From Italy to United States of America, from Mediterranean Sea to Michigan Lake, this is my journey. My name is Erika Ferrari and I’m doing the master degree at University of Illinois at Chicago. I’m part of a program that brought 16 students of Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico of Milan to UIC to achieve a double degree in Bioengineering. I’m working on the master thesis in Dr. Khetani’s laboratory (Microfabricated Tissue Models Laboratory) and this is a wonderful experience and opportunity for me because I see things that I could not be able to deal with in Italy. This is the first time that I live so far away from my family for such a long time and it’s not easy at all but fortunately I found a really challenging environment here in US, full of opportunities and that is helping me to fight the homesickness.

Hi, my name is Fabio Pradella and I am one of the Italian students that came here for the double degree program between UIC and Politecnico of Milan. I am doing a master degree in Bioengineering and I am currently working in Dr. Khetani’s laboratory: the Microfabricated Tissue Models (MTM) lab. It’s truly an exciting and challenging experience for me: beside being the very first time I live abroad for such a long time, here university is a little different from ours and the lab work is almost completely new to me. Furthermore, Chicago is an amazing city, full of things to do and see and friendly people to know.

Advisor: Thomas Royston Lab: Acoustics & Vibrations Laboratory (acoustics.mie.uic.edu) It was my first time in the US and outside the EU and coming here allowed me to live in a completely different culture. So far, I’m enjoing my time here in Chicago. Also, the way university works here is completely different from home: here you really have the chance to learn how to do things and improve your skills, while in Italy there are more lectures. I think that coming from that enviroment allows you to really employ all the things you were taught.

Giulia Gandini

Advisor: Christos Takoudis Lab: Advanced Materials Research Laboratory (amrel.bioe.uic.edu)

A really intense program, giving the opportunity to compare two cultures and two scientific research methods in order to grow one of your own taking the best you can from the two.

Eleonora Pensa 2

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Advisor: Xincheng Yao Lab: Biomedical Optics and Functional Imaging Laboratory (yaolab.bioe.uic.edu)

Beatrice Pazzucconi

Even if it may be quite unsettling at the beginning, I think everybody should try to go and see a bit of what it is outside its own institution before actually thinking about hands-on jobs. One could argue about which method is the best, but definitely cannot deny that experiencing different environments, teaching, living styles, climates is extremely enriching for the person and for the community. I also believe this is one key requirement to be able to understand each other better, which is vital if you’re working as a Bioengineer. UIC (and the city of Chicago) is an excellent option for living such an experience and I’m very happy I’ve been able to participate in this program.

UIC-PoliMi experience

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1 “WhatsApp Image...” : Mixed Reality Lab members 2 Enjoying the spring in Chicago (L to R: Lorenzo Rapetti, Andrea Faso, Cecilia Gatti, and Eleonora Tagliabue) 3 Commencement : Graduation ceremony 4 LACE team

Hi there, I am among the students who participated at the UIC-PoliMi exchange program last academic year, and I am writing (together with Andrea, Cecilia and Lorenzo) to share with you some group pictures and feedback about this experience.

The experience at UIC was just amazing. We had the opportunity to be in an international environment and to meet a lot of interesting people.

The four of us who are writing this email worked together with Professor Luciano at the Mixed Reality Lab, and we stayed at UIC an extra semester (during Spring). During the months spent at UIC we became a group of workmates, but especially of real friends, and we called ourselves “LACE Team”. We worked together on the development of a software platform for virtual reality-based simulations, which is called LACE library.

We really enjoyed our time there and we strongly encourage new students to join this program! We miss Chicago a lot!

All the best, Eleonora Tagliabue, LACE Team Fall 2017 | Newsletter

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Featured News | Empowering Women Leaders in STEM #HiddenNoMore The award-winning film Hidden Figures inspired viewers across the world with the true story of the courageous and talented African American women whose contributions at NASA in the 1960s significantly contributed to getting the first U.S. astronaut into orbit. Throughout 2017, U.S. Embassies and Consulates in more than 80 countries have screened the movie for international audiences, generating discussions on race, gender equality, and women in STEM careers.

In the wake of these successful screenings, Hidden Figures has inspired an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) titled “Hidden No More: Empowering Women Leaders in STEM” set for October 2017. This three-week program brings 50 women global leaders who represent “hidden talent” in their home countries to the United States to cultivate relationships with their American counterparts and examine women’s contributions to STEM through research and development; education and teaching; leadership; and public policy formation. Participants explored best practices in the effective recruitment, training, and development of women and other underrepresented groups in STEM and learn how they can institutionalize opportunities for women in their own countries. The University of Illinois at Chicago was proud to host the #hiddennomore international delegation on October 20, 2017, with female leaders hailing from countries as far away as Australia to Uzbekistan. Dr. Miiri Kotche, Department of Bioengineering, coordinated the event in collaboration with WorldChicago, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting citizen diplomacy to advance national security, economic development and social justice through programs that connect the Chicago community with the world. Dr. Kotche moderated a panel of female leaders, who spoke about the role of mentors and challenges faced as females in STEM. The event was hosted by the UIC Innovation Center and the Department of Bioengineering.

Friday, October 20, 2017 Hosted by the UIC Innovation Center Special thanks to Nora Bonnin, Senior Associate Director of the Office of International Affairs and the UIC Innovation Center Refreshments provided by the UIC Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering Organized by Miiri Kotche, Clinical Associate Professor of Bioengineering

RICHARD AND LOAN HILL DEPARTMENT OF

BIOENGINEERING 4

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EMPOWERING WOMEN LEADERS IN STEM Panel Speakers #HiddenNoMore

She has also conducted several studies related to the safety and efficacy of misoprostol in Southeast Asia and Africa, which has led to work with several other international agencies including the Gates and MacArthur Foundations, non-profit organizations and foreign governments to promote implementation of misoprostol into community-based settings in the developing world. Dr. Geller is the Principal Investigator of the National Institutes of Health-funded BIRCWH Program (Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health), and has personally mentored many faculty members and fellows, particularly in research and career development.

Barbara Di Eugenio Barbara Di Eugenio is Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago campus.

There she leads the NLP laboratory (http:// nlp.cs.uic.edu/). She is a native of Torino, Italy; she obtained her Laurea in Science dell’Informazione from Universita’ di Torino (1985), and her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania (1993).

Dr. Di Eugenio is an NSF CAREER awardee (2002) and she was honored with the 2013 Innovator of the Year award from the Chicago chapter of the Association for Women in Science. Her research has been supported

by NSF, ONR, Motorola, Yahoo!, Politecnico di Torino, and the Qatar Research Foundation.

She is a strong supporter of women in science. Since she joined UIC in 1999, she has graduated 37 students, 10 with PhD and 27 with Master’s, of which 14 women (4 with PhD, 10 with MS): this is almost double the national trend of graduate CS degrees awarded to women. At UIC, she was the CS facilitator for WISEST (Women in Science & Engineering System Transformation) from 2012 to 2015. She serves as the treasurer of the AWIS Chicago chapter, on whose behalf she regularly attends the Chicago Public Schools Science Fair, to judge and present awards to projects presented by girls.

Janice Levenhagen-Seeley is the founder and CEO of ChickTech, a national nonprofit that works to increase the gender diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. Janice has a BS in Computer Engineering from Oregon State University and an MBA from Willamette University. She believes strongly that the diversity and strengths that women bring will push technology to even more impressive heights. Her inspiration for creating ChickTech came from her own experiences in computer engineering and the realization that the percentage of women engineering isn’t going to get higher by itself.

Stacie Geller

Colonel Jill Morgenthaler is a woman of many firsts. She was one of the first women to enter an experimental class for women in the U.S. Army ROTC and train as an equal with men. Overcoming obstacles, she was the first woman Battalion Commander in the 88th Regional Support Command Division, the first Brigade Commander in the 84th Division and then rose to the rank of Colonel.

Colonel Morgenthaler was also the first woman to run homeland security for the state of Illinois. During her military career, Colonel Jill led hundreds of men and women around the world in war and peace, and was the recipient of the Bronze Star and the

Janice Levenhagen-Seeley

Colonel Jill Morgenthaler

Dr. Geller is a health services researcher and epidemiologist with expertise in women’s health issues. Dr. Geller has developed an innovative model for early identification of high-risk pregnant women and has done extensive work in Illinois to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality.

Legion of Merit for her lifelong leadership.

Her TEDx Talk, “Fake It ‘Til You Make It,” has been watched by over 40,000 people.

Miiri Kotche Miiri’s focus is on undergraduate education, and she is particularly interested in increasing diversity in engineering. Her role as an educator was motivated by how few female instructors she had as a student. She has introduced female high school students to bioengineering as part of the UIC Women in Engineering Summer Program (WIESP) and is the recipient of the Association for Women in Science Chicago chapter Motivator Award in 2016.

She runs the NIH-funded Bioengineering Experience for Science Teachers (BEST) Program that focuses on increasing bioengineering exposure to Chicago Public High School students, particularly underrepresented minorities, by having science teachers spend six summer weeks in a bioengineering lab to develop a tailored curriculum for their classroom.

Elsa M. Soto Elsa M. Soto is the Associate Director of Women in Engineering Programs at UIC and, in addition to working with students on campus, she coordinates various outreach programs such as Women in Engineering Summer Program (WIESP) and Girls who Code, to encourage young girls to pursue a career in engineering or computer science.

She is also a Professional Member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and currently advises and supports the UIC collegiate section. Elsa has a Masters Degree in Urban Planning and Policy and utilizes her community development skills to demonstrate that, in order to bridge the gender gap in engineering and technology, a multi-sector approach needs to be considered. That to increase the participation of women in engineering at the academic level, universities like UIC, local high schools, corporate partners, and community affiliates all need to work together to promote engineering as a viable career path for women.

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Investitures

Back Row (L to R): Ian Papautsky, Robert Barish (Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs), Pete Nelson (Dean, College of Engineering), Dimitri Azar (Dean, College of Medicine), Tom Royston (Head of Bioengineering) Front Row (L to R): Loan Hill, Richard Hill, Xincheng Yao

Hill Professorships Now Total Six On September 18, 2017, the College of Engineering and College of Medicine jointly celebrated the investitures of professors Ian Papautsky, PhD, and Xincheng Yao, PhD, as the new Richard and Loan Hill Professors. Papautsky and Yao are now two of six professors endowed by Richard (BS ’74) and Loan Hill.

Having both joined the College in recent years, Papautsky and Yao bring expertise to their respective research areas in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering. Papautsky’s lab develops microfluidic systems and point-of-care sensors. These devices, aimed at improving public health and safety, have applications in sorting complex cell mixtures for biopsies or blood analyses and measuring exposure levels in humans to heavy metals like lead and manganese. Papautsky also serves as the co-director of the NSF industry/university cooperative called the Center for Advanced Design and Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics.

Photo upper (L to R): Hua Gao, Ian Papautsky, Prithviraj Mukherjee, Jian Zhou Photo below: Vice Chancellor Robert Barish officially awards professorship to Xincheng Yao.

which will lead to rapid economic growth.” To this end, the Hills have given nearly $9 million to UIC, which includes a $6.5 million pledge— the largest gift in the College’s history—to the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering, named in 2013.

Rick Hill graduated from UIC with a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering. He has 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.

“UIC is a winner, and it’s in a winning position,” says Hill. “It’s located in a world-class city that’s both a leading academic medical destination and has a biotechnology business base that’s poised to expand.”

Ian Papautsky, PhD

Yao, with a joint appointment in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering and the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, develops optical technology for advanced imaging—including super-resolution ophthalmoscopy—of the retina, neural tissues, and endocrine cells in order to reveal distortions at early stages of eye disease. He serves as the instrument core director at the UIC Lions of Illinois Eye Research Institute, which houses his laboratory: the Biomedical Optics and Functional Imaging Laboratory.

Endowed professorships like these ones, the Hills believe, reinforce strong, leading-edge, multidisciplinary research at UIC and strengthen UIC’s role as a major player in Chicago’s biotechnology sector. “The key to success for Chicago and its universities,” says Rick Hill, “will be creating an environment that stimulates investment in breakthrough medical technologies, 6

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Ian Papautsky delivers acceptance speech.

Ian Papautsky received a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University in 1995 and his PhD in Bioengineering in 1999 from the University of Utah. He then joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati as an assistant professor in 2000. There, Ian’s research began to focus on developing microfluidic systems and point-ofcare sensors for improving public health and safety.

In 2008, his lab pioneered inertial microfluidics, an approach that uses hydrodynamic forces to manipulate focusing and positioning of cells or particles within flow without external forces, and can be used for label-free cell separation and sorting.

In 2013, Ian published a paper on the “Fundamentals of Inertial Focusing in Microchannels” which has already received more than 160 citations. He has successfully demonstrated a complete separation and isolation of rare cells, such as human prostate epithelial tumor (HPET) cells, the DU-145 (derived from brain metastasis) cells, and LNCaP cells, derived from left supraclavicular lymph nodes.

Back row (L to R): Taehoon Kim, Taeyoon Son, Minhaj Nur Alam, Asif Anik, Yiming Lu, Changgeng Liu, Benquan Wang Front row (L to R): Devrim Toslak, Vittoria Maneo, Xincheng Yao, Beatrice Pazzucconi

In January 2015 and then again in May 2016 his work was selected for a back cover of the prestigious Lab on a Chip journal (IF ~ 6.5).

adjunct appointment in the UIC Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, on November 1, 2014. He also became director Ian’s research has attracted significant support from diverse of Biomedical Optics and Functional Imaging Laboratory and the funding sources including NIH, NSF, and industry. He has multiple director of Instrument Shop Core in the UIC Lions of Illinois Eye issued and pending patents. A young startup in Singapore by one of Research Institute. The close ties between the Bioengineering his former students, Clearbridge Biomedics, has licensed his inerdepartment and Ophthalmology were key in recruiting Xincheng to tial microfluidics technology for commercializing label-free isolation UIC. At the time Dr. Yao joined UIC he was already PI on two major of circulating tumor cells.

NIH R01 grants and the NSF CAREER Award.

Ian joined UIC Bioengineering, also with membership in the UIC Dr. Yao has been developing optical instruments to achieve funcCancer Center, on August 16, 2016. He is also Co-Director of the tional examination of living neural tissues. While still at Los AlamNational Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Advanced Design os, he was the first person to report functional optical coherence and Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics (CADMIM). tomography (OCT) of stimulus-evoked intrinsic optical signal (IOS) In recognition of his research, Dr. Papautsky has received numerous awards and honors, including the Ohio Bioscience 30 in Their 30s award in 2007 and the Excellence and Service Award from the International Society for Optical Engineering in 2005 and 2007. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Chemical Society.

At the time of his investiture, Ian had authored more than 80 peer-reviewed archival journal publications that have been cited more than 5,000 times, with an h-index of 34, according to Google Scholar.

Xincheng Yao, PhD Xincheng Yao received his PhD in Optics from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001. This was followed by his postdoctoral research at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2001 to 2004. He held a Los Alamos National Laboratory Technical Staff appointment from 2004 to 2006, and served at CFD Research Corporation as a Senior Research Scientist from 2006 to 2007. He joined the University of Alabama at Birmingham as an Assistant Professor in 2007, and was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 2012.

Xincheng Yao joined UIC Bioengineering as a professor, with an

changes correlated with retinal neural dynamics.

Dr. Yao is widely recognized as a pioneer in intrinsic optical signal (IOS) imaging of living systems. He reported the first OCT recording of IOS changes in stimulated retina; and his group demonstrated first IOS imaging of pancreatic beta-cells.

Functional IOS imaging of the retina has tremendous potential to enhance clinical research and eventually the clinical management of eye diseases; functional IOS imaging of pancreatic beta-cells could significantly improve the prevention and treatment of diabetes. Different from many peers in the field of biophotonics technology developments, Dr. Yao does not stop at the surface of beautiful pictures or curves; he looks deeper into the mechanisms that underpin the fast optical signals. His invention of superresolution microscopy through virtually structured detection is considered highly innovative. The ‘virtually structured detection’ method holds excellent potential for enabling superresolution examination of retinal structures, and was instrumental in receiving his second NIH-NEI R01 grant.

Dr. Yao is highly visible in the professional community. At the time of his investiture he had over 60 archival journal publications and more than a dozen awarded patents, had been serving on 4 editorial boards of prestigious journals, and is actively involved in NIH and other funding source proposal reviews, and international conference organization.

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Alumni News | RetMap, Inc. About RetMap, Inc

Meet the Team • Tamas Ban, PhD, MBA President & CEO

RetMap, Inc. was co-founded by three UIC BioE alumni: Dr. Tamas Ban (PhD, 2011), Dr. John Hetling (PhD, 1997), and Dr. Safa Rahmani (MS, 2007). The company was formed to help commercialize a novel diagnostic technology for eye disease developed in Hetling’s Neural Engineering Vision Lab at UIC, the Contact Lens Electrode Array (CLEAr Lens). The CLEAr Lens increases sensitivity to the localized damage caused by retinal disease by adding spatial information to the basic electroretinogram (ERG) test (the ERG is like an EKG of the eye; it measures the electrical activity of the retina). RetMap, Inc. has exclusive license to make and sell the CLEAr Lens technology, which is described in two issued US patents.

While working to bring the CLEAr Lens to market, the RetMap team saw another opportunity to meet the need for an improved single-channel ERG contact lens electrode.

A design concept was developed, prototypes of the new RM Electrode were produced and tested, and results were presented at two international meetings, all within 12 months. At the most recent meeting of the International Society for Clinical Electrophysiology of Vision (ISCEV, http://www.iscev2017.org/), the RM Electrode was recognized with the Marmor Award for Clinical Innovation in Visual Electrophysiology.

The Marmor Award for Clinical Innovation in Visual Electrophysiology is designed to serve ISCEV and the discipline of clinical electrophysiology by encouraging new work that will widen the clinical applications of tests and enhance their practicality. The Award is funded by an endowment from Michael Marmor, Professor of Ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine, California, USA. Increased use of electrophysiological testing may come from demonstrations of medical value, or from improvements in factors such as cost, signal variability, comfort, time, availability, etc. This award is made to innovative projects rather than to individuals, and challenges the recipients, whether junior or senior, to continue the award-winning work to the next level of translation.

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As a Founder, President and CEO of RetMap, Inc., Tamas builds enterprise value and accelerates revenue by finding new revenue streams: new channels, new markets, new products.

He excels in technical and business innovation, emerging trends and markets. Tamas received his PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011 and his MBA from Chicago Booth School of Business in 2016.

Tamas has 22 year innovation/entrepreneurship experience spanning 6 years at Fortune 500 and 16 years in small business environment where he understands the synergies required to bring products to the market regardless of company size.

Marmor Award for Clinical Innovation John R. Hetling presented at the International Society for Clinical Electrophysiology of Vision (ISCEV) meeting 2017.

Left panel The prototype RM Electrode in use. The RM Electrode is the first new design for an ERG sensor in more than 35 years.

Innovative features include a soft, eye-friendly material, an anatomical shape is stable on the eye, an integral speculum that holds the eyelids open during testing, and a recessed electrode that minimizes motion artifact. The design is simple to manufacture, and will be sold as a disposable device.

Middle panel A version of the RM Electrode that is optimized for uniform light distribution within the eye. A light-diffusing layer embedded in the surface helps to spread the light evenly.

Right panel Illustration of light scatter in the eye achieved with the RM Electrode. This feature effectively compensates for poor alignment between the eye being tested and the stimulus source, due to low patient cooperation or nystagmus (involuntary eye movements).

• John R. Hetling, PhD Chief Science Officer

John is a leader and expert in electrophysiology of vision, with many publications in this space. As a Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer, John is responsible for technology and science development. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the departments of Bioengineering and Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. He is also the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Bioengineering and the director of the Neural Engineering and Vision Laboratory, where the RetMap technologies were invented.

• Safa Rahmani, MD, MS Chief Medical Officer

As a Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer, Safa is responsible for overseeing safety and effectiveness of the technologies RetMap is developing, monitors clinical trials and ensuring clinical endpoints are appropriate.

Her responsibilities also include approving marketing materials, brochures, and clinical literature and publications.

She is currently a Vitreoretinal Fellow at The Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (Harvard University). Safa was instrumental in the innovation of the CLEAr Lens system, she has many years of electroretinogram experience both in rodent and human.

in Visual Electrophysiology

Project title Evaluation of a Soft, Disposable ERG Electrode Prototype

Authors John R. Hetling, S. Patangay, J.C. Park, Safa Rahmani, Tamas Ban, J.J. McAnany

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Department News | BMES & IEEE EMBS Event & Graduate Awards BMES Conference 2017 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. UIC was well-represented at this major event of the BMES, including student presentations, noted below, numerous technical poster presentations and our departmental booth in the Exhibit Hall. We hope to see you Fall 2018 in Atlanta.

Advisor: James Lee Lab: Cell Mechanics and Signaling Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Diseases (leelab.uic.edu) Xue Geng presented her research on Effects of substrate elasticity on NOX-mediated superoxide production in Aβ-stimulated microglia.

Tao Teng presented his research on Cytosolic Phospholipase A2 Facilitates Soluble Oligomeric Amyloid-β Uptake through its Effect on Membrane-cytoskeleton Adhesion in microglia.

Xue Geng PhD Student

Tao Teng PhD Student

Advisor: Tolou Shokuhfar Lab: In-Situ Nanomedicine Laboratory (isnl.lab.uic.edu) Over 4,200 people gathered for the 2017 Biomedical Engineering Society’s 49th annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. This year was the highest number of attendees, abstracts submitted, and oral and poster presentations. Despite the staggering number of abstracts submitted, Jodi K. Finlay, an undergraduate student working with Professor Tolou Shokuhfar and her PhD student, David J. Banner, was awarded a certificate of recognition for outstanding achievement by an undergraduate student in a research and design project. This award was presented at the beginning of the lecture for healthcare innovation in front of thousands of attendees. Jodi K. Finlay presented her work on “Biomineralization of Calcium Oxalate Mimicking Kidney Stones with Citrate-Induced Inhibition: Changes in Crystal Structure and Hydration State”. Out of 928 oral presentations and 1948 poster presentations, this was the only research project which focuses on kidney stones at the 2017 BMES annual meeting, albeit having a very high impact on society with costs around $2 billion annually. This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation. NSF has recognized the impact of this research and awarded Prof. Shokuhfar and Shahbazian with $390,000 in funding under the NSF award #1710049. Shokuhfar and her ISNL team are honored to have received this NSF award and are working hard to continually progress and expand this project.

I attended the BMES National Conference to present on Monitoring Insulin Granules via Graphene Liquid Cell-Transmission Electron Microscopy. This was an amazing conference where I learned about the various research projects happening across the nation, talked to graduate admission officers, and made new connections. I obtained helpful information that further increased my knowledge in the bioengineering field. I highly recommend students to attend future meetings and take advantage of the resources and information BMES provides.

Jodi Finlay Undergraduate Student

Meagan Ouy Undergraduate Student

Advisor: Daniela Valdez-Jasso Lab: DVJ Lab I had the wonderful opportunity to present my summer research at the BMES annual meeting last October in Phoenix. In my lab, supervised by Dr. Daniela Valdez-Jasso, we focus on a disease known as Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH). PAH is a severe disease that affects the arteries of the lungs and the right ventricle of the heart. My project was based on investigating the mechanical properties of the pulmonary arteries in healthy and hypertensive rats. This conference allowed me to network with students and faculty across the country. I look forward to attend BMES next year!!

Michael Godoy Undergraduate Student 10

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IEEE EMBS Distinguished Lecturer Event at UIC:

Distinguished Lecturer Dr. Michael Friebe informs students on what he believes to be the upcoming trends in the medical field.

The IEEE EMBS Student Chapter at UIC hosted a Distinguished Lecturer Event on the 28th of November, 2017. We were honored to host Dr. Michael Friebe, a man of many talents and accolades who is truly deserving of the position of distinguished lecturer. Dr. Friebe is a research fellow of Technical University München (TUM), Munich and a professor of Image Guided Therapies at Otto-von-Guericke-University in Magdeburg, Germany. He has started more than 15 companies, 5 as major shareholder/CEO. He is very enthusiastic about teaching innovation generation and MedTec entrepreneurship. He is a listed inventor of more than 80 patents, author of more than100 papers, board member of four medical technology startup companies, and an investment partner of a MedTec investment-fund. Since 2016 he is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE EMBS. Dr. Friebe’s presentation was focused on trends that will become popular in the medical device industry, such as machine learning and the Internet of Things, trends which the medical and scientific community generally agree will see exponential growth in the future and become a cornerstone of future healthcare policies and practices. He also spoke for a time on the current state of affairs regarding healthcare policies and practices, and how they must change if society as a whole desires a healthy population. Advances in technology that can make diagnoses at home would set to eliminate frequent trips to expensive healthcare professionals. In the instance that visiting a healthcare professional is necessary, such as in the case of an MRI or X-Ray procedure, artificial intelligence is on the path of making more accurate diagnoses than doctors. All these factors will greatly change the way we conduct medicine in the future, most likely for the better. And as engineers of the future we should be taking these factors into consideration.

Michael Friebe, PhD

Professor of Catheter Technologies and Image Guided Therapies, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Otto-von-Guericke University (OVGU), Magdeburg, Germany Professor at the Medical Faculty, OVGU Fellow and Affiliated Professor at Technical University München (TUM), Munich, Germany Board Member / Advisor Surgiceye (Munich), Piur Imaging (Vienna), Micro-Dimensions (Munich), Desino (Cologne), Doloysy (Berlin), Context Surgery (Palo Alto) IEEE Member and EMBD Distinguished Lecturer

Fall 2017 Graduate Awards Annual Outstanding Thesis and Dissertation Award Gamze Gursoy, PhD Advisor: Jie Liang

Chancellor’s Graduate Research Award Shreyan Majumdar PhD Student Advisor: Dieter Klatt

Provost/Deiss Award Wei Tian PhD Student Advisor: Jie Liang

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Student Chapters | BGS & EWH BGS “ The Bioengineering Graduate Society (BGS) is comprised of the graduate students in the Department of Bioengineering across both the engineering and medical campuses. BGS aims to make the diverse population of the department, working on varied fields, into a cohesive entity. With this motive, the society holds regular meetings with topics pertaining to graduate school and student interest.

In the 3 years since its conception, BGS has held events / orientations that have helped incoming graduate students acclimatize to the research environment of the department. Another such event was to acquaint the continuing Master’s and PhD students with requirements for preliminary examinations and thesis defenses. The nature of these meetings were quite useful to the graduating students, and helped in mitigating the confusion that usually surrounds these situations. The use of LinkedIn and the importance of virtual and in-person networking was also touched upon during an event hosted in collaboration with people from Engineering Career Center and was of special interest to those among us heading out into industry. For the ones going into academia or maybe stumbling into the next groundbreaking discovery, the nightmare of handling intellectual property was made easier by members from Office of Technology Management, who very kindly came to one of our events and spoke to the graduate students about the diverse types of intellectual property, their nuances, and how to address these issues while doing productive research. Besides all the co-curricular events BGS conducted, it also celebrated Halloween by hosting a movie night and other such social events.

All in all, BGS aims to be an avenue that helps graduate students find their footing in the grander scheme of research, graduation, and employment while still allowing a social setting and the uninhibited exchange of ideas. BGS also aims to expand onto an online platform from 2017-2018 with the predominance of online interactions, especially professional interactions.

”

— Shreya Ghosh

Board Members: Treasurer: Shreyan Majumdar Secretary: Daniel Lee Faculty Advisor: Tolou Shokuhfar, PhD President: Shreya Ghosh

Vice President - Maheshwar Adiraj Iyer

EWH “ Throughout the Fall 2017 semester Engineering World Health (EWH) has pushed this year’s projects to the next level. We have

put aside the Laminar Flow Hood 2.0 project in order to focus on development of a Prosthetic Arm for a little girl in Vietnam as well as developing a Hearing Test Device to allow for self-diagnosis of hearing loss. Both of these projects are on track to produce a functioning prototype by the end of the Fall semester and will continue through Spring 2018. The Laminar Flow Hood 2.0 project will continue this upcoming Spring 2018 semester.

Outreach-wise, EWH participated in this year’s Chicago Marathon in the Molex booth. Additionally, we will be having an upcoming volunteering event named ‘Project C.U.R.E.’ which takes aim at the restoration of medical devices for developing countries around the world.

— Barak Stoltz

”

Board Members: Treasurer: Maxwell McKeough Networker: Genesis Chavez Faculty Advisor: Miiri Kotche, PhD President: Shouvik Sarkar 12

Fall 2017 | Newsletter

Vice President: Barak Stoltz

New Degree: B.S. Bioinformatics About Bioinformatics Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and computing tools for understanding biological data. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combines computer science, statistics, mathematics and engineering to analyze and interpret biological data. Bioinformatics is routinely used in sequencing and annotating genomes and their observed mutations, analysis of gene and protein expression and regulation and prediction of biomolecular structure, and simulation and modeling of interactions of DNA, RNA and proteins. Bioinformatics also plays fundamental roles in analyzing and cataloging the biological pathways and networks in systems biology and is extremely importantly in developing personalized medicine.

About B.S. program The new B.S. program in Bioinformatics will provide high-quality, comprehensive bioinformatics undergraduate training. The program, housed in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering, will be supported by the research and educational expertise from both the Department of Bioengineering and the Department of Computer Science. The synergistic integration and building upon existing programs in the two departments allows the college to offer a unique Bioinformatics undergraduate education that is responsive to growing job opportunities linked to personalized medicine and healthcare. The program will provide students with a well-rounded, interdisciplinary curriculum. The goal of the curriculum is to train students to develop innovative methods and technologies in the field of bioinformatics in order to solve problems and to create new knowledge. Students will be prepared with quantitative skills at the interface of biology, computer science, chemistry, and mathematics.

DRAFT BIOI COURSE TRACK – Students Entering Fall 18 Fall BIOE 101 3 hr Intro to BioE

Spring

Fall

BIOE 102 1 hr Freshman Seminar ENGLish 160 3 hrs

MATH 180 4 hrs Calculus I

Spring

Fall

Spring

Fall

Spring

BIOE 250 3 hr Clinical Problems

SEL 3 hrs

SEL 3 hrs

SEL 3 hrs

Gen Ed 3 hrs

SEL 3 hrs

Gen Ed 3 hrs

Gen Ed 3 hrs

ENGLish 161 3 hrs

PHYSics 142 4 hrs Elec. & Magnetism

PHYSics 141 4 hrs Mechanics

BIOE 205 3 hrs Thermodynamics

Gen Ed 3 hrs

Gen Ed 3 hrs

Math 220 3 hrs Differential Eq.

Note: All required courses except BioE Senior Design I and II are offered twice a year, Fall and Spring. Some SEL and Gen Ed courses only offered once per year.

SEL 3 hrs

MATH 181 4 hrs Calculus II

MATH 210 3 hrs Calculus III

Math 310 3 hrs Linear Algebra BIOE 339 3 hrs Biostatistics

CS 107/141 4 hrs Intro to Comp. Prog.

BIOE 240 3 hr Physiology Modeling

CS 151 3 hrs Math. Foundations BIOS 100 5 hrs Biology of Cells & Orgs

CS 211 2 hrs Prog. Practicum

CHEM 234 4 hrs Organic Chem II

CHEM 122/3 5 hrs Chemistry I

CHEM 124/5 5 hrs Chemistry II

CHEM 232 4 hrs Organic Chem I

17 HRS

17 HRS

17 HRS

15-16 HRS

BIOE 396 3 hrs Senior Design I

BIOE 397 3 hrs Senior Design II

Note: SEL are selective courses chosen from list of mainly BioE and CS course options (see below) depending on student interest and area of concentration. Gen Ed are General Education Requirements chosen from a list of options. Courses in red are selective (1 out of 3)

CS 251 4 hrs Data Structures

CS 401 3 hrs Algorithms I

BIOS 220 3 hrs Molecular Genetics

BIOS 430 4 hrs Evolution

16 HRS

16 HRS

BIOE 480/81 3+2 hrs Intro to Bioinformatics

14 HRS

15 HRS

SEL Options: BioE 310-Biological Systems Analysis; BioE 325-Biotransport; 410-FDA & ISO Requirements; 421-Imaging; 482-Optimization in Bioinformatics; 483-Molecular Modeling in Bioinformatics; CS 341-Programming Language Design & Implementation; 342-Software Design; 347-Commuication & Ethical Issues; 411-Artifical Intelligence; 412-Intro to Machine Learning; 418-Intro to Data Science; 424-Visualization; 477-Policy; 480-Database Systems; Stat 401- Intro to Probability; 471-Linear & Nonlinear Programming; MCS 421-Combinatorics; 423-Graph Theory;

Fall 2017 | Newsletter

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Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering University of Illinois at Chicago College of Engineering | College of Medicine 851 S. Morgan Street (MC 063) Chicago, IL 60607

bioe.uic.edu