UIC Bioengineering Spring 2015 Newsletter

BIOENGINEERING

SPRING 2015 NEWSLETTER IN THIS ISSUE:

50 Year Message from former Head

EWH Trip to Vietnam

New Faculty Profiles

Recent Graduates

Faculty News and FESP

Student Awards/Cover Image

James Patton - UIC and RIC

UIC Bioengineering Student Journal

See description of images on page 10 “Cover Page Research Image”

50 Years UIC Bioengineering

UIC BioE Department Is 50 Years Old: Looking Back at its Founding Head Lawrence Stark

Written by: Professor Richard L. Magin (BioE Head 1999 – 2009) Half a century is a long time, and whether we are talking about the department, our lives or an old car, hitting ‘Fifty’ is a number that brings pause to the conversation. In books, wine or collectables, 50 years is termed, ‘vintage’, which carries the connotation of depth and maturity. Certainly in the case of the department and the discipline of bioengineering, 50 years is a milestone of growth and development.

By all academic measures (number of graduates, size of faculty, and impact factor for publications), bioengineering is a mature discipline (now in the US there are almost 100 ABET certified BioE degree programs; UIC was the 3rd – approved in 1976). Therefore, it is probably apt to take a moment to reflect on the growth of bioengineering in general and on the key role played by BioE at UIC, in particular. Given limited space and the kaleidoscope of topics that encompass bioengineering, I will focus only on one sub-discipline – neural engineering – and on one individual, our founding department head, Lawrence Stark. But, keep in touch, as there will be a series of events and activities all year long to commemorate this anniversary.

In the language of a Venn diagram, bioengineering can be seen to expand from 1965 to 2015 at the intersection of biology, engineering and medicine (Figure 1). Early attempts to measure and model physical, chemical, and biological phenomena in a quantitative manner began in the 19th century during a time that historian, Richard Holmes termed, “The Age in Wonder” in his 2008 book with the same title. Among the many contributors who extended these models to medicine, the work of Hermann von Helmholtz stands out for its rigor in the application of physics and mathematics to vision and hearing (surprisingly, Helmholtz, now known primarily as a physicist, began his career as a physiologist). This progress led, for example, to definitive work on the electrical properties of membranes, cells and tissue by K.W. Wagner, H. Fricke, J. F. Danielli, and the brothers K. S. and R. H. Cole that culminated in the 1950s in the Nobel prizewinning work by A. L. Hodgkin and A. F. Huxley describing a mathematical model of the ‘action potential’. It was from this biophysical foundation, supplemented by the rapid development of analog computers and electronics in WW II, that neural engineering began to emerge as a discipline in the 1950s and 1960s. Larry Stark, a 1948 Albany Medical School graduate and then an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Yale University saw it coming.

J.M.

C.S.

L.S.

W.M.

Figure 1:

Unable to describe the dysfunctional mechanism underlying disorders of motor Figure 2: coordination in his patients, the physician Larry Stark began in the 1950s to take graduate courses in electrical engineering at Yale. The dynamic engineering models of circuits, feedback, and control theory begin to fill his mind with new ways to describe human neurological control of the pupil, the lens, eyeball rotation, and hand movement.

Linking the ideas of computers and control to neurological function in humans was the domain of the new field of “cybernetics”, a word coined by Norbert Weiner in 1948 and a birth announced in the end of year issue of Time Magazine. Moving first to MIT in 1960 and then to Chicago in 1965, Dr. Stark pioneered new tools and techniques to describe the motor systems associated with the eye (Figure 2, Nyquist diagram of pupil response), lens accommodation, and coordinated hand-eye movements. These advances were collected and published in his book, “Neurological Control Systems: Studies in Bioengineering” in 1968. In Chicago, Dr. Stark worked at both Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital (now Rush University Medical Center) and at UIC. He was the founding head of the Program and the Department of Bioengineering at UIC (the founding faculty were Earl Gose, Derek Hendry, Arne Troelstra, and Bert Zuber). Larry Stark left Chicago in 1968 to accept a position as a professor of physiological optics in the School of Optometry at UC Berkeley, where he spent the remainder of his career – retiring in 1994.

Photograph taken in 1964 in Boston at a meeting of the American Society of Cybernetics, we see Joel Michael, Larry Stark, Claude Shannon, and Warren McCulloch among the conference attendees.

In his 2014 book, “The Innovators,” Walter Isaacson describes how our modern age of integrated circuits, personal computers, and the Internet were spawned by innovation, creativity and teamwork. Over his career, Larry Stark worked to serve the needs of his Parkinson’s patients by building new disease models and measurement systems to evaluate, retrain and in some case, restore normal motor-sensory control. He built teams, originated novel concepts (e.g., ‘scanpath’ analysis of the visual field of view), and created new instruments for neural assessment (pupillometer, closed loop hand-eye controller). In these efforts, he not only was a pioneer in developing the field of neural engineering, but also was a living link with the analog/digital control models of Vannevar Bush, John von Neuman, Allen Turing, Claude Shannon, Jerome Lettvin, Norbert Weiner and Warren McCulloch.

The name Warren McCulloch occurs often in the work of Larry Stark, but it is perhaps not as well known as the others listed above; it should be. In Figure 3, a photograph that I think was taken in 1964 in Boston at a meeting of the American Society of Cybernetics, we see Larry Stark, Claude Shannon, and Warren McCulloch among the conference attendees. Warren wrote the Foreword to Larry’s 1968 book. In the Introduction to Section 2, Larry writes: “In 1948, when I was still a medical student, I obtained Professor Shannon’s paper, ‘Mathematical Theory of Communication,’ and for the last fifteen years I have been stimulated by Prof. Warren McCulloch’s work in the exciting field of bioengineering and cybernetics.”

First, what kind of medical student is reading papers in the Bell System Technical Journal, and second what was McCulloch’s role in bioengineering and cybernetics? The answer to the first question, of course, is that Larry was not a typical medical student. The answer to the second question is illuminating. It rests in part on McCulloch’s classic 1943 paper with W. Pitts, “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity,” in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, in which they tried to understand how the brain – composed of a multitude of individual ‘all or none’ responding neurons – could be arranged in networks that produce complex patterns. This paper is often cited for its role in germinating the field of artificial intelligence, and was in fact noted by Alan Turing as a key paper stimulating his investigations into ‘thinking machines.’ Another illuminating part of the answer is evident in the affiliations of the two authors: in 1943 Walter Pitts was a student researcher at the University of Chicago, and Warren McCulloch was on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry, at the University of Illinois, College of Medicine.

Interested readers who want to track down all the connections between this cast of characters in the advent of neural engineering, neural networks and artificial intelligence, should start with James Gleick’s 2011 book, “The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood”. I will end this article with a final quote from Larry Stark, taken from a video interview (http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Stark/) recorded in 2000 at UC Berkeley as part of its “Conversations with History” series. In a discussion with host Harry Kreisler of Stark’s ‘scanpath’ idea for assessing how the eye moves over an image with the aim of capturing all its information content, Larry notes that we all view the world with a discrete imaging tool, one which gives us an imprecise view of the world, but nevertheless is smoothed out by the brain creating an “illusion of clarity and completeness”. He apologizes for the metaphor, but I think that it not only identifies key features in the visual system but also could be applied to the lens that we use to look back over history (Figure below).

New Faculty Profiles

James received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996, and Ph.D. in Chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000, having the distinction of being the first PhD student of National Academy of Engineering (NAE) member, Dr. Dennis Discher. Dr. Lee then spent 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before joining the faculty of the University of Missouri as an assistant professor in 2003. Lee has established an interdisciplinary research program investigating the roles of membrane biophysics and cell mechanics in neurodegenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer’s disease. His research has been funded by National Institutes of Health, Alzheimer’s Association, Missouri Spinal Cord Injury Research Program, and Ministry of Education in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Lee received an Alzheimer’s Association New Investigator Award in 2006, and was invited as a keynote speaker for the International Conference of Regenerative Medicine & Healthy Aging in 2012. He has reported his research findings in over 38 peer-reviewed articles and has been cited over 3,400 times in the technical literature (h-index=23) according to Google Scholar. He has participated and co-organized national and international symposia in professional conferences.

Dr. Tolou Shokuhfar will join the UIC Department of Bioengineering on August 16, 2015 as an Associate Professor. She received her PhD in Dec 2010 from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Technological University. In January 2012, she joined Michigan Tech as a tenure-track assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering, with adjunct positions in Biomedical Engineering and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Her research focuses on: (1) in-situ liquid electron microscopy of biomolecules and biomaterials and their biochemical activities in wet/hydrated environment; and (2) nanotextured surfaces for biomedical materials such as dental and bone materials. She received the prestigious 2014 National Science Foundation CAREER Award to Investigate Biomineralization in Ferritin proteins. She is also recipient of the “Young Scientist Award” from the 2014 International Conference on Diffusion in Solids and Liquids. She already has graduated one PhD student and currently advises one research scholar, five PhD students, and three undergraduate students, some of whom will be joining us at UIC. She also served as faculty advisor to the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at Michigan Tech and participated in teaching, training and outreach activities.

Along with her research collaborators in the UIC Department of Bioengineering and College of Dentistry, and at Rush University Medical Center, she has co-founded the Institute for Biomaterials, Tribocorrosion, and Nanomedicine (IBTN) that fosters collaboration between UIC, Rush, and San Paulo State University in Brazil. She has 2 patent applications and 46 archival publications including 2 book chapters and has been active in the professional community. Dr. Shokuhfar is the Organizer of the “Advanced Materials in Dental and Orthopedic Applications” Symposium at the TMS conference, and Symposium Organizer for “Biomedical Implants and Devices” at the DSL 2015 International Conference. She currently holds 3 officer positions as Program Chair for Orthopedic Biomaterials, and Treasurer for Nanomaterials in the Society for Biomaterials (SFB), and Treasurer in the The Minerals, Metals and Materisals Society Biomaterials Committee. She is also an active member of the Orthopedic Research Society (ORS) and the Biomedical Engineering Society. Just recently, Dr. Shokuhfar was awarded the prestigious national award, the INSIGHT Into Diversity 2015 Inspiring Women in Stem Award.

Tolou Shokuhfar, Ph.D.

A media interview on the application of her research can be found: vimeo.com/75447318

Faculty News

On August 16, 2015, Dr. James Lee will join the UIC Department of Bioengineering as an Associate Professor.

Prior to his appointment at UIC, he was an Associate Professor of Bioengineering, and an active member of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Missouri.

Freshman Success

James Lee, Ph.D.

Farewell and Best Wishes to Professor Michael Cho Professor Michael Cho received his BS degree (83) from George Washington University and MS (86) and PhD (91) degrees from Drexel University in biophysics/physics. After completing his PhD, he joined the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School as a research fellow. He then joined the UIC Department of Bioengineering in 2000 as an Assistant Professor and quickly rose to the rank of full Professor by 2008.

In his fifteen years in the UIC Department of Bioengineering Professor Michael Cho has established himself as an outstanding classroom instructor in both undergraduate and graduate courses, and as a highly sought mentor to countless BS, MS, PhD and MD/PhD students on research projects, theses and dissertations. He also served as Director of Graduate Studies for 7 years and as Interim Department Head in 2005-6, in addition to service on numerous other department, college and university committees. Mike has led one of the most successful and active research labs in UIC Bioengineering (The Laboratory for Biomolecular Imaging) that has collaborated extensively with other researchers on both east and west campuses. The lab has consistently been supported by external grants, primarily from the Office of Naval Research and the National Institutes of Health. Professor Cho was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2011 for seminal contributions in establishing tissue engineering methods to regulate cell and tissue behavior over multiple length scales. He was recognized for his scholarly achievements by UIC as a recipient of the University Scholar award in 2012. On July 6th we will have to say farewell to our valued colleague and mentor, as Professor Cho begins his new position as Head of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. Cho is beloved by his colleagues, students, and staff. His friendly attitude and upbeat personality will be missed. We wish him the best in his new leadership position.

As part of the College of Engineering’s goal to improve the overall engineering experience for freshmen, in 2013 Dean Pete Nelson created the Freshman Engineering Success Program, which is led by Associate Professor Miiri Kotche of Bioengineering and five other faculty from each of the other engineering departments. The program goals are to help ease the transition into being a college student, expose the student to projects and information about all engineering disciplines, improve teamwork and interpersonal skills, and to improve future success as an engineering student. To achieve these goals, the program consists of three major parts.

The first part engages students in the program as soon as they start their college experience. Since every engineering student must take Engineering 100, the program takes place for a small duration of that class. Students are given two mini-projects in the class. The first mini-project is a team based project on analyzing the college as well as the individual departments. In a group of 3-4 students, they must work together to research and understand what the objectives of the department are, college objectives, and even their own student outcomes. In addition they are also asked to interview juniors and seniors in their own department to get a student’s view of various courses, tips and advice for freshmen. This project is important since it’s one of their first team exercises and they’re exposed to juniors and seniors that can provide insight. This early interaction helps to build confidence and networking. The second mini-project differs by each department. In Bioengineering, the project is to build a ECG simulator kit.

Students work together to build kits that biomedical technicians can use to train in developing countries. In many cases, these are the first time many students will solder and work with electrical components and circuitry.

Once a student has completed these projects, they can qualify for the second part of this program, the Guaranteed Professional Internship Program (GPIP). The second part of the program is unique in the country and offers a guaranteed internship for the summer between freshman year and sophomore year. Each internship lasts eight weeks and students can expect to make between $10 an hour in UIC research labs and up to $25 an hour if placed at an external company. Research has shown that having an internship during college greatly increases the probability of being hired once graduating. Bioengineering placed sixteen interns last year and thirteen this year in various UIC research labs and outside agencies such as Argonne National Laboratory and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

The third part of this program is ongoing support. Each department offers about forty hours of individual tutoring time for freshmen. During these tutoring times, students can ask upperclassmen for help on their math, engineering, and science courses. Starting early is essential to building confidence and future success. The successful candidate of the Freshman Engineering Success Program will learn how to creatively solve problems, develop interpersonal skills, interact hands-on, and be prepared for their future engineering careers.

James Patton UIC and RIC

The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) is the world’s leading hospital and research enterprise in physical medicine and rehabilitation. In two years, the new Ability Institute of RIC will open and it will feature 900,000 square feet dedicated to clinical/ research programs, five differentiated labs, and state of the art inpatient care. Boundaries between inpatient care and clinical research will no longer exist as new integrations will allow researchers to have unlimited access to patients and vice versa. This type of integration and interdisciplinary research allows clinicians, scientists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, engineers, and patients to all collaborate with the same goals and outcomes in mind. It is completely revolutionary and yet, its what Dr. James Patton has been doing day in and day out throughout his professional career.

His current research focuses not on how people control movement but how they learn to control movement. Dr. Patton is especially interested in error augmentation, where he tries to make mistakes bigger and faster so that patients are compelled to learn. He uses interactive robots and visual feedback to distort every day functions to reinforce error augmentation. The idea is similar to letting a child learn from their mistakes so that they can learn to adapt and prevent it. Graduate students Yazan Abdel Majeed and Justin Horowitz had this to say about Patton: “Dr. Patton combines keen insight and invaluable support in his roles as an educator and researcher. His work in stroke rehabilitation and the basic science underlying learning and recovery has already shown clinical promise and has improved the lives of stroke survivors. As an educator, his drive and integrity inspire his students and colleagues to strive for excellence. Even more impressive, his skills as a communicator enable him to clearly and compactly convey even the most complex physiological models.”

As a Professor of Bioengineering at UIC and Director of Robotics at RIC, Dr. James Patton has the unique combination of a world class rehabilitation hospital at RIC coupled with the teaching platform and student population of a world class university at UIC. “My career goals are to explore the ways we reshape movements of both the healthy and neurologically injured. Teaching at UIC has allowed more student interaction and more opportunities to design courses, lead, and influence the great people of tomorrow,“ says Patton. Engineering often emphasizes the ‘what’ to do without exploring the ‘why’ in concepts. To this, Dr. Patton often reinforces his students to understand theoretical concepts by building physical models, performing simulations, and requiring all students to help teach the class. “My goals have been to engender problem solving skills through programming, thinking beyond what is taught in the text, and team projects in order to make the course something that is remembered for years to come.” This method of teaching seems to resonate well with the student body as Dr. Patton’s classes can be quite full. All of this is especially impressive considering his full plate of commitments. In addition to his full faculty duties here at UIC, he oversees a large research lab at RIC. During his weekly lab meetings, he meets with roughly a dozen lab members composed of his graduate students, visiting foreign students, undergraduate workers, and collaborating professors to go over weekly progress and have an open forum for discussion and debate. Much like his classroom teaching, Dr. Patton wants to keep his lab engaged and to expand their true potential.

After completing his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Dr. James Patton continued his education with an M.S. at Michigan State University in Engineering Mechanics and Biomechanics and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University. His graduate work revolved around human motion, balance, and stability. He continued this research with a postdoctoral fellowship at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago incorporating motor control, robotics, and rehabilitation engineering. At RIC, he worked his way up from Research Associate to his current positions of Co-Director of the Robotics Laboratory and Director of the National Center for Rehabilitation Robotics. Along the way, he realized that while his research options were excellent, he wanted to parley his research with his passion for teaching and access to students. Dr. James Patton officially joined the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Bioengineering in 2006 as a Research Assistant Professor before being promoted to an Associate Professor in 2007. Starting this Fall 2015, Dr. James Patton has been promoted to Professor in the Department of Bioengineering. Patton is also an active member in the International Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, where he is the Editorin-Chief of the conference’s publication. He serves on their advisory committee as a North American representative, and chairs the Awards Nominations Committee.

A Phantom(r) Omni(r) 3D tabletop haptic system allows users to touch and manipulate virtual objects.

Dr. Patton demonstrating a Manipulandum planar 2D robotic system used to evaluate motor control of human arm movements.

(Photo courtesy of Yazan Abdel Majeed)

KineAssist walking assitance and balance robotic system provides the physical strength for adult patients to walk and move around.

Patton holds a weekly lab meeting for open discussion and feedback.

Engineering World Health - Trip to Vietnam As part of the Engineering World Health (EWH) Annual Fund sponsored by the UIC College of Engineering, two Bioengineering students were able to accompany Dr. Miiri Kotche on a site assessment trip to Vietnam this spring. The goal was to build long-term relationships between pediatric hospitals and the EWH student organization. EWH is interested in developing biomedical solutions for low-resource environments and this trip allowed students to assess needs firsthand. During their weeklong trip, Tejas Madhavan (undergraduate) and Fatima Rizvi (MS) traveled through Ho Chi Minh and Danang to visit pediatric hospitals in collaboration with the International Pediatric Specialist Alliance for the Children of Vietnam. These visits allowed them to observe how resourceful their staff engineers, doctors, and nurses were in being able to fix anything and to come up with ingenious solutions for their needs. During one visit, they were able to see this ingenuity during surgery. The physicians were using a $40 abdominal device to power the electrocautery knife. Typically, the device needed to power such a machine would have a price tag of around $10,000. “The original use of the device was to output voltages at set frequencies to cause a vibrating strip wrapped around the stomach to vibrate. Instead of connecting the abdominal strip for a workout they modified the device with alligator clamps to power a surgical electrocautery knife! It was an amazing feat of resourcefulness that the Vietnamese surgeons and nurses put together to make up for the lack of a working power source,” says Tejas Madhavan.

During another visit, they realized that there was a lack of sterile environment for mixing drugs and electrolyte solutions for infants contributing to the infection rate at the hospital. Tejas and EWH are currently writing a project proposal to begin construction on a laminar flow hood to provide low cost hoods with hepa filters and UV lights at a fraction of their current cost. “This trip was one of the largest eye openers I have had in my education as an undergraduate student.

It helped me gain exposure to a culture literally halfway around the world and a different angle on engineering.” For more information, please visit: https://sites.google.com/a/uic.edu/uic-ewh-vietnam/

Department of Bioengineering doctoral graduates in Spring 2015 semester Eik-lang Lau, PhD in Bioengineering Designing and Evaluating Carbide-Derived Carbon As a Novel Biomaterial for Hip Implants

Preeti Pratap, MS in Bioengineering Binding of Peptides to Graphene

Advisor: Michael Cho and Michael McNallan

Advisor: Michael Stroscio

Eric Lueshen, PhD in Bioengineering Design of Drug Delivery Methods for the Brain and Central Nervous System

Elina Sarmah, MS in Bioengineering Subcellular Mechanics Regulates Structure and Function of Neonatal and Stem Cell Derived Cardiomyocytes

Advisor: Andreas Linninger Yi Sui, PhD in Bioengineering Multi-dimensional Excitation in MRI: New Development and Applications

Advisor: Xiaohong Joe Zhou

Advisor: Anne George

BMES Helping Hand

Advisor: Viswanathan Natarajan

Advisor: Brenda Russell Gardner Yost, MS in Bioengineering Acoustic Characterization of Left Ventricular Assist Device Function

Department of Bioengineering bachelor’s graduates in Fall 2014

Anusha Reddy Gaddam, MS in Bioinformatics Ze Li, MS in Bioengineering Mary Maliakal, MS in Bioengineering Krithi Shetty, MS in Bioengineering Qian Wang, MS in Bioengineering

Department of Bioengineering master’s graduates in Fall 2014 semester Michael Joseph Boyle, MS in Bioengineering Cytoskeletal Reorganization in Human Dental Pulp Stem Cells

Advisor: William Zev Rymer

Advisor: Satish Alapati

Ajay Kurani, PhD in Bioengineering Resting State fMRI in Parkinson’s Disease and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy

Jr-Shin Chen, MS in Bioengineering Improved Lung Nodules Detection with Active Contour Method and Machine Learning Based Classification

Advisor: David Vaillancourt

Advisor: Hui Lu Kirti Yenkie, PhD in Bioengineering Stochastic Processes from Batch Crystallization to In-vitro Fertilization

Department of Bioengineering master’s graduates in Spring 2015 semester Elizabeth Ferraz, MS in Bioengineering Microfluidic Applications for the Study of Pancreatic Islets, Gradient Formation, and Gas Diffusion

Advisor: David Eddington The most important aspect of the arm built by BMES is its customization. Drew’s case is more severe, so any of e-NABLE’s current open-source designs won’t work for him. “This just means we have an opportunity to do something new, and something special for him,” said Dreyer. That includes a cutout on the forearm that pays tribute to Drew’s favorite movie, Transformers. Aside from giving Drew a memorable sixth birthday, the group’s ultimate goal is to release their design to the public domain and help other kids with cases similar to Drew’s.

They’re thinking of calling it the ‘UIC Arm’.

Vidyani Suryadevara, MS in Bioengineering Sphingolipids in Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury

Abdulrahman Basith, MS in Bioinformatics Reshma Donthamsetty, MS in Bioengineering Devanshi Parikh, MS in Bioengineering Rucha Sanjeev Wad, MS in Bioengineering Rutul Shah, MS in Bioengineering Gobind Singh, MS in Bioinformatics

Faezeh Jahanmiri Nezhad, PhD in Bioengineering Surface EMG Examination of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Advisor: Urmila Diwekar The work started after bioengineering student Samuel Dreyer (BS ’16), the group’s president for the 2015-2016 academic year, heard about a network called e-NABLE that enlists volunteer groups to build 3D-printed prosthetics for kids. “I knew right away I needed to get UIC involved,” he said. So he signed up, recruited members of BMES, and shortly thereafter, Drew and the team were matched. Kids like Drew, who have this type of rare birth defect, rely on the help of e-NABLE volunteers “because most insurance companies can’t afford to cover the cost of a traditional, more expensive prosthetic device until an individual is fully grown,” Dreyer said. A 3D-printed prosthetic arm is much different from its traditional counterpart; it’s light-weight, kid-friendly, and low-cost— making it easy to produce and produce again after a growth spurt.

Advisor: Amelia Bartholomew

Advisor: Thomas Royston

Chun-Chieh Huang, PhD in Bioengineering Synthesis And Characterization of Leucine Zipper Hydrogel For Tissue Regeneration

Article and photos by Kirsten Gorden - May 12 isn’t an ordinary Tuesday for members of UIC’s Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES); it’s Drew Reed’s sixth birthday. Drew, who was born without a right hand or wrist, received a one-of-a-kind birthday gift from the team: a custom-made, 3D-printed prosthetic arm. Using a mold of Drew’s “lucky fin” for exact measurements, BMES modeled and created three prototypes, each one made out of thousands of stacked, 2D-printed layers.

Rachana Vinay Patil, MS in Bioengineering Effects of Different Lasers on the Fibrotic Tissue

Advisor: Mathew Mathew

Department of Bioengineering doctoral graduates in Fall 2014 semester

From left to right: Group picture at Da Nang Hospital, (center) Need for sterile environment for mixing drugs, (right) Abdominal device powering a surgical knife.

Shelley Kerwell, MS in Bioengineering Electrochemically Treated Film Formation on CoCrMo Alloy for Total Hip Replacement (THR)

Eyad Hajissa, MS in Bioengineering Limit-Push - Reduction of Motor Variability in a Virtual, Haptic Environment with Visual Distortions

Advisor: James Patton Erik Hammes, MS in Bioengineering The Effects of Enhanced Self-Teleoperated Arm Therapy for Chronic Stroke Survivors

Advisor: James Patton Tyler Johnson, MS in Bioengineering Using Perceived Rotational Gain to Elicit a Lasting Effect within the CAVE2

Advisor: James Patton Grant Hartung, MS in Bioengineering In Vivo Pharmacokinetic Model For The Design of Bottom-up Engineered Biocompatible Nanopharmaceuticals

Shreyan Majumdar, MS in Bioengineering Correlating Tumor Microstructure With Hypoxia Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Advisor: Andreas Linninger

Advisor: Mrignayani Kotecha

Michael Naskrent, Summa cum Laude Vivian Sandoval Shivam Thakkar Minh Tran Marzia Yasmin

Department of Bioengineering bachelor’s graduates in Spring 2015 Nada Rawhi Abdelrahim, Cum Laude Shidrukh Ali Kirthi Sree Bellamkonda, Summa cum Laude Thomas Charles Benedict Mark J. Connolly Matt J. Dela Cruz, Cum Laude Ryan C. Dexter Diego Sanchez Diaz Enas EL-Khatib Martin James Gannon William Thomas Gebbia Brian D. Havel Sylvia M. Isteefanos Mariam F. Khan Evan J. Kline-Wedeen Nakib A. Mansuri, Cum Laude Nicholas Marjanovic Felix L. Morales, Cum Laude Ai Nhu Vu Nguyen Brynne E. Nicolsen, Summa cum Laude Thomas Nowak, Cum Laude Dan James O’Neill Ryan M. Orda Noel S. Padiyil Haroon N. Papa, Summa cum Laude Jay Patel Abhinav K. Reddy, Cum Laude Ben C. Schneller Suraj Shah Parth V. Soni Hari Sreedhar Keila Kashay Stokes

(since our last newsletter in Fall 2014)

Student awards and Honorable Mentions

Martin J. Strama, Summa cum Laude Tim Y. Tang, Cum Laude Justin K. Thomas, Cum Laude Grant David Thompson Rostislav Tikhonov Julio C. Villalta Melissa Tremaine Wardlow Victoria M. Way

Cover Page Research Image

Department of Bioengineering BS graduates in Spring 2015 semester (continued)

Top Left: 3D-Printed oxygen control insert for a 24-well plate. The device, complete with micro-channels and hose barbs, is formed from UV curable resin via stereolithography and completed with the addition of a gas-permeable membranes to facilitate diffusion of oxygen for cell culture studies. An inlet and outlet barb allows perfusion of gas to control a 6-well unit with up to 4 conditions per 24 well plate. The device pictured is filled with dye for visualization. Martin D Brennan and David T Eddington. Biological Microsystem Lab. Bottom Left: This picture shows the error probability density when a single individual repeatedly attempts to reach to a target. Systematic errors are mapped out, and then a training force actually amplifies the errors people tend to make most. The resulting “error field” is representative customized therapies that Dr. James Patton’s lab is researching right now.

Right Picture: The intrinsic topology of the brain is visualized using the new BRAINtrinsic software by Dr. Alex Leow’s group. This shows the underlying geometry of brain connection patterns formed by cortical/subcortical gray matter regions plus the brain stem (A), cortical/ subcortical gray matter regions without the brain stem (B) and the cortical gray matter regions after removing subcortical structures (C). Results suggesting that in the absence of subcortical regions the topology remains minimally altered, likely thanks to alternative routing via corticocortical connections. This work was recently presented at the Society of Biological Psychiatry conference held in Toronto, Canada.

Elise Debruyn won the UIC Honors College Undergraduate Research Grant for her EWH project and also received an honorable mention for the Goldwater Scholarship. (Advisor: Kotche)

Ahmed Metwally received a travel award to attend the 2015 Pjylogenomics Symposium & Software School. (Advisor: Dai)

Gregory Roytman received the UIC Honors College Undergraduate Research Grant. (Advisor: Esmailbeigi)

Kevin Tangen was the recipient of the 2015 – 24th European Stroke Conference Award as well as placing 3rd place in the 2015 UIC Student Research Forum.

(Advisor: Linninger)

Tiana Wong was awarded a $7500 Goldwater Scholarship by the Goldwater Scholars for researchfocused careers in math, science and engineering.

Yazan Abdel Majeed was accepted to the COSMO summer school on computational motor control in the Netherlands. (Advisor: Patton)

Michael Mkrtschjan won the Spring 15 Provost Deiss Award for his project titled ‘Training in Micromagnet Fabrication for use in Cardiomyocyte Mechanical load studies.” Advisor: Dai)

Vidyani Suryadevara won the Spring 15 Provost Deiss Award for her project titled ‘Imaging techniques (MRI) and nanomedicine for the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary fibrosis.’ She also won 2015 UIC Chancellor’s Student Service Award.

Daniela Velez-Rendon received an all paid invitation to the 2015 Industrial Math/State Modeling Workshop. She also received the Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering and Biotransport Conference Diversity Travel Award (Advisor: Valdez-Jasso) Allen Ye was invited for an oral presentation at the upcoming Society of Biological Psychiatry meeting. (Advisors: Leow and Magin)

UIC in top 20 on list of world’s 100 young universities For the fourth consecutive year, UIC is one of four U.S. universities listed in the top 20 of an international ranking of the top 100 universities in the world that were founded less than 50 years ago. Only seven U.S. universities are included on the entire list. The Times Higher Education‘s 100 Under 50 list has included UIC in the top 20 among universities worldwide since it began the rankings in 2012. Only two other U.S. universities have been listed consistently in the top 20 — University of California, Irvine, and University of California, Santa Cruz. University of Texas at Dallas has made the top 20 for the last three years. UIC’s place on the list has varied: No. 11 in 2012, No. 19 in 2013, No. 13 in 2014 and No. 18 this year. Times Higher Education, published in the United Kingdom, said the 100 Under 50 list “provides a glimpse into the future, showcasing not those institutions with centuries of history, but the rising stars which show great potential.”

According to the publication, which also produces the annual World University Rankings, the institutions in the 100 Under 50 rankings are evaluated more for objective performance indicators such as teaching, research, citations, international outlook and innovation, and less for subjective indicators of academic reputation. Young universities are “more responsive to societal and economic developments nationally and globally, ensuring the relevance of their teaching and research to students, scholars and partners,” wrote Brian MacCraith, president of Dublin City University, in an accompanying Times Higher Education analysis. ”They tend to be innovative and more willing to engage with enterprise and civic society.” The other U.S. institutions on this year’s 100 Under 50 list are George Mason (59), University of Maryland, Baltimore County (73) and Florida International University (79).

UIC Bioengineering Student Journal (UBSj) Written by co-editors Cierra Hall and Brynne Nicolsen The UBSJ was founded by former department head and University Distinguished Professor Richard Magin in Fall 2008 and has been published in six subsequent issues with the goal of providing students with more opportunities to practice all aspects of the technical writing, reviewing, and editing process. The journal has succeeded in bringing together students at different levels of education, from freshman undergraduates to the graduate members of the editorial board. Students submit articles that discuss original research or review research published elsewhere. This allows students to hone their writing skills without being limited by a lack of data. The journal also provides students with an opportunity to be involved as editors and reviewers, giving students an overall appreciation of the processes involved in disseminating scientific findings. Additionally, the journal finally serves to expose the authors, reviewers, and readers to current trends in the bioengineering field.

Completed research projects are not necessary for publication, nor does publication in the UBSJ preclude later publication of the results in a more complete presentation. Articles are intended to document research accomplishments to date, and it is expected that many of the articles that appear in the journal will later be expanded to full-length studies and published elsewhere. Submissions can range from original research articles and technical reviews to book reviews relevant to bioengineering. Students often publish papers which were written to fulfill a class assignment, and a few of the issues have focused primarily on a single course, such as Biomedical Imaging (BioE 421) or Biological Systems Analysis (BioE 310). By using a previously written paper, students are able to further experience the process of reviewing and revising their written work, an opportunity which is not often presented within the context of a class.

After submitting an article, authors work closely with a number of students to improve their work through a number of review processes. Authors, reviewers, and editors meet at biweekly meetings to review the progress of the articles and discuss any suggestions about which reviewers and authors disagree. After this process is completed, the editorial board performs the final review of the articles and composes the official document which is sent to the printing company. The editorial board also works together to locate and work with a graphic designer for the unique cover art of each issue. At the end of the year, the authors, reviewers, and editors celebrate another successful issue at the publication party, where students and professors alike can discuss the articles over refreshments. A number of professors also vote on the recipient of the Best Author award, which is presented at the party.

Through peer review, personal authorship, and management of the publication by the board, students are able to hone a wide degree of the type of skills needed by professional engineers and scientists post-graduation. These include learning to incorporate constructive feedback during article review, learning to manage one’s time well, developing attention to detail during the review process, and working well together in groups, among many others. We hope that the UBSJ continues to flourish in the years to come through the hard work and dedication of UIC bioengineering students.

Download the Spring issue at: http://www.bioe.uic.edu/pub/BIOE/BioeUbsj/ubsj_61_sp15.pdf

The Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering College of Engineering College of Medicine Science and Engineering Offices 851 South Morgan Street, Room 218 Chicago, IL 60607-7052

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