The BME Transcript

Transcript The BME

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE | DEPARTMENT OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

FALL 2018

ERADICATING BIRTH DEFECTS Research enables healthier babies and children

ACCOLADES ABOUND Congratulations to our stellar students, faculty, and alumni

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CHAIR’S MESSAGE

FRIENDS, This has been the most successful year in the history of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware. Our students and alumni are making their mark on the world through research and entrepreneurship, and our faculty are being recognized as emerging leaders in their fields. I am especially proud to share that in 2018, two of our assistant professors, Emily Day and John Slater, won NSF CAREER awards. In addition two of our faculty, Day and Jason Gleghorn, were recognized as 2018 Young

Innovators of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering. It’s virtually unheard of for two members of the same department to receive this honor in the same year. Indeed, Emily Day hit a trifecta, as she was just awarded the Rita Schaeffer Young Investigator - the highest accolade in our community. But research excellence is not our only strength.

We also excel at teaching. Our very own Sarah Rooney won the 2018 Biomedical Engineering Teaching Award from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

Our department is contributing to national conversations about the role that biomedical engineers will increasingly play in addressing a wide range of human health challenges. As I take the reins as the newest president of the Biomedical Engineering Society, I will work to help academic biomedical engineering departments such as ours optimize student success.

On the pages that follow, you will learn more about what we are up to. From neural engineering to nanobiotechnology to microfluidics and more, our faculty and students are working together to uncover fundamental insights and develop technologies that could someday help people suffering from devastating diseases such as stroke or breast cancer.

I am so proud of what we have accomplished this year and look forward to what will come next.

I hope you will follow along with us. Connect with us on Linkedin and Twitter, and stay up-to-date with our news at bme.udel.edu.

Best wishes,

Dawn Elliott Blue & Gold Distinguished Professor and Chair University of Delaware Department of Biomedical Engineering

FA L L 201 8 B M E T R A N S C R I P T Biomedical Engineering is published by the Office of Communications in the College of Engineering for the alumni, friends and peers of the College of Engineering.

©2018 University of Delaware, College of Engineering University of Delaware College of Engineering 102 Du Pont Hall Newark, DE 19716

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BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

Transcript The BME

NEUROENGINEERING

FEATURE

BME IN MOTION

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ALUMNI NEWS

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UNDERGRADUATE NEWS

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GRADUATE NEWS

10 FACULTY HONORS & GRANTS

09 FACULTY RESEARCH & ACCOMPLISHMENTS

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NEURO ENGINEERING TO IMPROVE MEMORY AND LEARNING Johnson and Sergi labs develop technology to study fundamental neuroscience problems Curtis Johnson and Grace McIlvain discuss brain scan data in the University of Delaware’s Center for Biomedical and Brain Imaging.

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ssistant professors Curtis Johnson and Fabrizio Sergi are uncovering new insights about the human brain and developing technologies to push the fields of neuroscience and biomedical engineering forward. Both biomedical engineering professors collect data at the University of Delaware’s Center for Biomedical and Brain imaging, which houses a top-of-theline MRI scanner. They also work with faculty in the Department of Kinesiology and Applied Physiology and UD’s Department of Physical Therapy, which is ranked No. 1 in the nation, to evaluate the clinical relevance of their technologies.

Using mechanics to understand memory Curtis Johnson is a leading expert on the use of mechanical resonance elastography (MRE), a non-invasive medical imaging technology, to study the human brain.

MRE utilizes magnetic resonance imaging

(MRI) paired with vibration waves to map the mechanical properties of the brain.

These properties are a window into brain health. The softness or stretchiness of brain tissue can be affected by age or neurological diseases and has been linked to performance on tasks that measure thinking ability.

“Mechanical properties reveal a lot about very subtle aspects of the brain that are hard to see otherwise,” said Johnson.

Johnson recently received an NIH Research Project Grant Program (R01) to study brain health and memory performance in aging adults and adults with mild cognitive impairment. Using MRE, he will evaluate how brain regions responsible for memory performance differ between healthy aging adults and those with memory loss. Then, he will explore how mechanical brain properties correlate with performance on memory tests. Finally, he and his

collaborators will study how physical fitness, as measured through graded exercise testing, affects these brain measures.

Adults with mild cognitive impairment will complete a threemonth exercise training protocol, and then Johnson will compare their brain scans results pre- and post-intervention.

He is developing methods to assess the brain activity of stroke survivors in response to a changing set of rehabilitation exercises. Armed with these results, medical professionals could develop customized rehabilitation to give patients exactly what their healing brain cells need.

“We think that these mechanical properties are more sensitive to brain health than traditional MRI measures, so we want to understand this relationship with cognition but also markers of how exercise boosts brain health,” he said.

Under an American Heart Association Scientist Development Grant, Sergi is using functional MRI to see how patients’ brains respond to exercises they perform with a wrist-controlled, MRI-compatible robot. Operating the wrist-controlled robot is akin to using a video game joystick— except that the robot interacts physically with the subject, applying forces to either assist or to challenge the player during the videogame.

Using functional MRI, Sergi is measuring study participants’ brain activity as they perform the exercises, as well as shortly before and after. Sergi will look for neural reorganization, especially in the brain’s cortico-thalamic-cerebellar pathway.

Advanced analysis based on machine learning may also reveal other brain areas involved in motor learning. Then, Sergi will compare the MRI results with the motor improvements visible to the naked eye when patients do the exercises and use these insights to predict subsequent gains in motor function.

Johnson also explores brain properties in younger populations.

In a recent paper in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Johnson and his collaborators were the first to report the mechanical properties of adolescent brains in living study subjects. Using MRE, they found that in general, outer regions of the adolescent brain, including the temporal and parietal cerebral lobes, are softer than the corresponding areas in the adult brain. Meanwhile, inner regions of the adolescent brain, such as the caudate and putamen, are stiffer than the corresponding areas in the adult brain. These findings could eventually be used to help clinicians assess development, risk-taking behavior, and other important cognitive issues as well as psychiatric disorders in teens.

Data from these studies will someday be used to develop norms that clinicians could consult when examining children for developmental delays, behavioral abnormalities and psychiatric disorders. These insights into the brain will also be useful for anyone designing helmets or other protective gear designed to help kids reduce the impact of head injury.

“This provides us a huge way to treat and start looking at a very underserved population in terms of neuroimaging practices and also provide us a way to provide a new tool for neuropsychologists—something in their toolboxes to understand a bit better about how the brain is developing,” said Johnson.

Sergi will also test this technology against other methods to evaluate motor recovery, including diffusion tensor imaging to measure integrity of corticospinal fibers, as well as lesion size and location.

“This research aims to define to what extent current theories of motor learning in healthy subjects can be extended to describe motor recovery after stroke,” he said.

Sergi is refining his MRI-compatible, wrist-controlled robot, the MR-Softwrist. Most robots used in medical research aren’t MRI-compatible, due to their size or materials.

“We are the first group in the world to have developed an MRI-compatible robot to study neural reorganization induced by robotic rehabilitation therapy,” said Sergi.

Based on this line of research, Sergi was recently selected to participate in the Interdisciplinary Rehabilitation Engineering Career Development Program (IREK12) in Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences, which operates out of Northwestern University.

Using robotics to understand motor learning Fabrizio Sergi is an expert in in the growing field of human-robot interaction. His research focus is on the use of robotics as a tool to study sensorimotor control.

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Under this training program, he will develop additional applications of MRI-compatible robotics in sensorimotor learning, such as the use of robotic perturbations during fMRI to study function in the reticulospinal tract, and the use of this technique to understand mechanisms of motor impairment in stroke.

Through this program, Sergi will also receive mentoring from senior faculty members, including biomedical engineering faculty member Tom Buchanan, the director of the Delaware Rehabilitation Institute.

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FEATURE

BME IN MOTION

Students and faculty use their skills to help others move and play the Undergraduate Design Competition at the Summer Biomechanics Bioengineering Biotransport Conference (SB^3C) in Tucson, Arizona in 2017.

After working with The Go Get Dem Wheelchair Racing Club, Scheffers realized that she wanted to learn more about Ghana’s culture and help people in the process. She postponed her initial plans to attend graduate school when she realized she could work with the Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative for at least three months.

“Increasing mobility for those that have the most difficulty affording it is one of my passions, and through this project with the Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative I am able to contribute to solving these kind of issues,” Scheffers said.

Empowerment on wheels Marjelle Scheffers is used to being on the go.

During her four years at UD, she balanced her biomedical engineering major with a field hockey career that earned her four letters and the 2016 NCAA Division I Championship.

After graduation in 2017, it was time for a new hustle. Scheffers went to Ghana to work with the Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative, which builds bicycles out of bamboo to help young people, especially women, gain employment and escape poverty. Bamboo is a good material for bicycles because it’s plentiful, lightweight, and strong. Scheffers was tasked with a special project: refining a prototype of a bamboo wheelchair.

The local Greater Accra wheelchair basketball team tested her wheelchair prototype in November 2017, and the project garnered attention from major newspapers in Ghana.

Next, Scheffers and her collaborators rigged the wheelchair to optimize use in rural areas.

They incorporated features such as adjustable BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

back rests and foot rests into the seat and aimed to add a brake system partially made of bamboo. She and her teammates also worked on a second type of wheelchair for use in urban areas. This particular project is in collaboration with Raphael Nkegbe Botsyo, a three-time Paralympian for Ghana.

The inspiration for this adventure came through the project Scheffers and her teammates tackled in Senior Design—a capstone course that requires teams of biomedical engineers to complete design projects in medical devices or research.

Scheffers and her teammates worked with an NGO from Ghana, The Go Get Dem Wheelchair Racing Club, to design and build a sustainable, affordable and portable training device for racing wheelchair athletes in Ghana.

For their innovative work, Scheffers and her teammates, Sarah Peden (BME), Dyland Wergelis-Isaacson (ME), and Dsik Somasundaram (EnvironE), placed third in

Designing for America’s pastime For a baseball player, a thumb injury can be season-ending–or maybe even career-ending.

Many of the splints and braces on the market today stabilize the thumb but also limit flexion, making it hard for players to do their jobs on the diamond and avoid injury at the same time.

In tandem with UD Athletics, a team of four engineering students developed a solution to help baseball players, especially catchers, protect their thumbs from hyperextension.

Through their capstone senior design course, Seth Martinez, Grace Ruiz Cooper, Alex Metz and Zak Chiaradia developed the Thumb Saddle, a lightweight, durable, manufacturable, affordable and comfortable thumb brace. Martinez, Metz and Chiaradia are recent graduates in biomedical engineering, while Cooper earned a degree in mechanical engineering.

The team was charged with developing custom splints that would protect the thumb from hyperextension while still

allowing optimal flexibility so that players could catch comfortably. The Thumb Saddle cradles the proximal phalanx in a small piece of plastic that is custom-molded for each player in a 3D printer. Strategically draped fabric creates all the right tension forces to stabilize the thumb.

Baseball players at UD approved. “It was a gratifying feeling when the catchers said it felt better than what they currently use,” said Metz.

The students displayed their work at the 44th Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference, held at Drexel University in March 2018.

“I’ve always liked sports, so that’s what drew me in to this project at first,” said Metz. He started playing baseball as a toddler and played for his high school’s varsity team. Chiaradia played ball as a kid, too, and played on UD’s Club baseball team as a catcher.

Cooper played recreational softball in her teen years.

Now, as engineers, they are contributing to the sport in a different way.

“This project really bridged the gap between classroom learning and real-life learning,” said Cooper. “We used a lot of concepts and skills that we once spent long nights studying.”

Engineering exercise and sport Students who want to take their understanding of exercise and sports to a whole new level can do so in a recently developed advanced undergraduate course.

Assistant professor Sarah Rooney, a former a gymnast, is passionate about exercise and sports.

To blend this passion with her professional expertise in biomechanics, she created the 400-level undergraduate elective course Engineering Exercise and Sports. This class integrates concepts from engineering, physiology and exercise science to help students define, measure, and design exercise technology.

During the spring 2018 semester, students in the course worked together to create a blog, https:// sites.udel.edu/coe-engex/, with posts that included critical reviews of primary literature, explanations of how different technologies work, and patent searches. For example, one post examined the evidence for lifting free weights versus using exercise machines, while another examined the science behind common uses of Epsom salts.

Rooney, the director of the undergraduate curriculum in biomedical engineering, is this year’s winner of the Biomedical Engineering Teaching Award from the American Society for Engineering Education UNIVERSITY of DELAWARE | COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

(ASEE). In the classroom, Rooney asks students to work through problems in groups during breakout sessions. She checks their understanding through quick clicker quizzes. She demonstrates concepts in clear, insightful, fun ways. For example, to teach torque, a twisting or rotational force the human body undergoes often, she uses a pool noodle with lines drawn on it. As she twists the noodle, students can see how the lines bend and contort.

“Demonstrations like these help to translate something conceptual and math-heavy into something students can feel,” she said.

Opposite Page: Marjelle Scheffers demonstrates her bamboo wheelchair prototype.

This Page, top, left to right: Seth Martinez, Alex Metz, Sarah Rooney, Grace Ruiz Cooper, and Zachary Chiaradia.; Bottom, left to right: Kelley Kempski and Sarah Rooney

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Understanding injury induced osteoarthritis Highly active individuals suffering joint injuries in sport, work, or uniformed service are at very high risk of developing an accelerated form of osteoarthritis, called post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA).

PTOA is incurable and, in what is a cruel twist of fate, will lead to severe pain, disability, and loss of joint function and mobility in otherwise healthy, young and active people as quickly as 10 to 15 years after injury.

Research in laboratory of Dr. Christopher Price is focused on studying the biomechanical changes associated with joint injury and how they disrupt the homeostasis of chondrocytes, the cells in cartilage that regulate tissue health, in order to better understand the specific mechanical and biological triggers that drive PTOA. Recently, the Price Lab completed a DoD supported study demonstrating the preclinical efficacy of local intra-articular-delivered bisphosphonates, a class of FDA-approved drugs, as a prophylactic treatment for preventing PTOA development and progression. The Price lab is continuing to study the use and delivery of such drugs, in combination with improved joint rehabilitation techniques, to establish a framework for clinical studies to help relieve the burden of PTOA in patients suffering joint injury.

Photo on left: Histological image of the cartilage damage that results from joint injury in a small-animal model of post-traumatic osteoarthritis. Severe loss of articular cartilage (loss of red stained tissue in the right half of the image) in seen on the tibia and femur 8 weeks following a destabilizing injury to the murine knee joint.

Amanda Studnicki put s Delaware First on the cour t and in the world Tennis players know that net play takes nerve, speed, confidence and commitment.

“I love to play the net,” says Amanda Studnicki—in life, it seems, as well as on the court. Former co-captain of the UD women’s tennis team, this 2018 graduate maintained a 3.98 average in biomedical engineering.

At age 16, Studnicki boldly charged the net of life: raised by a single mom, she mustered her courage and left home, moving from Illinois to Florida to enroll full-time in the tennis academies. She caught the eye of UD Coach Laura Travis, who offered a scholarship to play for the Blue Hens. An undergraduate research opportunity landed her in the Human Robotics Laboratory led by Fabrizio Sergi where she worked alongside graduate students analyzing biomechanical principles.

These lab projects are particularly appealing. “They tackle real-world problems, but they also teach teamwork, collaboration, problem-solving, even conflict resolution,” Studnicki explains.

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT NEWS

BOLSTERING BABIES WITH BRITTLE BONES

C H A R L E S B. EVA N S P R I Z E

Four undergraduate biomedical engineering students spent their summer developing an assistive seating device for infants with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease. The goal was to create a sturdy but comfortable chair that would support the frame of a child with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, reducing pressure on the spine while allowing the child to sit up, play, and enjoy activities that might not be possible otherwise. The chair was designed so that a caregiver could easily adjust it, allowing the child to recline and tilt in space as needed. Branden Bateman, Anna McGough, Riley Larson and Dylan Ensslin built upon the work completed during Junior Design, a course completed by all biomedical engineering juniors in spring 2018. Students consulted with physicians from Nemours A.I du Pont Pediatric Hospital and assistant professor Sarah Rooney for feedback on their design.

The Charles B. Evans Prize is awarded to a graduating senior engineering student who submits the best report on an original research project and has achieved outstanding scholarship and service. Maggie Billingsley, biomedical engineering honors graduate, received this prestigious award in 2018. In addition, Maggie received an honorable mention for a National Science Foundation Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP) in 2018.

Assistant Professor Emily Day exclaims, “Maggie Billingsley is an extremely impressive young researcher. During her time in my group, she both led her own independent project and helped others’ with their research. As a result, Maggie became lead author on one research paper and co-author on two other publications from my group. This is an extraordinary contribution for such a young researcher, and points towards Maggie’s tremendous promise as a future leader in the field.” Maggie currently attends the University of Pennsylvania, where she is pursuing a PhD in Bioengineering and performing research on immunotherapy.

Undergraduate Depar tmenta l Awards Biomedical Engineering Chairperson's Award Zachary Sexton Margaret Billingsley

Biomedical Engineering Distinguished Senior Award Amanda Studnicki Matthew Gentry

Biomedical Engineering Distinguished Junior Award Steven Ioele Kelley Kempski

Matthew Maguire Celebration of Life Memorial Award Srinivasa Gajjala

Biomedical Engineering Distinguished Sophomore Award Phoebe Balascio Sienna Pyle UNIVERSITY of DELAWARE | COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

TAY LO R AWA R D FO R O U TSTA N D I N G S E N I O R

The prestigious Alexander J. Taylor Sr. Award is awarded annually by the University of Delaware Alumni Association (UDAA), celebrating an outstanding man of the senior class that demonstrates leadership, academic success and community service. Zachary Sexton, the 2018 distinguished recipient, earned an honors bachelor of biomedical engineering degree with distinction and honors bachelor of arts degree in public policy. In addition to completing his senior thesis and presenting his research nationally, he is coauthor on two national conference abstracts and a coauthor on a recently submitted manuscript for peer-review.

Sexton is the founder and vice president of the UD chapter of Habitat for Humanity and has advocated for affordable housing and led Habitat for Humanity projects throughout Delaware and North Carolina. He was a Student Alumni Ambassador and an outreach coordinator for the Blue Hen Leadership Program. This fall he attends Stanford University for a Ph.D. in bioengineering with a National Science Foundation Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP) he received this year.

He plans to combine bioengineering with public health initiatives to address chronic disease.

Jason Gleghorn, assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering states, “Zack has great dedication and persistence to learn about and try and solve problems in the classroom, in the lab, and the community through his volunteer work. I have little doubt that he will significantly contribute to science and the community more broadly during his career.” Sexton worked in Gleghorn’s Lab as an undergraduate researcher for three years beginning his sophomore year.

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ALUMNI NEWS his dissertation, Independent and Competing Roles of Fluid Exudation and Rehydration in Cartilage Mechanics and Tribology.

Moore’s research focused on the mechanics of human joint lubrication and its relationship to osteoarthritis, a condition affecting more than 45 million Americans. In particular, his groundbreaking discovery of tribological rehydration — the idea that movement acts to feed and hydrate the connective tissue, or cartilage, within our joints — enabling them to function better and longer is a quantum leap in understanding the relationship between inactivity and joint disease.

“Most importantly, his results suggest that intermittent joint movement is the pump that restores and maintains tissue hydration … in other words, cartilage slowly deflates during standing and inflates during walking and other activities,” wrote David Burris, associate professor of mechanical engineering and Moore’s adviser.

Al lan P. Colburn Prize in Eng ineering and Mathematica l Sciences

Axel Moore received the Allan P. Colburn Prize in engineering and mathematical sciences for

It is work that may someday inspire a new generation of biomaterials for joint replacement and other applications, according to Jason Gleghorn, assistant professor of biomedical engineering.

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Dawn Elliott, Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor and chair of biomedical engineering, called Moore an “enthusiastic and valuable collaborator” whose seminal research prompted joint projects between multiple research groups across campus and led to two large federal grant submissions to study post-traumatic joint disease and explore potential physical treatments.

One of those collaborators, BME Assistant Prof. Christopher Price said he has “no doubt” that Moore’s thesis will “stand as a major discovery in the field of articular cartilage mechanics and joint health.”

Moore was the second graduate student to complete UD’s biomedical engineering doctoral program.

NS F Graduate Research Fe l lows hip Awa rds Awardee

University of Pen n sy lvan i a

Ai r Li q u id e

“The test of time and additional experimental and computational analysis will bear out if tribological rehydration is responsible for how cartilage ‘works’ and if it’s failure is responsible for the progression of osteoarthritis; however, Axel’s new ideas about a problem that has baffled people for more than half a century speak to his critical thinking and innovation in the lab,” Gleghorn wrote.

ACel l

Ghana Bamboo Bikes

WL GORE

Monideepa Chatterjee

Undergraduate researcher in Slater Lab; current PhD student at Cornell University Zachary Sexton

Undergraduate researcher in Gleghorn Lab; current PhD student at Stanford University Honorable Mention Margaret Billingsley

Undergraduate researcher in Day Lab; current PhD student at University of Pennsylvania Lacey Anne Perdue

Undergraduate researcher in Sullivan Lab; current PhD student at Georgia Institute of Technology

GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS GRADUATE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE The Biomedical Engineering department strives for excellence in both our high impact research and our innovative teaching. Nowhere is the harmony of these goals more evident than in our graduate education.

In the seven years since the graduate program began, we have graduated 7 PhD students, and have an additional 44 students enrolled. Our students are performing exceptional research, publishing in top-tier journals, and being recognized for their excellence both institutionally and nationally. In particular, you can read about two prestigious national fellowships earned by our current graduate students Rachel Gilbert and Margot Farnham.

These two highly competitive awards reflect the amazing quality of our students, faculty, and research.

– Ryan Zurakowski

Photographed from left to right: Hisham Sherif, Ryan Zurakowski, LaMont Cannon, Mohammed Soltani, Andrea Lee, Dawn Elliott, Jillian Melamed, Rachel Riley, and Emily Day

NIH F31 predoctora l grant Rachel Gilbert is a 4th year student working with Dr. Jason Gleghorn to investigate the role of mechanics in regulating lung development. Rachel was awarded an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NIH F31) predoctoral grant to fund her graduate studies as a fellow. “This prestigious award reflects Rachel’s creative and critical thinking that she has applied to an incredibly important clinical problem,” said Gleghorn. This is a rare accomplishment with Rachel being the first graduate student in the Department and only the tenth graduate awardee ever at the University of Delaware.

Rachel’s work is focused on understanding how the mesothelium, the outermost cell layer on the lung, is involved in controlling the molecular signaling to regulate the branching or new airways. She is using a combination of transgenic mouse models, a novel 3D embryonic lung culture system, time lapse imaging and microfluidic tools to apply controlled pressures and mechanical strains to lung cells. These studies will not only provide general understanding of lung development, but will provide improved treatment strategies to rescue lung growth in babies with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia.

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NSF Graduate Research Fel lowship Margot Farnham was awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellowship (GRFP) award for 2018. This highly competitive fellowship, the oldest of its kind in the nation, supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research based graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). NSF fellows are considered future knowledge experts who will go on to become lifelong leaders, innovators and teachers.

Farnham is working to understand how the body’s connective tissue lubricates joints to reduce friction and support high loads. In particular, she is trying to tease out the mechanisms that cause injured cartilage to deteriorate and develop osteoarthritis. Farnham commented, “The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) allows for me to freely explore any research questions I have and provide me the opportunity to take extra classes to supplement my research.”

Margot is a second year graduate student studying with Dr. Christopher Price, Assistant Professor of BME. Price remarks, "We could not be more proud of Margot and her having been awarded the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship. Margot is a trailblazer, and this accomplishment is a testament to her outstanding dedication and passion to engineering and biomedicine. It come as no surprise to those that know Margot that she would be the first of our young Department’s graduate students to be awarded this highly prestigious Fellowship."

BME Ph.D. ALUMNI

BME DEPARTMENTAL AWARDS

LaMont Cannon | Postdoc at University of Pennsylvania

Best Doctoral Thesis Award Axel Moore

Biomedical Engineering Best Paper Award Andrea Lee

Faculty advisor: Ryan Zurakowski

Ashutosh Khandha | Teaching Faculty at the University of Delaware Faculty advisor: Tom Buchanan

Jillian Melamed | Postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University Faculty advisor: Emily Day

Axel Moore | Whitaker Fellow at the Imperial College of London Faculty advisor: David Burris

Rachel Riley | Postdoc at University of Pennsylvania Faculty advisor: Emily Day

Hisham Sherif | Cardiovascular Surgeon (retired), Christiana Care Health System Faculty advisor: Nii O. Attoh-Okine

Peter Worthington | Scientist at Visikol in New Jersey Faculty advisor: Darrin Pochan BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

Biomedical Engineering Distinguished Graduate Scholar Award Rachel Riley Biomedical Engineering Graduate Teaching Assistant Award Wade Stewart Biomedical Engineering Rising Star Award Andria Farrens

Graduate Student Seminar Series Best Presentation Rachel Gilbert Outstanding Graduate Student Service Award Dan Minehan Outstanding Biomedical Engineering Outreach Award Michael David Outstanding Biomedical Engineering Outreach Award Danielle Valcourt

Congratulations!

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congratulates Dawn Elliott on being named president of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), the premier national society for the biomedical engineering profession.

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awn Elliott is a professor and founding chair of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware. Prior to joining the University of Delaware in 2011, she spent 12 years in the University of Pennsylvania’s Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering, where she was promoted to full professor. Elliott earned a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan. Elliott is a leader in the field of musculoskeletal tissue biomechanics. In 2015 she was awarded the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Van C. Mow Medal for significant contributions to the field of bioengineering. Elliott has been an outstanding

teacher, mentor, and contributor to the professions of biomedical engineering and orthopaedics. In 2015 she was awarded the inaugural Outstanding Achievement in Mentoring Award from the Orthopaedic Research Society. Elliott is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and of ASME. She has also served on the executive boards of the International Society for the Study of Lumbar Spine, the Council of Chairs of Biomedical Engineering, the Bioengineering Division of ASME, and the Orthopaedic Research Society. Dawn was a member of the NIH Study Section Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering and has served on numerous NIH and other review panels.

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Our research could enable healthier futures for babies and kids

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

Using cutting-edge tools such as microfluidics and optogenics , we’ re answering fundamenta l questions that could lead to better prevention and treatment s for bir th defect s .

Protecting the brachial plexus Megan Killian is using optogenetics to study skeletal muscle loading during rotator cuff maturation and healing through an NIH R03 grant.

“This research is focused on how tendons and their attachments to bone are formed and remodeled with loading,” said Killian, an assistant professor. She is addressing problems with how the enthesis, the graded attachment site between the shoulder’s bones and tendons, forms in the absence of loading during post-natal growth.

“Clinically, this is an issue in the case of disorders such as brachial plexus injuries, nerve injuries that happen to the shoulder as babies move through the birth canal,” she said.

“About 1.5 in 1,000 infants is born with a brachial plexus injury. When shoulder muscles are stripped from their associated nerves, the tendonto-bone attachments, which require muscle loading, don’t form properly, which can affect a child’s shoulder health for a lifetime”, said Killian.

This work may also have applications to rotator cuff injuries in adults.

Enthesis tissue forms as muscles work, Killian is pioneering new experimental approaches to induce controlled muscle activity during growth. To do this, she is using optogenetics, a technique that utilizes light to induce activity in cells that have been genetically modified to be light-sensitive, to manipulate cells at the attachment

site and control the muscle loading of tissue in a mouse model. The mice will express channelrhodopsin 2, receptor cells that are actuvated in response to blue light. A hit of blue light will induce a controlled muscle contraction that loads the tendon and enthesis.

“This is really novel because we have a lot of tools at our disposal to control muscle loading in the negative sense by denervating muscles, giving Botulinum toxin, or cutting the muscle and tendon away from the bone, but until recently, we haven’t had options to control muscle activation,” said Killian. “Now instead of unloading the muscle we can overload the muscle.”

She will study collagen alignment and cell morphology in the tissue using histology. Then she will examine attachment changes in the 3D scale using microcomputed tomography in vivo and at high resolution.

The University of Delaware’s microCT resources will help Killian complete this project.

Investigating how arsenic affects tiny lungs Jason Gleghorn, an assistant professor, is using a novel microfluidic chest cavity he developed for the culture of mouse lungs to study how arsenic in drinking water impairs fetal lung and airway development. Arsenic is one of the most prevalent groundwater contaminants in the United States, and infants with arsenic exposure have increased risks of respiratory problems. Gleghorn received a $400,000 R21 grant from the NIH Institute for Environmental Health Sciences for this work.

a physiologically relevant environment.

They can precisely control pressure and test molecular and mechanical events through time-lapse imaging with high spatial resolution. They can also characterize airway morphology by creating 3D reconstructions using computational modeling.

“We are one of a few groups in the world that uses engineering approaches to examine developmental biology in the lung,” said Gleghorn.

Under the NIH R21 project, Gleghorn is using this microfluidic model to explore whether fetal exposure to arsenic disrupts airway smooth muscle contractility by calcium signaling sensitization. These findings could allow for the identification of new therapeutic targets for babies exposed to arsenic.

Gleghorn also hopes to determine the impact of arsenic on reduced lung growth through hyperactivation of the Hippo signaling pathway within the airway epithelium. The team will examine varying levels of arsenic exposure at different development stages, simulating both short-term and long-term exposure.

This work could affect public policy, perhaps resulting in a modification to the maximum arsenic exposure levels for women of childbearing age.

“It’s unclear whether the upper limits of arsenic exposure in humans are actually safe for expectant mothers,” said Gleghorn.

The results could also clear the way for a whole new line of research on the effects of arsenic on a variety of organs in utero.

This novel microfluidic platform, described for the first time in an article published in Development in 2017, enables Gleghorn to culture embryonic lung explants from mice in

UNIVERSITY of DELAWARE | COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

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FACULTY NEWS

NSF CAR EER AWA RDS

Two of our faculty received this prestigious early-career funding in 2018 John Slater: Building an in vitro model of microstroke Assistant professor John Slater has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Career award to develop a tissueengineered model of ischemic microstroke.

The five-year grant started on March 15, 2018. Slater develops 3D, biomimetic models that mimic the microenvironment of human cells and can be manipulated to induce desired cellular traits. For this project, he is modeling microstrokes—small, temporary blockages in brain blood flow that affect an estimated 50,000 Americans per year.

Most ischemic microstrokes are caused by clots that form in one or more of the brain’s tiny blood-carrying capillaries. To model

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brain blood flow during microstrokes, Slater will induce a clot in a vascular system made from healthy brain cells and a hydrogel that mimics tissue. Blood clots form when an enzymatic cascade converts the blood protein fibrinogen into fibrin, which polymerizes and hardens. Slater will blend fibrinogen and a photo-crosslinked hydrogel, which will allow him to control the formation— and dissolution—of the clot. He will utilize laser-based hydrogel degradation to generate brain mimetic vascular networks in tissue-engineered hydrogels with short pulses of light and quantify how the clots induce cellular damage.

Slater is applying his tissue engineering expertise to microstrokes for the first time with this project.

“From my standpoint as an engineer,

it poses interesting and difficult engineering challenges,” Slater said. “No one else is working on fluidized in vitro microstroke models, so if we can make this work, we may open up a whole new avenue of research on microstrokes.”

Slater hopes this work will eventually open the door for research on new stroke treatments and strategies to regrow brain tissue damaged during strokes. Only one drug has been approved by the FDA for acute stroke treatment, although hundreds of hopefuls have been tested.

The grant will also fund outreach through UD’s annual Art in Science program and exhibit, for which Slater is the faculty director.

Emily Day: Developing nanoscale materials to outsmart cancerous tumors Assistant professor Emily Day has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Career award to engineer membrane-wrapped nanoparticles for targeted ribonucleic acid (RNA) delivery to breast cancer cells.

The five-year grant began on May 1, 2018.

Day is making novel nanoparticles containing special RNA molecules that can silence genes inside cancer cells that would otherwise help them grow and proliferate. Unfortunately, delivering this RNA cargo to a tumor made of breast cancer cells is a very difficult task.

For one, “upon administration into the bloodstream, RNA is extremely susceptible to degradation before it ever reaches a tumor,” Day said.

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And even when the therapeutic RNA makes it to a tumor, it may be blocked by the membranes of the cancer cells.

The RNA needs to be protected and disguised so that it remains stable in circulation long enough to reach the target tumor and enter its cells.

Day is loading the RNA into nanoparticles she has fabricated to provide enhanced stability, and then extracting membranes from cancer cells and wrapping them around the RNA-loaded nanoparticles. By cloaking the nanoparticles with cancer cell-derived membranes, Day aims to trick cancer cells into into accepting the wrapped nanoparticles.

“The idea is that the body will see these membrane-wrapped nanoparticles as a cell and not recognize it as foreign material,” she said. In addition to preventing premature clearance from

the bloodstream, the membrane coating will also enable cancer cellspecific binding of the nanoparticles.

Upon binding the cancer cells within the tumor, the nanoparticles’ contents can be released, and the tumor-suppressive RNA can go to work reducing the expression of harmful genes—and ultimately shrinking the cancer cells and the tumor they comprise.

She will test these new materials in both in vitro and in vivo models of triple-negative breast cancer, possibly paving the way for creation of new, improved treatments. She will also create new educational efforts to increase knowledge of nanoscale biomaterials for cancer management.

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FACULTY NEWS

YOUNG INNOVATORS Two UD BME professors selected for prestigious national award

Assistant professors Emily Day and Jason Gleghorn have been named Young Innovators of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering.

Both have articles featured in a special issue of the journal Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering and will give invited talks in a special session at the 2018 meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society.

Annually, about a dozen researchers receive this award, and it’s unusual to have two recipients in the same department. “The University of Delaware’s Department of Biomedical Engineering is full of talented researchers who are making major contributions to their fields,” said Dawn Elliott, department chair and Blue and Gold Professor of Biomedical Engineering. “I am so proud that not one, but two of our faculty members were identified as Young Innovators this year.”

Day’s paper reports on the development of layer-by-layer assembled nanoshells as vehicles for intracellular miRNA delivery.

She demonstrates that these nanoparticles can deliver the tumor suppressor miR-34a into triple-negative breast cancer cells, which subsequently reduces the expression of the cancer-promoting genes SIRT1 and Bcl-2, resulting in decreased cell proliferation.

Day and her team coated negatively charged nanoshells with alternating layers of positive poly-l-lysine (PLL) and negative miRNA, with the outer layer consisting of PLL to facilitate cellular entry and protect the miRNA.

The nanoshells released about 30 percent of their miR-34a cargo over five days and suppressed SIRT1 and Bcl-2 by 46 percent and 35 percent, respectively. They also decreased cell proliferation by 33 percent. Future studies that build upon this foundational work could ultimately result in very potent and noninvasive cancer treatments.

Gleghorn’s paper reveals that the ion channel TRPV4 may regulate lung development and pulmonary vasculature stabilization in utero.

His lab cultured embryonic mouse lungs and used timelapse imaging to capture active changes in lung physiology and immunofluorescent staining to visualize the organization of epithelial, smooth muscle, and vascular compartments in response to TRPV4 activity.

Gleghorn found that TRPV4 expression and function was related to airway branching, smooth muscle differentiation, and lung growth. Gleghorn concluded that TRPV4 could be a mechanosensor involved in transducing fluid mechanical forces on the developing airways, leading to molecular and transcriptional events that regulate the morphogenesis of the lung’s essential tissue compartments.These new findings may uncover new therapeutic targets for the improved treatment of bronchopulmonary dysplasia, the leading cause of perinatal mortality and morbidity.

Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award Day is also the 2018 winner of the Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award, given annually to one BMES member within seven years of receiving his or her highest degree. The award, which is designed to stimulate research careers in biomedical engineering, is named in honor of former BMES Executive Director Rita Schaffer. At the BMES annual meeting, Day will present a 20-minute Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Lecture, and the text of this lecture will be published in the journal Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

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NEW FACULTY

INAUGURAL BERNARD CANAVAN FACULTY RESEARCH AWARD Assistant professor Jason Gleghorn is the first recipient of the Dr. Bernard Canavan Biomedical Engineering Early Career Faculty Research Award, which includes $15,000 of research funds and will be given to a biomedical engineering faculty member at the University of Delaware every other year.

Gleghorn’s research centers on understanding how cells assemble into functional tissues, using microfluidics and microfabrication for regenerative medicine applications.

The Dr. Bernard Canavan Faculty Research Award was established in 2018 by his daughter, Helen Stimson, the chair of the biomedical engineering department’s External Advisory Committee, and Dr. Canavan’s wife, Margaret. Stimson is president and CEO of the Delaware BioScience Association.

At an award presentation on May 10, 2018, Dawn Elliott, department chair, said of Stimson: “I’m just so excited that she picked us to honor her father’s name through the faculty of this department.”

Stimson has mentored faculty, and Elliott described her as a “member of our family.”

Stimson said her father was an early biopharmaceutical engineering enthusiast.

“He would study every night,” she said.

“He was a doctor and became a very successful businessman, and it was all self-taught. I knew that if he were still alive, biomedical engineering would have been the next thing he would have gotten involved in.”

Stimson has been impressed by UD’s biomedical engineering department.

“You’re such a dedicated group of professors, and everybody is so enthusiastic about their work, I just thought this would be the place he would be,” she said.

Bernard Canavan was born in 1936 and graduated first in his class from Scotland’s Edinburgh Medical School with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1960.

He moved to Canada for his residency and to begin his practice as a family doctor and later joined Wyeth Pharmaceutical, a division of American Home Products, as Canadian Medical Director. In 1991, Dr. Canavan was a key player in the decision to acquire the Genetics Institute, which pointed the company toward the biopharmaceutical market. He retired in 1994 as the company’s President.

A life-long learner, he dug deeply into the biopharmaceutical industry. After retirement, he remained active as a Board member on six biotech startups. One of those companies, BioChem Pharma, was acquired by Shire Pharmaceuticals and Dr. Canavan served on the Board until his death in 2002.

UNIVERSITY of DELAWARE | COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

ELISE CORBIN earned her B.S. in Engineering Science at Penn State in 2007 and her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013. She taught at the University of Illinois in bioengineering and then moved to the University of Pennsylvania to do research at the Cardiovascular Institute. She joins University of Delaware as an assistant professor in Biomedical Engineering in January 2019. Her research focuses on studying emergent time-dependent cellular responses with engineered microdevices.

Elise will be developing new methods to probe the mechanical response of cells and tissues and addresses unmet pre-clinical and clinical needs, especially in cardiology, cancer, and biopharmaceuticals. At UD, Elise looks forward to collaborating through interdisciplinary research teams.

ASHUTOSH KHANDHA received his doctoral degree in biomedical engineering at the University of Delaware (UD). Ashutosh’s experience spans over 18 years, working in both the medical device industry as well performing translational biomedical research in an academic setting. At UD, Ashutosh teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, including medical imaging, bioinstrumentation, and design biomechanics Following graduation, he assumed the position of Associate Scientist at Delaware Rehabilitation Institute (DRI).

His research at DRI focused on investigating the relation between biomechanical and biochemical changes in the knee joint after anterior cruciate ligament injury, using neuromusculoskeletal modeling, finite element modeling, semi-quantitative and quantitative magnetic resonance imaging.

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FACULTY HONORS

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ACCOLADES ABOUND

Ashutosh Khandha Teaching Professor of BME

Congratulations to our stellar faculty

Megan Killian Assistant Professor of BME

Emily Day Assistant Professor of BME

• BMES Public Affairs Committee

• 2018 NSF CAREER Award • 2018 Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (named by the BMES Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering journal)

• NSF SBIR Innovation Corps Phase 0 Award: Principal Investigator

• NIH NICHD R03 Small Research Grant Program: "Contributions of skeletal muscle loading during rotator cuff maturation and healing” (2018-2020)

Christopher Price Assistant Professor of BME

• 2018 Young Innovator Award in Nanobiotechnology (named

by Nano Research journal)

• Delaware Center for Translational Research (DE-CTR) Accelerating Clinical to Translational Research (ACCEL) Shovel-Ready Pilot Grant Program (SHoRe Grants) to study the role of joint activity in modulating cartilage function and health

Dawn Elliott Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of BME

Sarah I. Rooney Assistant Professor of BME

• Beginning of 2-year term as president of the BMES society 2018-2020

Jason Gleghorn Assistant Professor of BME • Inaugural awardee of the Bernard Canavan Award • 2018 Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (named by the BMES Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering journal) • UDRF-SI grant in collaboration with Babatunde Ogunnaike to investigating directed self-assembly of vascular tissues

Curtis Johnson Assistant Professor of BME • NIH R01 grant, “Mechanical integrity of memory systems in mild cognitive impairment” • DE-CTR ACCEL OrBiTS grant, “Clinical brain MR elastography in pediatric neurology and neurosurgery,” with Nemours/A.I. duPont Hospital for Children

UNIVERSITY of DELAWARE | COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

• Biomedical Engineering Teaching Award, American Society for Engineering Education Biomedical Engineering Division • UD CTAL Instructional Improvement Grant to develop evidence-based inclusive teaching and mentoring modules for engineering faculty

Fabrizio Sergi Assistant Professor of BME • NIH K12 Career Development Award in Interdisciplinary Rehabilitation Engineering • DE-CTR ACCEL pilot grant to study the brainstem correlates of post-stroke spasticity

John Slater Assistant Professor of BME • 2018 NSF CAREER Award • 2018 Biomedical Engineering Society Cellular & Molecular Bioengineering Rising Star Junior Faculty Award

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2018–19 ADVISORY COUNCIL

BME Advisory Council Helen Stimson

Devon Bond

Chair President, Delaware BioScience Association

Engineer, Terumo Cardiovascular Systems

Retired VP, Agilent Technologies, Inc.

John V. Flynn, Jr., PhD

Michael J. Axe, MD

Adjunct professor in Physical Therapy, University of Delaware Board-certified orthopaedic surgeon and partner First State Orthopaedics

University of Delaware | ChE64 Retired CEO, Healthcare Resource Solutions

John T. (Jack) Kramer

University of Delaware | ChE82 Global technology leader, W.L. Gore and Associates

Michele S. Marcolongo, PhD University of Delaware | ME86 Senior associate vice provost, Translational research, Drexel University

Linda J. Myrick, MBA

University of Delaware | ChE77 Biomarkets Program Director, Air Liquide

Bruce C. Robertson, PhD

University of Delaware ChE89 Managing director, H.I.G. Bioventures

From left: Lynda Myrick, Jack Kramer, Bruce Robertson, Michael Axe, Helen Stimson, John Flynn, Dawn Elliott, Michele Marcolongo. Not pictured: Devon Bond

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From Inspiration to Invention Amira Idris is on a mission to improve quality of life for amputees. Inspired by her hands-on experiences as a biomedical engineering student at the University of Delaware, Amira invented the TheraV ELIX, a patentpending, drug-free pain management device that uses vibrating technology to reduce pain associated with phantom limb pain and other nerve conditions. Amira and the company she founded, TheraV, are providing the device at no cost to veteran amputees in the community.

Partner With Us

Industry partners work closely with our students to develop solutions to real business needs. Interested in sponsoring a capstone project, mentoring a student team, or hiring for internships or full-time employment?

Contact Amira Idris

B.S. Biomedical Engineering, 2015 M.S. Entrepreneurship and Design, 2016

Sarah Rooney | sirooney@udel.edu | 302-832-4778 Assistant Professor & Director of BME Undergraduate Program