New Faculty: Christopher Fang-Yen
Penn Engineering is pleased to announce the appointment of Christopher Fang-Yen, Ph.D. as assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering. Dr. Fang-Yen obtained his Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics from Stanford University in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002. He comes to Penn Engineering following […]
Bioengineering Students and Alumni Receive NSF Research Awards
Graduate Recipients Brent Showalter, doctoral student in the laboratory of Dawn Elliott, associate professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering, and Rachel Truitt, doctoral student in the laboratory of Kenneth B. Margulies, professor of Medicine, have been awarded prestigious Graduate Research Fellowships by the National Science Foundation. Showalter earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical […]
MEAM Students and Faculty in Philly Materials Science and Engineering Day
Students and faculty in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) were active participants in this year’s Philly Materials Science and Engineering Day, an event developed to introduce the general public to materials that are stronger, smaller, cleaner, and smarter than ever. Each exhibit in the February 5th event was designed to tie […]
Beth Winkelstein and Andrew Tsourkas Receive CSRS Award
Macrophage as a Potential Biomarker for Imaging Radicular Pain, a paper co-authored by Beth Winkelstein and Andrew Tsourkas, has been selected as the First Place Basic Science Research Award Paper by the Cervical Spine Research Society’s (CSRS) Research Committee. The research was performed by students Dan Hubbard (Ph.D. ’08) and Christine Weisshaar in Winkelstein’s Spine […]
Cracking the code inside a worm’s brain
Christopher Fang-Yen, assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering, studies worms. Specifically, Caenorhabditis elegans (or C. elegans in short). These transparent, one-millimeter-long creatures have just 302 neurons, and their study allows Fang-Yen to combine his training as a physicist, optical engineer and neurobiologist. Interested in bringing his expertise in imaging devices to biology, Fang-Yen states, […]
Teaching Discovery Through Smart Experimentation
John Crocker studies “squishy stuff.” A researcher at the nexus of soft-matter physics and cell biology, Crocker employs various methods to develop new materials, to determine how soft (or squishy) a material is, and in the case of living cells, to learn how they determine the squishiness of their own surroundings. As an associate professor […]
Global Citizenship: Serving to Learn, Learning to Serve
Penn Engineering’s commitment to “global citizenship” provides many opportunities for undergraduates to travel and serve abroad. A concept founded in the idea that each person has a responsibility to both local and international communities, “global citizenship” enables Penn Engineering undergraduates to undertake various hands-on projects that engage them with local citizens and leaders to provide […]
In Memoriam: Alumnus Jeremy G. Chan
Jeremy G. Chan passed away in Medford, NJ in a boating accident on May 29, 2010. He was 23 years old. Born in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, on September 26, 1986, Jeremy attended Mountain Lakes High School before matriculating to the University of Pennsylvania. Jeremy excelled at Penn, earning selection to Tau Beta Pi Engineering […]
Two Approaches to Tissue Engineering Converge
Recently, Jason Burdick and Robert Mauck talked about their collaborations on cartilage and meniscus regeneration and engineered biomaterials. Q. What projects do the two of you work on together? Jason: Rob and I are primarily working on two projects in collaboration, both related to musculoskeletal tissue engineering. The first project is to develop strategies for […]
Can We Help to Heal Injures Without Causing Scarring?
By transplanting injured fetal sheep tendon tissue into an adult environment, Lou Soslowsky and his colleagues in the McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory, have astonishingly shown that tendons can heal in a scar-less, regenerative manner rather than through a scar-filled, reparative mechanism, a finding that would greatly benefit our tendons when injured. Scar tissue formed during […]