Paul Ducheyne publishes new six volume book series, Comprehensive Biomaterials
Edited by Paul Ducheyne, professor of Bioengineering, Comprehensive Biomaterials is a six-volume set that reviews the current status of nearly all biomaterials in the field by analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, performance as well as future prospects; presents appropriate analytical methods and testing procedures in addition to potential device applications; and provides strategic insights for […]
Susan Margulies Receives $6.7 million NIH/NINDS Grant
Susan S. Margulies, Professor and George H. Stephenson Term Chair of Bioengineering, has recently been awarded a $6.7 million, 5-year NIH/NINDS grant to conduct preclinical Cyclosporin A trials to treat pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI). This multi-institutional, collaborative study is the first of its kind to use immature porcine models of TBI with developmental and […]
Brian Litt Promoted to Professor of Bioengineering and Neurology
Penn Engineering is pleased to announce the promotion of Brian Litt to Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Neurology. In his announcement, David F. Meaney, Solomon R. Pollack Professor and Chair of Bioengineering, said, “We are very proud of Dr. Litt’s wonderful accomplishments and we congratulate him on this achievement.” Dr. Litt’s laboratory focuses […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Building Better Building Blocks
Designer Proteins, Molecular Networks, and Cells One of the ongoing challenges in cancer detection and therapy is to target imaging agents and deliver toxic drugs only to tumor cells and not to normal cells. To achieve this critical selectivity, Casim Sarkar, assistant professor of bioengineering, is targeting protein antigens that are uniquely or abundantly expressed […]