FALL 2015 NEWSLETTER
IN THIS ISSUE: 50 Years - UIC Bioengineering
BMES and EWH Updates
In Memoriam - Percival D. McCormack
Recent Graduates
New Faculty Profiles
Faculty and Student News
See description of image on page 4 “Cover Page Research Image”
50 Years UIC Bioengineering
UIC BioE Department Is 50 Years Old: Looking Back at its Founding Head Lawrence Stark
Dr. Bert L. Zuber, faculty member of UICC/UIC Bioengineering from 1965 – 1999 shared his experiences.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the undergraduate and graduate programs in bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a special symposium was held on November 20, 2015 to review past and current contributions of faculty within the department to the research field of bioengineering and to pay tribute to the department founders, the original faculty hired by Dr. Larry Stark in 1965, some of whom were present at the symposium. This was also an opportunity to review Dr. Stark’s broad-reaching contributions to the field of bioengineering. Complementary to this symposium, faculty and former faculty of the (now) Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering are authoring a special issue of Critical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering that recounts technical advances in bioengineering pioneered at UIC, and are preparing a web site that will include highlights from the recorded symposium and interviews with faculty and students, past and present, recounting their experiences at UICC/UIC. The web site is expected to go live in Summer 2016.
Dr. John W. Ahlen, the first student to receive a BS degree from the newly formed UICC Department of Bioengineering in 1969 talked about his experiences as a student in those early days.
Faculty and students of UICC/UIC Bioengineering, past and present, gather for a group photo. Seated left to right: Miiri Kotche, PhD (Clinical Associate Professor of Bioengineering), Robert Kenyon, PhD (Professor of Computer Science and Bioengineering), John W. Ahlen, PhD (first BS student of UICC/UIC Bioengineering), Richard L. Magin, PhD (University Distinguished Professor and former Head of Bioengineering), Bert L. Zuber, PhD (Professor Emeritus of Bioengineering), Earl Gose, PhD (Professor Emeritus of Bioengineering), Brenda Russell, PhD (Professor Emerita of Bioengineering and Physiology & Biophysics). Standing middle row left to right: James Lee, PhD (Associate Professor of Bioengineering), John Hetling, PhD (Associate Professor of Bioengineering), Jie Liang, PhD (Richard and Loan Hill Professsor of Bioengineering), Terry Layton, PhD (Senior Lecturer of Bioengineering), William Pieterzak, PhD (BS 1977 and PhD 1988 degrees from UICC/UIC Bioengineering, member of External Advisory Board), Thomas J. Royston, PhD (Professor and Head of Bioengineering), Xincheng Yao, PhD (Professor of Bioengineering), G. Ali Mansoori, PhD (Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering). Standing back row left to right: Hananeh Esmailbeigi, PhD (Clinical Assistant Professor of Bioengineering), Salman Khetani, PhD (Associate Professor of Bioengineering), Robert Eisenberg, PhD (Chair Emeritus and Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Physiology at Rush, Professor of Bioengineering), James L. Patton, PhD (Professor of Bioengineering), Christos Takoudis, PhD (Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering) Tolou Shokuhfar, PhD (Associate Professor of Bioengineering), Richard Penn, MD (Affiliate Professor of Bioengineering), Irv Miller, PhD (Professor Emeritus of Bioengineering).
Message from Head: Dear Friends of UIC Bioengineering, While we continue to move forward with expanding undergraduate and graduate programs, new faculty and projects, we also pause on our 50th anniversary to look back and recognize those who came before us at UIC, pioneers of the exciting new field of bioengineering. We are commemorating their contributions to the field through the symposium highlighted above, as well as live interviews that will become part of a dedicated web site to be launched in 2016. As always, thank you for helping support our continued pursuit of excellence. Gifts targeted to the department continue to help us achieve our strategic goals, and could include opportunities to endow a named professorship, scholarship, laboratory, or special facility or program. For more information click https://www.cs.uic.edu/bin/view/BIOE/BioeGift. In addition to financial support, I know that the network of UIC BioE alumni and friends will continue to help our students find internship and employment opportunities. I am always happy to meet our alumni and friends and welcome your visit. And, please join our Facebook group; see the link on the cover. Happy Holidays, Thomas J. Royston
In Memoriam: Percival D. McCormack, MD, PhD, ScD Professor of Bioengineering (1929 - 2015) Dr. Percival (Percy) McCormack, a beloved affiliate member of the bioengineering faculty since 2001, passed away on June 9, 2015. Percy was born on October 23, 1929, entered Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland) in 1947 and had a most remarkable career, having graduated with a first class honors physics degree, a MSc in Computer Science and a PhD in Nuclear Physics. He was a lecturer in Electrical Engineering at Trinity, 1961 - 65, and was elected to Fellowship in 1964. He then held other academic posts in the U.S.A. before returning to Ireland as Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University College, Cork in 1970. He received the degree of ScD in 1971. In 1974 he entered the Medical School at Trinity as a student and graduated with medical qualifications. He subsequently held various medical and research appointments in the U.S. Navy and at NASA, including positions of Medical Officer in the USN, Chief of Operational Medicine at NASA, Chief Flight Surgeon at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany and U.S. Navy Exchange Officer at the German Naval Medical Institute. In 1991 he was candidate for the Provostship of Trinity College, Dublin. In 1993 he was awarded the degree of MD. In 2001 Dr. McCormack became Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was visiting Professor in a number of universities in the early part of this century including the University of Ulster, Jordanstown, Francesco Marroquin University, Guatemala and the School of Physics at Trinity. He held a number of awards including the U.S. Naval Commendation Medal and the Germn Ehrenkreuz der Bundeswehr in Silber (Silver Cross of Honour). From 2008 to 2012, Dr. McCormack served as a member of the National Advisory Council for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, one of twelve members appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. This Council advises the Secretary, the Assistant Secretary for Health, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) on matters relating to the conduct and support of research, training, health information dissemination, and on other programs that address biomedical imaging, biomedical engineering, and associated technologies and modalities with biomedical applications. NIBIB director Dr. Roderic Pettigrew (center) and deputy director Dr. Belinda Seto (fourth from left) welcome new council members (from left) Dr. Mae Jemison, Dr. Percival D. McCormack and Dr. Gary Glover (2008). Dr. McCormack published in a range of research areas including fluid dynamics (jets, vortices and molecular dynamics of fluids); mathematical modeling of blood flow and the myocardium; linear dichroism of DNA in solution; seismocardiography; electrodynamics and sensitivity to ionizing radiation of DNA. His contagious enthusiasm for bioengineering, his always present subtle and determined smile, and his gentle nature will be greatly missed. May he rest in peace.
Apollo 13 Chief of Operational Medicine, Percival D. McCormack, MD, (far left) with Apollo 13 astronauts (left to right ) Fred Haise, Jim Lovell and Jack Swigert in 1972.
New Faculty Profiles Salman Khetani, PhD
Dr. Khetani joined UIC Bioengineering as an Associate Professor on August 16, 2015. He received his BS degrees, summa cum laude, in electrical engineering and biomedical engineering from Marquette University, and MS and PhD degrees in bioengineering from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). He was a Jacobs fellow and National Science Foundation graduate fellow at UCSD. Dr. Khetani conducted his postdoctoral studies at MIT in the laboratory of Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and a world-renowned leader in multi-scale liver tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Dr. Khetani’s research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Hepatology, Nature Biotechnology and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also the recent recipient of the CAREER award from NSF. In 2007, Dr. Khetani co-founded Hepregen Corporation and led research there as director of research from 2008 to 2011 in order to bring to market bioengineered models of animal and human livers for pharmaceutical drug development. In 2011, Dr. Khetani became an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and School of Biomedical Engineering at Colorado State University. At UIC, he directs the Microfabricated Tissue Models (MTM) laboratory, specializing in creating in vitro engineered tissue models for drug screening and disease modeling applications.
Dr. Luciano joined UIC Bioengineering as a Research Assistant Professor on November 16, 2015. He also serves as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences in the College of Applied Health Sciences, and Adjunct Research Assistant Professor in the Departments of Medical Education in the College of Medicine, and in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Cristian Luciano, PhD
He received a BS degree in Information Systems Engineering from the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Argentina, and an MS degree in Industrial Engineering, an M.S. degree in Computer Science, and a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Cover Page Research Image
Dr. Luciano has been conducting research and development on virtual, mixed, and augmented reality in engineering, dentistry, and medicine since 1997. His areas of expertise involve 3D graphics, haptics, scientific visualization, collision detection, GPU programming, dynamics simulation, and multimodality motion tracking. His current research interests are surgical simulation and training, pre-surgical planning, robotic surgery, and surgical navigation.
NIH MSTP (MD,PhD) student Allen Ye’s Brain Visualization in the CAVE2TM picture was listed among the finalists for the 2015 UIC Image of Research Contest. Connectomics is a relatively new field in science that looks to map and analyze the millions of connections in the brain. Currently, there is no widely accepted standard for visualizing connectomic information. This research combines the connectomic data from standard clinical imaging and uses the powerful visualization capabilities at UIC to propose novel methods for describing an entire cerebral map. This photo shows the first attempt at describing the brain in the CAVE2TM, an immersive virtual reality environment. Each glyph in the model represents a cubic centimeter of the brain, while the communication tracts in our brain are mapped using white lines. Allen Ye is co-advised by Bioengineering University Distinguished Professor Richard Magin, PhD, and Bioengineering and Psychiatry Associate Professor Alex Leow, MD, PhD.
Faculty Updates
Tolou Shokuhfar, PhD, receives TMS Young Leader Award. Tolou Shokuhfar, PhD, will be honored with the Young Leadership Award of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) during a formal presentation on Feb. 15, 2016, during the 145th TMS Annual Meeting in Nashville The Annual Meeting brings together more than 4,000 business leaders, engineers, scientists, and other professionals and students from around the world in the minerals, metals, and materials fields. The Young Leaders Professional Development Award was created to enhance the professional development of dynamic young people and promote networking, technical exchange, and camaraderie leading to collaborations, innovation, and solutions in the workplace and in society.
Urmila Diwekar, PhD, receives 2015 Energy and Sustainability Award. This is one of the most prestigious awards of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The Energy and Sustainability Award is given to individuals, teams from industry, or entire companies who have accomplished significant energy savings, improved the sustainability of chemical processes, or developed innovative technologies for energy generation or delivery that hold significant promise of favorable economic or environmental impact. The citation for Professor Diwekar’s award reads: “For leadership in research related to conventional energy, renewable energy, energy-water-nexus, carbon capture, environmental control for energy, pollution prevention, and sustainability.”
Jose Oberholzer, MD, receives NIH grant: Summer Internships for Undergraduates. Surgery and Bioengineering Professor Jose Oberholzer was awarded a five year NIH R25 grant entitled “Training Interdisciplinary Scientists for Functional Cure of Diabetes” for $540,000. With this grant, Dr. Oberholzer will mentor and train the future generation of interdisciplinary scientists and engineers in the field of diabetes research and treatment. Diabetes is a debilitating disease affecting 25.8 million in the United States at a cost of over $180 billion annually. In partnership with the UIC Honors College, Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering, and Department of Surgery, this training program is a non-academic credit, ten week multidisciplinary summer internship program for undergraduates. The first cohort will begin in the summer of 2016. The program includes training lectures covering basics and advanced diabetes research topics, emerging biotechnology, clinical translational strategies, proficiency in basic science techniques and knowledge, and creating a thoughtful career development plan. It also includes a specific research theme that focuses on how to improve islet transplantation, a promising cell-based therapy for Type I diabetes with an ultimate goal to bring a functional cure for diabetes. The training is fully supported by a unique array of multidisciplinary mentors who share common research interests. Finally, the program resonates with UIC’s commitment to provide excellent education for undergraduates through department partnership, to embrace diversity in campus, and to strengthen research collaboration between clinical expertise and engineering expertise.
Miiri Kotche, PhD, receives NIH grant: Summer internships for high school STEM teachers. Clinical Associate Professor Miiri Kotche was awarded a five year NIH R25 grant entitled “Bioengineering Summer Research Experience for High School Teachers“ for $540,000. The Bioengineering department is excited to offer a summer research program for high school teachers starting in summer 2016. Working in collaboration with Curriculum and Instruction faculty in the UIC College of Education, the program will provide an opportunity for pre-engineering and science teachers to spend time in bioengineering research labs and use the experience to create a curriculum for use in their own classrooms. The six-week program matches teachers to a laboratory under the guidance of one of thirteen research-active core bioengineering faculty mentors. These lab opportunities are in diverse areas that include regenerative medicine, precision medicine, rehabilitation engineering, bionanomaterials and biomedical imaging. In partnership with faculty who are recognized experts in curriculum design and teaching in secondary education, and, in particular, teaching of secondary science in urban schools, participant-tailored curricular mentoring in weekly workshops will focus on principles of effective planning, instruction, and assessment to be directly connected to teachers’ classroom curriculum.
Goldwater Scholar creates tools to solve health problems Tiana Wong, a junior in bioengineering, is helping to create a device to treat women with postpartum hemorrhage, a major cause of death in developing countries. Tiana was attracted to bioengineering because of the tools it brings to solving health-related problems. Wong, who plans a research career, was awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for outstanding undergraduates in mathematics, science and engineering. She is among 260 students nationwide to receive the $7,500 scholarship, named for the late Republican senator from Arizona. Wong became interested in bioengineering when a scientist from Indiana University came to her high school to talk about science careers. She was intrigued by the idea of investigating a problem, then taking the information to make a device that could lead to a solution: “I just thought I’d try it out and see if I liked it.” She is working on a research project with Hananeh Esmailbeigi, clinical assistant professor of bioengineering, to fight postpartum hemorrhage, the leading cause of death worldwide for women after childbirth, particularly in developing nations. The researchers are creating a medical auto-transfusion device that would filter and re-transfuse a woman’s own blood. The device would help stabilize the woman’s condition so she could be taken to a facility with more medical resources. Wong is also working with Andreas Linninger, PhD, professor of bioengineering, on a one-dimensional, computational model of cerebral spinal fluid. The researchers believe that a better understanding of the flow of cerebral spinal fluid will help health professionals improve the effectiveness of spinal injections for chronic pain. Wong, who would like to do research on computational modeling of the nervous system, enjoys the puzzle-solving that bioengineering presents. “The most rewarding part is seeing a completed project develop from all that I’ve learned,” she said. A native of Chicago, she graduated from Walter Payton College Prep High School. She is a member of Phi Eta Sigma, a national honor society, and Alpha Eta Mu Beta, a national biomedical engineering honor society. See more at: http://news.uic.edu/goldwater-scholar-creates-tools-to-solve-health-problems2#sthash.ZecnUaq3.dpuf (Article adapated from UIC News)
Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering doctoral graduates in summer 2015 semester
Elmira Moslemi Rad, MS in Bioengineering Volumetric Wear Assessment and Characterization of Striated Pattern of Retrieved UHMWPE Tibial Inserts
Chi Bang, PhD in Bioengineering The Role of Spectrosome and Centrosome in Asymmetric Stem Cell Division
Advisor: Markus Wimmer, PhD
Advisor: Jun Cheng, PhD
Raghavee Venkatramanan, MS in Bioengineering Deconstruction of Polymerase Chain Reaction to Reduce Bias Associated with Degenerate Primers
Arman Butt, PhD in Bioengineering Functionalized Ti-V Surfaces for Improved Osseointegration and Tribocorrosion of Biomedical Implants
Advisor: Stefan Green, PhD
Advisor: Christos Takoudis, PhD
Advisor: Constance Jeffery, PhD
Rajni Parthasarathy, PhD in Bioengineering Neprilysin-dependent Reduction of Amyloid-beta in Eye Tissues
Non-Thesis: Marisa Doria, MS in Bioengineering Perlina Fortinberry, MS in Bioengineering Ian Hirsh Michael, MS in Bioengineering Xiyao Long, MS in Bioengineering
Advisor: Markus Wimmer, PhD Hong Hu, PhD in Bioinformatics Identification of Transcriptional Regulatory Elements: Novel Machine Learning Approaches
Advisor: Yang Dai, PhD
Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering master’s graduates in summer 2015 semester Thesis: Hansa Kundra, MS in Bioengineering Measurement of the Photopic Negative Response of the Electroretinogram by Discrete Wavelet Analysis
Advisor: James J. McAnany, PhD
Wangfei Wang, MS in Bioengineering Intracellular/Surface Moonlighting Proteins
Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering bachelor’s graduates in summer 2015 Joel Buishas Matt Dela Cruz Enas EL-Khatib Abhinav Reddy Keila Stokes Ines Torra Melissa Wardlow
BMES Updates
While the student chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) at UIC is primarily focused on student projects, they are also committed to student engagement and empowerment. In the fall 2015 semester, BMES sent 10 students to the Biomedical Engineering Midwest Regional Conference in Akron, Ohio to attend workshop sessions on careers in bioengineering and to network with employers. BMES hosted a field trip for its members to the International Museum of Surgical Science located in Chicago. Members of BMES volunteered to monitor the health status of participants during the Chicago Marathon and hosted a number of guest speakers, including Dr. Laura Miller, a prosthetist at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Last year, the 3D Printed Prosthetics team capped the year by designing and building a prosthetic arm for Drew, a six year old boy in North Carolina. This year, they updated the designs to fit Drew as he grows while also increasing functionality. BMES Board Members.From left to right: Nidaa Ramahi (Secretary), Mohit Dhande (Networker), Rich Hickey (Project Manager), Shana Terai Snarrenberg (Treasurer), Sam Dreyer (President), Mohi Ahmed (Vice President). In summer 2015, BMES acquired EEG hardware to start a Brain-ComputerInterface (BCI) team. The BCI team has spent the fall semester isolating brain waves, 3D printing their headset, and learning signal processing software. The team plans to have a neurally controlled prosthetic arm by the end of next semester.
EWH Updates
The BCI team assembling and trying out the EEG headset. From left to right: Caleb Gardner, Kristin Wiseman, Alpa Kotak, Kholoud Baste, and Feeba Abraham.
BMES also started a new project this semester, the Tongue-Controller Interface (TCI). TCI is a device designed to improve accessibility to computers for people with profound paralysis. This novel design allows for a human-to-computer interface based on manipulation of a miniature joystick sensor which mounts on a retainer on the upper palate of the mouth and is manipulated with the tongue, a muscle still functional in many tetraplegics. TCI communicates wirelessly to a receiver, which is connected to a computer via USB and is recognized as a mouse input device. The TCI aims to improve upon antiquated methods of mouth-based controllers and focuses on interaction with a personal computer. BMES members and their faculty advisor, Dr. Esmailbeigi, have filed an invention disclosure for this project.
The UIC chapter of Engineering World Health (EWH) is doing great things! With 43 members, they have five active design projects this year. These include a RetinOtoscope, Project Purity (water bottle purifier), pedal powered generator, solar powered autoclave, and a laminar flow hood. Last spring, undergraduate Tejas Madhavan and master’s student Fatima Rizvi traveled with faculty advisor Dr. Miiri Kotche to Vietnam with the International Pediatric Specialists Alliance for the Children of Vietnam to identify collaborative projects with pediatric hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City and Danang. They identified an opportunity to provide a laminar flow that will reduce contamination during medicine mixing and preparation of nutritional solutions. The flow hood team is designing and building a device to test on site at Nhi Dong #1 Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City for a return trip in September 2016. The solar autoclave team was invited to compete for the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, and has qualified for the second round of judging. All the design teams have entered or are preparing applications for the EWH Design Competition, Biomedical Engineering Society Undergraduate Student Design Competition, and the UIC Maurice Prize Competition. In addition, EWH students work with Project C.U.R.E., the largest provider of donated medical equipment in the developing world. With a distribution center in nearby Melrose Park, students learn about the design and function of medical devices while repairing the equipment for distribution around the world. EWH student leaders Julie Wagner, Nirav Soni, Elise Debruyn, and Stephanie Sagun, also worked with freshmen bioengineering students to build an optical heart monitor as part of the Freshmen Engineering Success Program. EWH provides training and guidance to freshmen about the principles of an optical heart monitor, breadboards, electrical components, and soldering. Freshmen reported that the project made them more excited about bioengineering and enjoyed learning from upperclassmen. In October, EWH was invited to present their activities to the College of Engineering Advisory Board. Other highlights include a generous Freshmen Engineering Success Program participants build and test $3,000 award from the College 2015 Annual Fund to purchase project materials, an optical heart rate monitor. and expanded grant support to bring up to five students to Vietnam for the laminar flow hood project.
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