Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering Magazine - Fall 2019

Recipient of the 2019 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 1

FROM THE CHAIR

Dear colleagues and friends,

T

he field of biomedical engineering is working hard to identify and deliver

innovative technologies needed to advance healthcare. The Wallace H. Coulter

Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory, which is helping to lead that endeavor, has two unique and critical assets, which are ever-present in both our research and training activities—integration and interdisciplinarity.

Many engineering disciplines and departments intersect with science and medicine, but very few can integrate the full range of resources and knowledge that our biomedical engineering department leverages by combining the nation’s top-ranked, and largest engineering school (Georgia Tech) with one of the nation’s best health and medical centers (Emory University), giving us exceptional breadth and depth – indeed, that synergy between Tech and Emory is just one of the many reasons our department is always ranked among the best in the nation year after year.

The Coulter Department is also involving many diverse branches of technical expertise both in classrooms, laboratories, and in applied healthcare. This approach basically defines who we are – BME is the only engineering field that is truly ‘interdisciplinary.’

Moving far beyond that, our department, a visionary leader in engineering education, develops integrative thinkers who are ‘cognitively interdisciplinary.’ Our faculty embody cognitive interdisciplinary approaches in their research. As a department community, this defining approach is something we practice with intention. In the pursuit of new discoveries and treatment methods, our talented faculty members, students, and clinicians embed themselves, together, as cohesive science teams.

This year, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) awarded the 2019 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education to Coulter faculty members Wendy Newstetter, Joseph Le Doux, and Paul Benkeser, “for fusing problem-driven engineering education with learning-science principles to create a pioneering program that develops leaders in biomedical engineering.” With the guidance of scientists who

2 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

specialize in the acquisition of knowledge and engineering education, the department’s BME program is fostering the next generation of leaders in biomedical engineering who will play an integral role in improving health and well-being worldwide.

Our guiding philosophy is to build intersectional research and training ecosystems that foster and support the best collaborations among scientists, engineers, and clinicians.

That is the theme of this year’s BME magazine, which features highlights from the past year, including our latest performance metrics reflecting the diversity and quality of our students, and breadth and impact of our research enterprise. In this issue, we take you inside the labs of our faculty, who are pioneering new methods to improve human health, and introduce you to a few of our students who are leading change outside of classrooms.

We hope that you’ll enjoy this snapshot of the Coulter Department as we continue on the path to creating the next breakthroughs in education, medicine, and healthcare.

With warm regards,

Susan Margulies, Ph.D. Wallace H. Coulter Chair, Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Injury Biomechanics Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 3

BME at a Glance Recipient of the 2019 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering

70

20

$49M

300

Faculty

Start ups since 2015

Papers published in high impact* journals in last two years

Annual research awards 2019 > $950,000 per FTE

*Impact Factor ≼ 10 (journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, and others)

263

1,217

Graduate students

Undergraduate students

1 3 No.

No.

BME women graduates in the nation

BME graduate program in the nation

U.S. News & World Report, Spring 2019

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1 4 No.

No.

Underrepresented minority BME graduates in the nation

BME undergraduate program in the nation U.S. News & World Report, Fall 2019

Leadership Susan Margulies Wallace H. Coulter Chair

Degree Programs Georgia Tech B.S. in BME Georgia Tech M.S. in BME Georgia Tech M.S. in Biomedical Innovation and Development Joint Georgia Tech & Emory University Ph.D. in BME Georgia Tech Interdisciplinary Ph.D. programs in: • Bioengineering • Bioinformatics • Computational Science • Machine Learning

Paul J. Benkeser Senior Associate Chair Johnna Temenoff Associate Chair for Translational Research Hanjoong Jo Associate Chair for Emory Joe Le Doux Associate Chair for Undergraduate Learning and Experience Michael Davis Associate Chair for Graduate Studies Cheng Zhu Executive Director for International Programs

• Robotics Georgia Tech, Emory University, & Peking University Ph.D. in BME

Essy Behravesh Director of Undergraduate Studies Kyla Ross Director of Graduate Training

The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering is a true success story in risk-taking and innovation—a visionary partnership between a leading public engineering school and a highly respected private medical school.

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 5

Leading RNA Therapeutic Research

Santangelo is one of the nation’s leading researchers in the area of RNAbased therapies.

New method has been shown to create HIV antibodies that ward off the infection. It also has the potential to protect against genital herpes and other pathogens.

Professor Phil Santangelo is one of the nation’s leading researchers in the area of RNA-based therapies to confront HIV and flu infections. His lab receives support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for development and engineering of new molecular imaging technology for the interrogation of viral infections and immunodynamics.

Santangelo’s lab developed a new HIV treatment aimed at women using mRNA-based technology.

The results of an aerosolized RNA-based HIV preventative are promising; his new method has been shown to create HIV antibodies that ward off the infection. It also has the potential to protect against genital herpes and other pathogens. “A single administration of this aerosol is showing expression of antibodies against HIV for up to three months,” said Santangelo. “Our hope is that this will be more affordable, granting easier access to women in developing countries. This has the potential to revolutionize disease prevention.”

His team is also tackling new contraception methods. Currently 72% of women who practice contraception use hormonal methods, but there is frequent dissatisfaction with these methods.

Reversible immunocontraception offers a nonhormonal solution, where antisperm antibodies are introduced into the female reproductive tract (FRT) and inhibit sperm function. An antibody has been identified with well-characterized mechanisms of action that impact fertility, and his team is creating

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an innovative method to deliver the antibody with a synthetic mRNA-based approach to the FRT. His team also recently published a study using synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA) to deliver antibodies directly to the lungs to protect them from RSV infection – RSV is a virus that sends almost 60,000 young children to the hospital each year. This study was funded by a DARPA grant and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Currently, there is no vaccine and available preventive medication isn’t particularly effective in high-risk patients.

“Using mRNA appears to be an effective, safe delivery option,” said Santangelo.

To assist with advancing the RNA technologies his lab is developing, Santangelo and his collaborators have also advanced their tools, developing a new, non-invasive approach for PET/CT scanning which promises to accelerate mRNA vaccine efficacy determinations that will be especially useful during preclinical and translational vaccine studies – more DARPA-funded research and part of a collaborative project involving CureVac, Sanofi Pastueur, and In-cell-Art. “This year has been a banner year for us. My lab has really benefited by our strides in the world of RNA therapeutics, and we will continue to pursue these avenues. We are hopeful these approaches will benefit society by providing new preventatives and therapeutics against infectious agents.”

DNA: Faster Data, More Storage, Better Drugs

Georgia Tech researcher James Dahlman pens essay for Scientific American as new DNA barcoding company continues to grow

Imagine dramatically increasing the amount of data we can create while at the same time shrinking the resources needed to store all of it.

DNA, the molecule that evolution chose as the trusted repository for our treasured genetic code, makes that scenario a reality, a concept that Georgia Tech researcher James Dahlman wrote about in the June edition of Scientific American.

“With recent technological breakthroughs that allow us to easily ‘read’ and ‘write’ DNA, scientists are now repurposing this age-old molecule to store new types of information – the kind that humans are generating at an exponential rate in the age of big data,” writes Dahlman, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, in his essay, “All the World’s Data Could Fit in an Egg: How DNA is used to store – and generate – information at extreme scales.”

The essay illuminates the properties that make DNA ideal for both generating and storing information, explaining how improved sequencing methods, like DNA barcoding, have allowed researchers to use DNA as a molecular recorder, producing data at unprecedented speeds, the kind of progress that could have major implications for speeding drug development and treating diseases – progress that led directly to the creation of GuideRx, a barcoding company co-founded by Dahlman focused on developing safe gene therapies efficiently.

Researchers in Dahlman’s lab at Georgia Tech are using DNA barcodes to improve the design and function of nanoparticles so that they can safely deliver drugs to diseased cells. “Nanotechnology, which relies primarily on physics and chemical engineering, may seem completely unrelated to DNA,” Dahlman writes in Scientific American. “But when you think of DNA as a way to track and store data, its utility as an organizational tool becomes apparent.”

Researchers in Dahlman’s lab at Georgia Tech are using DNA barcodes to improve the design and function of nanoparticles so that they can safely deliver drugs to diseased cells.

DNA barcodes, he explains, allow researchers to overcome what had been a laborious and time consuming process. Now hundreds of different nanoparticle types can be tested at once. GuideRx is aiming to test 30,000 lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) in vivo per year, and building a process that can be scaled up to 150,000 LNPs a year.

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 7

New Technology to Mend Broken Hearts Heart disease remains the number one killer, taking 610,000 lives a year. That’s more than number two, cancer, and in the United States, more than the next five causes of death combined, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Coulter biomedical engineering researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University are developing new cardiological solutions that have the future potential of helping patients with specific heart problems.

A New Heart Attack Patch Vahid Serpooshan, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, is developing a collagen patch infused with a regenerative protein called FSTL1. When blood flow is blocked to part of the heart from a heart attack, muscle tissue, or myocardium, dies. His collagen patch, infused with FSTL1, structurally shores up the weak myocardium. “The protein time-releases into the scar tissue,” Serpooshan said. “It encourages blood vessels to regrow, and new cardio muscle cells form.”

Creating a Biological Pacemaker Nearly Identical to the Heart Hee Cheol Cho, associate professor in the Coulter Department, has teamed up with Phil Santangelo, professor in Coulter BME. They are creating a biological pacemaker via a minimally invasive cardiac catheter injection of messenger RNA. The mRNA derives from a regulatory gene, TBX18, which, during the embryonic phase, makes the pacemaker nodes that humans are born with. Upon injection in the heart wall, the mRNA converts ordinary heart muscle cells into pacemaker cells, and then the mRNA biodegrades. “Our mRNA technology and delivery method hardly triggers any adverse immune reaction versus a viral vector delivery method,” Santangelo said.

Strengthening a Baby’s Heart Michael Davis, professor in the Coulter Department, has teamed up with Manu Platt, an associate professor also in the department. Babies born without a left side of the heart have what’s called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. “If they don’t have surgery within a week, they’ll die,” said Davis. His team is developing an injection of stem cells into pediatric patients’ hearts in hopes the cells will fortify the children’s only ventricle and prevent heart failure until the children can get heart transplants. They are also developing a heart patch with stem cells that would treat adults who have had heart attacks. Platt’s team is computationally determining the stem cells’ potential mechanisms, which is necessary for Food and Drug Administration approval.

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DNA-based Nets Capture and Destroy Bacteria Today’s antibiotics are not particularly engineered to coordinate their fight against bacteria with white blood cells, the body’s own first line of defense against infectors, but a new study gives hope that that could change.

How white blood cells called neutrophils work has not been understood well on a micron level, but researchers have gotten a closer look by chemically modeling one of their combat weapons, a kind of web, and trying it out on bacteria. The researchers successfully double-teamed bacteria with an antibiotic and their synthetic version of the white blood cell’s microweb.

One of their (the cells’) weapons are neutrophil extracellular traps, also called NETs. NETs are microscopic networks of fibers made primarily of DNA that neutrophils produce to capture bacteria.

“It’s amazing to think that molecular DNA tape, on which our genetic code is recorded, can also be used as a bacteria-lassoing web. White blood cells can act like cellular Spidermen that net bacterial micro-villains to protect our body,” said Shu Takayama, who is a professor in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

“As bacteria develop resistance even to last-resort antibiotics, there is worry of untreatable infections. We found that microwebs can help antibiotics break through such resistance,” said Takayama.

The knowledge gained in this study could be helpful in designing new and better antibiotics that mimic the body’s natural defense mechanisms, as well as potentially change how we dose antibiotics given the potential synergy between the immune system and certain antibiotics.

“It’s amazing to think that molecular DNA tape, on which our genetic code is recorded, can also be used as a bacteria-lassoing web. White blood cells can act like cellular Spidermen that net bacterial micro-villains to protect our body.”

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 9

Eliminating Precursor T Cells That Pose Autoimmune Dangers A person reaches out for a handshake; the other person takes their hand with two hands and tugs then dies as a consequence. That’s a rough description of newly discovered cellular mechanisms that eliminate T cells that may cause autoimmune disorders.

“Although the mechanisms are intertwined with biochemical processes, they also work mechanically, grasping, tugging and clamping,” said Cheng Zhu, Regents’ Professor in the Coulter Department.

The mechanism’s purpose is to make dangerously aggressive developing immune cells called thymocytes destroy themselves to keep them from attacking the body, while sparing healthy thymocytes as they mature into T cells. Understanding these selection mechanisms, which ensure T cells aggressively pursue hordes of infectors and cancers but not damage healthy human tissue, could someday lead to new immune-regulating therapies.

Usually, researchers pursue such mechanisms using chemistry experiments, but Zhu, who led the study, makes atypical discoveries via physical experiments to observe effects of forces between key proteins in living cells.

“Experiments where the proteins are isolated and used in chemical reactions in vitro miss this force dynamic,” said Zhu, “Before our work, force was not considered as a factor in thymocyte selection and now it is.”

For about two weeks in the thymus, multiple T cell receptor sites engage in one- or twohanded handshakes, which send signals into the thymocyte that make it either mature into a T cell or begin the process of programmed cell death. The researchers found that the two-handedness markedly resisted the force applied to break the grip between the T cell receptor and the self-antigen, thus prolonging the duration of the handshake. A long grip sent signals for the thymocyte to die.

“That’s the study’s elegant finding,” Zhu said.

“That the force is significant for the selection to work.”

The mechanisms’ purpose is to make dangerously aggressive developing immune cells called thymocytes destroy themselves to keep them from attacking the body, while sparing healthy thymocytes as they mature into T cells.

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Introducing Biolocity:

Guiding Medical Innovation to Market Biolocity elevates the impact of Emory and Georgia Tech innovations by strengthening the connection between local, regional, and national resources for the acceleration of technology development.

The Coulter Translational Fund is excited to announce its transition to a next-generation effort, Biolocity. The move to Biolocity is prompted by the growing need for translational technology support and the twilighting of a successful five year pilot, stewarded by the Wallace H. Coulter Department.

The Coulter team awarded over $6.2 million to 40 innovative projects across both Emory and Georgia Tech campuses. Through mentorship and commercialization guidance, awardees successfully launched their technologies into 20 start-ups, 2 industry licenses, and three products on market. In parallel, the number and quality of applicants to the Coulter program increased substantially each year.

To help meet the needs of a growing technology pipeline, Biolocity will provide a broader network of support for university innovators while deepening the commitment to Emory and Georgia Tech.

2. Biolocity Fund features a rigorous application process to identify the most compelling medical technologies from partner institutions. Eligible technologies must positively impact human health, with compelling evidence for commercial potential. Faculty are mentored to develop effective pitches and establish commercially relevant milestones that reduce risk and enhance translational value.

Biolocity will continue to achieve exceptional results through three functional areas:

Through this integrated approach, Biolocity elevates the impact of Emory and Georgia Tech innovations by strengthening the connection between local, regional, and national resources for the acceleration of technology development.

1. Biolocity U provides educational programming in life science commercialization for faculty, students, post-doctoral trainees, and other members of the community via three mechanisms: • Consultations: The Biolocity Expert-inResidence Core and the Biolocity Team provide 1:1 coaching to faculty and project teams.

•

Bench2Market Talks: A monthly educational series featuring lectures, panels, and workshops covering critical topics for translational success in collaboration with the Georgia CTSA.

•

Biolocity Internship Program: Graduate student and post-doctoral interns are trained to assist in the evaluation of healthcare technologies and their market opportunity.

3. Biolocity Launch provides Biolocity Fund awardees with active project management and formal coordination with the life science commercialization ecosystem. This ecosystem provides resources for funding and mentoring, such as incubators, accelerators, and connection with entrepreneurial talent to lower the barriers of translation into the private sector as a start-up or through licensing.

Most recently, Biolocity was selected by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to be a southeast regional site for the Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe) Accelerator Network to support health security innovation development. (BARDA DRIVe is part of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, within the United States Department of Health and Human Services). Biolocity will leverage the momentum of the Coulter Translational Fund pilot and build a network of resources to successfully translate academic medical innovations into the market.

Advancing Brain and Neurological Research

Developing New Algorithms to Interact with Neural Circuitry The inner-workings of the neural circuitry that underlies brain function is better understood today thanks to recent technological advances.

Still, the neural circuits whose dysfunction lead to disorders like epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and depression (among others) remain shrouded and difficult to study and model, because of their complex network of interconnections and loops.

A team of researchers wants develop intelligent closedloop algorithms for turning measurements into precise actions in real time – kind of like those used in technologies such as self-driving cars and robotics.

A team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology wants develop intelligent closedloop algorithms for turning measurements into precise actions in real time – kind of like those used in technologies such as self-driving cars and robotics. The project just received a $1.6 million, five-year award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and stroke (NINDS) through a long-standing and innovative

Bilal Haider Receives BRAIN Grant

Rather than just analyzing data after an experiment, the team’s integrative approach will develop real-time algorithms that operate as a type of autopilot for a neural circuit, where they can lock in a precise response, regardless of surrounding activity.

“The advances in tools that we and others have made in precisely measuring and manipulating neurons and neural circuits now make it possible to read and write brain activity at the same time, and communicate with the brain in the fast timescale on which it operates,” says Garrett Stanley, professor in the Coulter Department. “We think this is a game changer, experimentally and computationally.”

Exploring the role of attention in sensory perception

Bilal Haider, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, received a $2.1 million BRAIN grant to study sensory perception. The role of attention in sensory perception is an important question in neuroscience, especially when trying to understand and create better treatments for disorders like schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, and attention deficit disorders.

Haider and his team will utilize transgenic mice and combine high-density local field potential and neural activity recordings in the visual cortex,

12 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

NSF/NIH partnership in the Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) program.

patch-clamp recordings from cortical and thalamic synaptic connections, cell-type specific optogenetics, and a well characterized spatial attention task to elucidate the neural mechanisms of attention at multiple levels: specific cells, synapses, and circuits.

“We want to understand how circuits rapidly move attention this way or that way, turn it on and turn it off,” says Haider.

“Once we can get a handle on that, we can really start to understand how we might be able to enhance normal attention and remedy attention deficits.”

Advancing Brain and Neurological Research

Advancing Brain-machine Interfaces for Rehabilitation Combining artificial intelligence-based approaches…that enable the decoding of complex signals from the nervous system controlling movement.

Chethan Pandarinath, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, working with Professor Lee Miller at Northwestern University, were awarded a $1 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). They are combining artificial intelligence-based approaches that their laboratories have developed that enable the decoding of complex signals from the nervous system controlling movement. The scientists plan to develop algorithms that periodically and automatically recalibrate so that nervous system “intent” can be decoded smoothly and without interruption.

Pandarinath and Miller’s project is being funded under DARPA’s $2 billion AI Next campaign, which includes a “high-risk, high-payoff” Artificial Intelligence Exploration program. DARPA officials see the campaign as part of a “third wave” of artificial intelligence research. The “third wave” focuses on contextual adaptation and enabling machines to function reliably despite massive volumes of changing or incomplete information.

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 13

Advancing Brain and Neurological Research

Using Brain Waves and Brain Dynamics

Georgia Tech and MIT researchers develop noninvasive treatment to improve memory and reduce amyloid plaques in mice

Using Brain Wave Stimulation to Treat Alzheimer’s Annabelle Singer’s team at Georgia Tech, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have demonstrated that by exposing mice to a unique combination of light and sound, they can improve cognitive and memory impairments similar to those seen in Alzheimer’s patients.

The noninvasive treatment, which induces brain waves known as gamma oscillations, also greatly reduced the number of amyloid plaques found in the brains of these mice – in Alzheimer patients, abnormal levels of amyloid (a naturally occurring protein) form plaques that gather between neurons and disrupt cell function. This work by Singer, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, and her colleagues, was awarded an R01 grant ($2 million over

five years) from the NIH last year to support further efforts in this arena.

“Traditionally, stimulation methods have been invasive or they usually don’t reach deep brain structures,” Singer said.

“There’s been some work in this area, but there aren’t many options – for one thing, they’re not very fast, they don’t have millisecond precision.”

This latest research proves, in mice, that the noninvasive treatment works not only in the visual cortex, “but also in hippocampus, in the brain’s memory centers,” said Singer, who believes the novel approach will spur new therapeutic approaches to Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.

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Understanding the Flavors in our Heads Brain waves – or, oscillatory brain activity – are thought to play an important role in how different areas of the brain communicate. They’re also altered in many diseases.

“We think these brain waves are like walkie talkies tuned to the same frequency,” says Annabelle Singer. “Interestingly, one brain region can switch frequencies in order to control what other brain regions it talks to.”

The Singer team describe a new way to separate the brain’s single oscillation cycles into distinct states based on frequency and phase coupling. Using their new method, the researchers identified four thetagamma coupling states in animal models. “There are four flavors – or theta-gamma coupling states – that we have identified, but there are many more kinds of brain waves,” Singer says. “What’s exciting is, we can track them with millisecond precision.”

So much in the realm of brain research involves not only listening to the noise that neurons are making and recording these micro conversations, but understanding the language, and why it makes sense.

Advancing Brain and Neurological Research

Improving our Understanding of Spasticity Using the Pendulum Test New model lends additional insight into physiological mechanisms of spasticity in cerebral palsy

Spasticity can be severely debilitating, negatively impacting movement, speech, gait, and overall quality of life.

Spasticity is a condition in which muscles contract strongly, resulting in stiffness or tightness, and quite often, pain. Usually caused by damage to the brain or spinal cord, it’s particularly common in people with neurological maladies like cerebral palsy or stroke. Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common cause of physical disability in children in most developed countries, and spastic CP is the most common form of the disorder. For these patients (and others), spasticity can be severely debilitating, negatively impacting their movement, speech, gait, and overall quality of life.

The lab of Lena Ting, professor in the Coulter Department, and in the Division of Physical Therapy in Emory’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, is tackling the problem, shedding new light on issues underlying spasticity. They had a specific interest in the pendulum test.

The pendulum test is a sensitive clinical assessment of spasticity in which the lower leg is dropped from the horizontal position and the features of leg motion are recorded. In typicallydeveloped people, the swinging leg behaves like a damped pendulum, with the angle of leg swing decreasing as it oscillates several times

before coming to rest. In children with spastic CP, three key differences in the leg motion are observed: Reduced angle of leg swing in the first oscillation, fewer oscillations, and coming to rest at a less vertical angle.

“We were stumped because the clinical explanation of increased velocity-dependent reflexes didn’t generate realistic motion,” Ting said. “But we happened to be working on a different research project studying an interesting property of muscles called short-range stiffness, which increases when muscles are activated.

We wanted to know if this very rapid rise and drop of resistive force in muscles when they are stretched could explain the parts of the pendulum test that were giving us a hard time in the simulation.”

So the researchers developed and tested a physiologically-plausible computer simulation of how muscle tone and reflexes would interact to reproduce key features of the pendulum test for spasticity across a range of severity levels.

Their new model helps to explain a whole range of pendulum test kinematics in people with and without CP.

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 15

Helping Motor Impaired Individuals with Advancements in Robotics “Our results suggest that people with profound motor deficits can improve their quality of life using robotic body surrogates.”

An interface system that uses augmented reality technology could help individuals with profound motor impairments operate a humanoid robot to feed themselves and perform routine personal care tasks such as scratching an itch and applying skin lotion. The web-based interface displays a “robot’s eye view” of surroundings to help users interact with the world.

Using a PR2 robot, study participants learned to control the robot remotely, using their own assistive equipment to operate a mouse cursor to perform a personal care task. For example, the PR2 and interface system was given to Henry Evans who has been helping Georgia Tech researchers study and improve assistive robotic systems since 2011.

Evans, who has very limited control of his body, tested the robot in his home for seven days and not only completed tasks, but also devised novel uses combining the operation of both robot arms at the same time – using one arm to control a washcloth and the other to use a brush.

“The system was very liberating to me, in that it enabled me to independently manipulate my environment for the first time since my stroke,” said Evans.

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Phillip Grice, a recent Ph.D. graduate, and Charlie Kemp, associate professor specializing in medical robotics from the Coulter Department, developed the system and performed the studies which they described as using “robotic body surrogates.”

“When we gave Henry free access to the robot for a week, he found new opportunities for using it that we had not anticipated,” said Grice. “This is important because a lot of the assistive technology available today is designed for very specific purposes. What Henry has shown is that this system is powerful in providing assistance and empowering users. The opportunities for this are potentially very broad.”

This work was supported by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), grant 90RE5016-01-00 via RERC TechSAge, National Science Foundation Award IIS-1150157, by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program Award, and the Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly of Fulton County Scholar Award.

New Tool and Treatment for Glaucoma

New research offers better tools for measuring critical tissue function, and a potential new stem cell treatment

Glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness, has one modifiable risk factor: ocular hypertension, or elevated intraocular pressure (IOP).

If you lower IOP effectively, you can slow progress of the disease. And there you have a very big ‘if,’ because available treatments generally do not target – or they intentionally bypass – the diseased and stiffened glaucomatous outflow tissues responsible for elevated IOP. Recent discoveries in Ross Ethier’s research focusing on the properties of a spongy, critical tissue in the eye called the trabecular meshwork (TM) include the development of a better measurement tool and a potential new treatment method, providing hope for people grappling with the disease. Ethier is a Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Scholar in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering where his lab is striving to transform a clearer understanding of glaucoma into new and better therapeutics.

“You can’t really know about something that you can’t measure, so here we’ve come up with a way to directly measure the properties of the trabecular meshwork, using imaging hardware and technology that is available in every eye doctor’s office,” said Ethier. “This technology has the potential to monitor

recently-approved treatments that target the outflow tissues, and to inform glaucoma surgery decisions, leading to better clinical outcomes.”

In addition to his measurement method, Ethier is working with BME professor, Stanislav Emelianov, who holds the Joseph M. Pettit Chair in the Coulter Department, to develop a new treatment.

Ethier’s lab is using photosensitive and superparamagnetic nanoparticles (in this case Prussian blue nanocubes, or PNBCs) to label mesenchymal stem cells, then magnetically steering them to the TM, which is in the eye’s anterior chamber. In Ethier’s research, PBNC labeled stem cells show increased delivery to the TM after only 15 minutes of exposure to a magnetic field.

“In glaucoma patients, these stem cells could be delivered to the entire circumference of the TM,” Ethier said. “The purpose of the stem cells is to restore tissue function in patients.”

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Noninvasive Urine Test Tracks Immunotherapy Progress “In five to ten years, we want to expand the platform to detect most all major complex diseases and progress in treating them.”

Doctors want to know as fast as possible if the body is rejecting an organ transplant or if an immunotherapy (like those involving T cells) is working or not, so they can adjust treatment. An experimental urine test to detect immunotherapy effectiveness very early has received a major funding boost of $1.8 million from the National Institutes of Health.

Gabe Kwong, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, has established a platform to detect complex disease and immune activity using nanoscale sensors. His platform, and engineered variations, uses an intravenous injection of “activity sensors,” nanoparticles that detect early enzyme activity of immune cells attacking cancer or an organ transplant. The sensor confirms the attack with a fluorescent signal in the urine.

Cancer is just one of many areas where his test can be useful. Cancer’s defenses are crafty and can thwart treatment from the start or disrupt initially successful treatment later on, so progress must be continually monitored, which Kwong’s lab is engineering the particle to do. Early resistance to therapy looks very different from later resistance.

18 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

“We need to be able to classify different forms of resistance, so we can combat them better,” said Kwong. “Our sensors’ signals get concentrated in the urine, so, not only are they not diluted in the blood, but we usually see a hundred- to thousandfold signal enrichment.”

He plans to adapt the sensing technology to profile those subtleties. It is already engineered to have advantages over other tests that have recently entered the market, which look for signals that come later, such as dead cancer cells shedding their DNA into the bloodstream.

Kwong’s lab has already developed the sensors, which are biocompatible nanoparticles, refined them as a reliable platform, and engineered variations that experimentally sense blood clots, liver fibrosis, organ transplant rejection, and cancer. The human genome produces 550 proteases, a type of enzyme relevant to detecting and combating disease. Kwong believes researchers can adapt his platform to detect any of them.

Kwong’s endgame ambitions: “In five to ten years, we want to expand the platform to detect most all major complex diseases and progress in treating them.”

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Nanoscale “Glass” Bottles Could Enable Targeted Drug Delivery Transferring Sensory Information in Prostheses

Tiny silica bottles filled with medicine and a special temperature-sensitive material could be used for drug delivery to kill malignant cells only in certain parts of the body according to Younan Xia, professor and Brock Family Chair in the Coulter Department.

Frank L. Hammond III, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, is working with applied physiologists, psychologists, and prosthetists to develop novel feedback-enabled prostheses that provide users with the sensory feedback required to more efficiently and intuitively utilize their assistive devices. Their non-invasive approach involves the display of proprioceptive and tactile feedback on the skin using small vibrating motors (vibrotactile feedback) and inflatable patches (mechanotactile feedback).

His team devised a way to create silica-based hollow spheres around 200 nanometers in size, each with one small hole, that could enable the spheres to encapsulate a wide range of payloads to be released later at certain temperatures only. The team packed the spheres with a mixture of fatty acids, a near infrared dye, and an anticancer drug. The fatty acids remain solid at human body temperature but melt a few degrees above. When an infrared laser is absorbed by the dye, the fatty acids will be quickly melted to release the therapeutic drug.

Feedback displays created from these two types of components can be worn inside prosthesis sockets, or in separate, wearable garments (arm bands) to provide information such as the angles of prosthesis joints during prosthesis movement, or the amount of force the prosthesis is exerting during the performance of a task.

“This approach holds great promise for medical applications that require drugs to be released in a controlled fashion and has advantages over other methods of controlled drug release,” Xia said.

Hammond’s group has developed wearable prototypes of these sensory feedback displays, as well as sensor-enabled robotic prostheses to pursue several topics relevant to the improved adoption of upper-extremity prostheses, including the use of anatomically-mismatched feedback where sensory data from a prosthesis are displayed on a remote part of the body (e.g., a prosthetic hand’s sensory information being displayed on the torso) rather than on the residual limb.

“This controlled release system enables us to deal with the adverse impacts associated with most chemotherapeutics by only releasing the drug at a dosage above the toxic level inside the diseased site,” said Jichuan Qiu, a postdoctoral fellow in the Xia group.

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 19

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Haynes Helps Create Roadmap for Synthetic Biology

Her lab investigates and designs chromatin-based systems for controlling gene expression in cancer and other cells.

Karmella Ann Haynes, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, researches chromatin, and how it can be used to control cell development in tissues. Her lab investigates and designs chromatin-based systems for controlling gene expression in cancer and other cells.

Recently, she played a key role in helping to chart a course for the future of research in engineering biology (also called ‘synthetic biology’), a field that involves taking what we know about the genetics of plants and animals, and then tweaking specific genes to make these organisms do new things.

The field is mature enough now to provide solutions to many societal problems, according to a roadmap released by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC). This publicprivate partnership is partially funded by the National Science Foundation.

The roadmap is the work of more than 80 scientists and engineers from multiple disciplines. Though highly technical, the report provides a strong case that the federal government should invest in this area, not only to improve public health, food crops, and the environment, but also to fuel the economy and maintain the country’s leadership in synthetic biology.

20 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Desai Developing Steerable Robotic Guidewire The ability to steer, visualize, and navigate the guidewire is highly novel and will eventually result in improvement of clinical workflow and patient treatment outcomes.

Jaydev Desai, professor in Coulter Department and director of the Georgia Center for Medical Robotics (GCMR), has spent his career developing robotic tools to address challenging clinical problems.

The NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) awarded a $2.8 million grant to support Desai’s lab and his collaborators for an innovative project that features the first use of intravascular steerable robotic guidewire capable of forward looking ultrasound imaging and image-guided navigation through vasculature and occluded vessels.

Desai explains that the ability to steer, visualize, and navigate the guidewire is highly novel and will eventually result in improvement of clinical workflow and patient treatment outcomes.

Patients with atherosclerosis can develop a buildup of fatty deposits, or plaque, within their arteries. These can lead to total blockages in the arteries, a condition called chronic total occlusion (CTO), which are the riskiest and most challenging vascular lesions to treat with traditional stenting or endovascular devices.

The structure of the lesion (including a fibrous, calcific plaque) presents a complex technical challenge – the stiff formation can bend guidewire tips. Even successful procedures, Desai points out, “are time consuming, involve chance, and require prolonged patient and physician exposure to radiation.”

“The clinical challenge is well recognized in the community,” he adds. “Since endovascular approaches are increasingly utilized over conventional approaches, there is an urgent need to develop new technologies to meet this critical need!”

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Gaining a Better Understanding of Platelet Aggregation

Zhu’s work reveals distinct integrin state transitions in response to both biomechanical and biochemical stimuli.

When you nick yourself shaving, or clumsily slice your thumb while cutting sheetrock, thank integrins. These specialized proteins play a critical role in stopping the bleeding. This first stage of wound healing is called hemostasis. “Of course, the other side of the coin is thrombosis, which is what kills people who have cardiovascular disease,” says Cheng Zhu, Regents’s Professor in the Coulter Department, describing what happens when platelet clumping runs amok, causing deadly clots.

Integrins facilitate how cells bind to and respond to their environment.

They allow cells to cling to each other, and they are great communicators, transmitting bi-directional signals: inside-out, to activate the binding function; and outside-in, allowing the cell to sense and react to the extracellular environment.

Tackling Genetic Vascular Disease A cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM), the abnormal development of blood vessels in the brain, has long captured the attention of Denis Tsygankov, assistant professor in the Coulter Department. “There is no cure for CCM. Some people who have the disease may live their whole lives and not know it,” said Tsygankov.

CCM can be a genetic hand-me down: children stand a 50 percent of inheriting CCM from a parent with the condition. Typically, the disease lies quietly within a person’s brain or spinal cord until there are symptoms. These include seizures, headaches, paralysis, lost vision, cerebral hemorrhage.

“We know about the mutations that cause it. On a molecular level we can do genetic studies, biochemical studies, and say, ‘here is the signaling network involved.’ But when you look at the disease you look at collective cell behavior,” Tsygankov said. “You see how the blood vessels form and then you see there is a huge gap between what you know on the molecular level and what you know on the tissue level. This is a challenging problem in general for any disease.”

He and his team used computer modeling and experiments in studying coordinated endothelial cell behavior at the earlier stages of vasculogenesis. “Through iterative cycling of modeling and experiments, we investigated the biomechanics of multicellular patterning in the context of healthy and diseased cell populations,” said Tsygankov, whose team developed a comprehensive simulation model with a sufficient level of detail to account for single-cell dynamics – protrusive activity, cytoskeletal stiffness, shape change, and then used it to simulate thousands of interacting cells.

Zhu’s work reveals distinct integrin state transitions in response to both biomechanical and biochemical stimuli. His team believes that their new findings, especially the biomechanical pathway, will probably guide the development of new antithrombotic strategies.

“Through iterative cycling of modeling and experiments, we investigated the biomechanics of multicellular patterning in the context of healthy and diseased cell populations.”

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 21

SPOTLIGHT

Shella Keilholz

Shella Keilholz, associate professor in the Coulter Department, is a pioneer in functional neuroimaging, having made seminal contributions using multimodal recording to identify the physiological sources of the fMRI signal broadly interpreted as brain activity. Her lab is the only one in the world using multiple electrode recordings to measure neural activity in rats simultaneous with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Her findings are foundational for interpreting the rapidly growing area of fMRI research in animals, healthy humans, and patients. Because she records from multiple sites within the brain, she has also contributed innovative methods and key findings to our understanding of how time-varying activity in fMRI data can be used to study different neural processes.

She is applying these methods to understanding differences in the human resting-state fMRI that predicts behaviors in healthy individuals during a cognitive task, and aids predictions of differences across different stages of development or neurological and psychiatric diseases.

The impact of her innovative research continues to raise the bar for the field by introducing cutting edge methods and discoveries, and for sharing them with the community of neuroscience.

The Keiholz lab, located on the Emory campus, studies functional connectivity mapping, based on correlations in the blood oxygenation dependent (BOLD) MRI signal. The exact relationship between these measures and the electrical signals of the brain is poorly understood, and the lab uses combined MRI and electrophysiological techniques in rodent models to elucidate the neural basis of functional connectivity. They plan to use these tools to build a multi-scale model of the brain capable of providing insight into the origin and relevance of functional networks observed with BOLD.

Students taking Manu Platt’s BMED 3600 class this year will be exposed to more than the components of cell biology. Platt, associate professor in the Coulter Department, is collaborating with Jennifer Singh, associate professor in the School of History and Sociology to challenge BME students to think more critically about the social, economic, and cultural considerations in science, and medicine. The goal is to link BMED 3600 with a sociology class (HTS 3088) through shared lectures and service learning opportunities.

22 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Creating the Next Wave of Researchers in Computational Neural Engineering Georgia Tech and Emory University have launched a training grant program in Computational Neural Engineering (CNE) with support from the National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The program is charged with training the next generation of multidisciplinary researchers working at the intersection of computational neuroscience, data science, and clinical neurophysiology. It is designed to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the explosion of new tools for measurement and manipulation of nervous system function, and the challenges posed by the growing threat of neurological diseases and disorders on an expanding senior population.

The award of nearly $1 million will support the traditional and innovative training activities of Ph.D. students in Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory, as well as Bioengineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Machine Learning Ph.D. programs at Tech, leveraging the growing strength of Neural Engineering at both universities.

The new CNE Training Program is led by coprincipal investigators Garrett Stanley and Lena Ting where they are co-directors of the Neural Engineering Center. Stanley is the Carol Ann and David D. Flanagan Professor in the Coulter Department. Ting is a professor in the Coulter Department and in the Division of Physical Therapy in Emory’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine.

Training the next generation of multidisciplinary researchers working at the intersection of computational neuroscience, data science, and clinical neurophysiology.

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 23

The Coulter Department welcomes

New Faculty Members

Ahmet Coskun

David R. Myers

Lakshmi Prasad Dasi

Assistant Professor Ph.D.: University of California-Los Angeles Postdoctoral Fellow: California Institute of Technology and Stanford University

Assistant Professor Ph.D.: UC Berkeley Postdoctoral Fellow: Emory University

Professor Ph.D.: Georgia Institute of Technology Postdoctoral Fellow: Georgia Institute of Technology

The Single Cell Biotechnology Lab aims to study spatial biology in health and disease.

Our research lies at the nexus of multiplex bioimaging, microfluidic biodynamics, and big data biocomputation. Using highdimensional nanoscale imaging datasets, we address fundamental challenges in immuno-engineering, cancers, and pediatric diseases. Our lab pursues a transformative multi-omics technology to integrate spatially resolved epigenetics and spatial genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, all in the same platform. We uniquely benefit from super-resolution microscopy, imaging mass spectrometry, combinatorial molecular barcoding, and machine learning to enhance the information capacity of our cellular data.

Variability of single cell images can be used to understand differences in therapeutic responses, as well as satisfy our curiosity on understanding how cells are spatially organized in nature.

Our understanding of a system centers on our ability to quantitatively measure it, from elucidating how cells function to enabling better healthcare with accurate measurements of patient vital signs. Our lab, the Sensors for Living Systems Lab (SL2), is interested in finding new ways to make these measurements and learning how to extract information from biological systems.

For example, our work shows for the first time that impaired cell forces alone correlate with bleeding symptoms in a disease that has no known diagnostic biomarker and remains poorly understood, highlighting the importance of biophysical measurements.

Borrowing concepts from biology, mechanics, and microsystems engineering, we focus on: 1) new sensor science and transduction principles, 2) high-throughput biomedical studies, and 3) clinical translation.

I am interested in translational cardiovascular engineering, i.e. push engineering to better treat and/or manage structural heart diseases in both adults and children. My team advances artificial heart valve technologies; tackles complex pediatric structural heart problems using engineering; and develops other innovative structural heart technologies. Our collaborative approaches include fluid and solid mechanics based experimental techniques, patient-specific predictive computational models, biomaterials, and 3D printing. While we integrate advanced biomaterials and biomechanical principles to realize next generation artificial heart valves, we are personalizing heart valve designs and surgical procedures through patient-specific simulations for optimizing outcomes. Finally, we firmly believe in translating our technologies to the clinic by supporting technology transfer and commercialization efforts.

24 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Felipe Garcia Quiroz

Aniruddh Sarkar

Ankur Singh

Assistant Professor Ph.D.: Duke University Postdoctoral Fellow: Rockefeller University

Assistant Professor Ph.D.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Postdoctoral Fellow: Harvard Medical School

Associate Professor Ph.D.: University of Texas at Austin Postdoctoral Fellow: Georgia Institute of Technology

The goal of my laboratory is to decode and utilize the repetitive language that is apparent in nature’s recurrent use of repeat elements across genomes, RNAs, proteins and material systems. We approach this challenge through genetic engineering approaches in bacteria and mammalian tissues. A key property that we examine is the ability of repeat elements to encode self-assembly behavior, namely through liquid-liquid phase separation.

Despite the prominent role of repetitive DNAs (reDNAs) in physiology and disease, reDNAs in genomes remain largely inaccessible to existing sequencing technologies. The gap is amplified at the level of repeat proteins (RPs), as they undergo extensive post-translational modifications (PTM) that alter their selfassembly but that are difficult to map. My lab pursues innovative approaches for synthesis, manipulation and sequencing of reDNAs, as well as unprecedented characterization of PTMs in RPs. Ultimately, we aim to use our understanding of nature’s repetitive language to build self-assembling nanotechnologies, as well as devise therapeutic approaches for human disorders involving phase separation, reDNAs and RPs that are intrinsically-disordered.

The unifying theme in my research is exploiting microscale and nanoscale physical phenomena to build technology for precision biology and medicine. Individual biological entities (e.g. cells) function and interact at this length scale. This creates unique opportunities for nanofabricated tools in high sensitivity and resolution in analyzing and manipulating them in an automated, high throughput and cost-effective manner.

Working in collaboration with clinicians and biologists, I build and use such lab-on-achip tools to unravel complex biological phenomena underlying human diseases to further their prevention, diagnosis and therapy. Some current projects include: microfluidic high throughput assays for studying biophysical and functional properties of antibodies and immune cells and electronic sensing and manipulation techniques for rapid and inexpensive point-of-care diagnostics and monitoring for infectious diseases in resource-poor settings as well as for cell and gene therapies.

My research aims to develop “living” immune tissues as organoids or on-chip to recapitulate dynamic immunological events in lymph nodes and spleen, and enable discovery and translation of immunotherapies. Our engineered materials in organoids communicate and manipulate the decision making process of immune cells at the cellular, molecular, and epigenetic levels. Our application areas are cancer, infections, and inflammation. Within cancer engineering, we have developed ex vivo “malignant” immune tissues by integrating micro-nano-bioengineering, patient-derived lymphoma cells, biomaterials, tissue mechanics, transport and lymphaticlike fluid flow. We are interested in discovering how biophysical forces and tissue microenvironment influence immune cell receptor signaling and epigenetics of lymphomas, as well as therapeutic responses.

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 25

Paul Benkeser

Michael Davis

Wilbur Lam

»» US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, 2019

»» International Society for Heart Research Fellow, 2019

»» Royal Society of Chemistry, Emerging Investigator, Lab on a Chip, 2018

»» Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Fellow, 2019

»» Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE Fellow, 2018

Mark Borodovsky »» American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Fellow, 2019

Jaydev Desai

Eva Dyer »» Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship

»» Society for Biomaterials’ MidCareer Award

»» National Science Foundation, Computer and Information Science and Engineering (NSF CISE), Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) Award

James Dahlman

Bilal Haider

Edward Botchwey

»» Tech Review TR35 – 35 innovative people in world under 35 years old (MIT) »» Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award, 2019

»» Frank A. Oski Lectureship Award, The American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, 2019

Joseph Le Doux »» US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, 2019

Susan Margulies »» Earl Bakken Lecture, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), 2019

»» Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship »» Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) Explorer Award

»» Emerging Investigator, Journal of Materials Chemistry B, 2018

26 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Cassie Mitchell »» International Alzheimer’s Association Award for Research Diversity, 2018

Wendy Newstetter

Peng Qiu

Robert Taylor

»» US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, 2019

»» Top 5 Best Performers of DREAM Single Cell Transcriptomics Challenge - Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods (DREAM)

»» American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Fellow, 2019

Chethan Pandarinath

Francisco Robles

»» Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship

»» Cord Blood Connect – Best Abstract Award 2018

Machelle Pardue »» US Dept. of Veterans Affairs, Senior Research Career Scientist Award

Krishnendu Roy

Manu Platt

»» 2018 Deal of the Year Award, Georgia Bio for NSF Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT)

»» American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Fellow, 2019

Annabelle Singer

»» American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Prism Magazine Early Risers: 20 under 40, 2018

Eberhard Voit »» Society of Mathematical Biology Fellow

Younan Xia »» National Science Foundation (NSF) Special Creativity Award »» Sigma Xi Sustained Research Award, Georgia Tech chapter

»» National Academy of Sciences & Kavli Foundation - Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow 2018

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 27

FACULTY AWARDS

BME Faculty Join Medical and Bioengineering Elite Mark Borodovsky, Manu Platt, and Bob Taylor inducted into AIMBE College of Fellows

Three faculty members from the Coulter Department have been accorded one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer. Mark Borodovsky, Manu Platt, and W. Robert Taylor have been inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

Borodovsky, Regents’ Professor in the Coulter Department and director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics at Georgia Tech, was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows for, “outstanding contribution to Bioinformatics by developing effective algorithms critically important for accelerated progress of genomics science and engineering.”

Platt, associate professor, Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Scholar, and co-founder of Project ENGAGES at Georgia Tech, was recognized for, “outstanding contributions to diversity, inclusion, community involvement, and interdisciplinary research aimed at global health problems and domestic health disparities.”

The College of Fellows is comprised of the top two percent of medical and biological engineers. College membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering and medicine research, practice, or education” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of medical and biological engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to bioengineering education.”

Taylor, who is the Marcus Chair in vascular medicine, professor of medicine and biomedical engineering, director of cardiology, and executive vice chair of the department of medicine at Emory, was honored for, “outstanding contributions advancing our understanding the pathology of cardiovascular disease.”

AIMBE Fellows are among the most distinguished medical and biological engineers including two Nobel Prize laureates, 17 Fellows having received the Presidential Medal of Science and/or Technology and Innovation, and 158 also inducted to the National Academy of Engineering, 72 inducted to the National Academy of Medicine and 31 inducted to the National Academy of Sciences.

28 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

FACULTY AWARDS

Sloan Foundation Awards Fellowships to Two BME Faculty Two faculty members from the Coulter Department have been awarded research fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The fellowships, awarded yearly since 1955, honor early-career scholars whose achievements mark them as among the most promising researchers in their fields.

In receiving their fellowships, Eva Dyer and Chethan Pandarinath, assistant professors in the Coulter Department, are ranked among “the best young scientists working today,” according to Adam F. Falk, president of the Sloan Foundation.

“Sloan Fellows stand out for their creativity, for their hard work, for the importance of the issues they tackle and the energy and innovation with which they tackle them,” Falk said. “To be a Sloan Fellow is to be in the vanguard of 21st-century science.”

Past Sloan Research Fellows include many towering figures in the history of science, including physicists Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann, and game theorist John Nash. Forty-seven fellows have received a Nobel Prize in their respective field, 17 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 69 have received the National Medal of Science and 18 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics, including every winner since 2007.“It is truly remarkable for one department to have two Sloan Research Fellowship winners in the same year,” said Susan Margulies, Coulter Department Chair. “Last year, Bilal Haider from BME won a Sloan Fellowship, and Annabelle Singer was awarded a Packard Fellowship. Three Sloan

Eva Dyer and Chethan Pandarinath ranked among top young scientists in the country awards and a Packard Fellowship in just two years are evidence of the brilliance and thought leadership of our early-stage neuro-engineering faculty.”

Dyer’s research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, optimization and neuroscience. Her lab develops computational methods for discovering principles that govern the organization and structure of the brain, as well as methods for integrating multimodal datasets to reveal the link between neural structure and function.

Pandarinath, who is also an assistant professor in Emory’s Department of Neurosurgery as well as the Emory Neuromodulation Technology Innovation Center, leads the Emory and Georgia Tech Systems Neural Engineering Lab. He’s part of an interdisciplinary team at Emory and Georgia Tech working to better understand how large networks of neurons in the brain encode information and control behavior. Pandarinath’s team hopes to design new brain-machine interface technologies to help restore movement to people who are paralyzed, including those affected by spinal cord injury and stroke, and by Parkinson’s disease and ALS.

“Sloan Fellows stand out for their creativity, for their hard work, for the importance of the issues they tackle and the energy and innovation with which they tackle them.”

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 29

FACULTY AWARDS

National Academy of Engineering Ceremony Honors Three Biomedical Engineering Faculty On May 14, at the historic Academy of Medicine in Atlanta, the president of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), C.D. Mote, Jr., presented Paul Benkeser, Joseph Le Doux, and Wendy Newstetter, from the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, with the 2019 Bernard M. Gordon Prize medal for innovation in engineering and technology education.

They were recognized “for fusing problem-driven engineering education with learning-science principles to create a pioneering program that develops leaders in biomedical engineering.” The $500,000 annual award recognizes new methods and concepts in education aimed at developing engineering leaders.

The Bernard M. Gordon Prize is the highest and most prestigious education award bestowed by the National Academy of Engineering.

“I am honored to recognize these educators who have created a remarkably innovative biomedical engineering program to create future leaders in the field,” said NAE President C. D. Mote, Jr.

“When the BME department was formed, a new way of educating future engineers was envisioned and we were very quickly recognized as an innovator in engineering education as evidenced by receiving a teaching excellence award by the Board of Regents,” said Susan Margulies, chair of the BME department. “Today, our BME faculty are receiving NAE’s highest award for their innovative approach.”

“...Fusing problem-driven engineering education with learning-science principles to create a pioneering program that develops leaders in biomedical engineering.”

Robert Butera to serve as Vice President for Research Operations Robert Butera, associate dean for research and innovation in the College of Engineering and professor in both the ECE and BME departments, will serve as Vice President for Research Operations (VPRO). The VPRO will be responsible for supporting

30 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

and developing the research program, operating the internally funded research programs in collaboration with the colleges, overseeing core facilities and research space, and managing policies related to research administration and operations.

FACULTY AWARDS

Women in Engineering Honors Cristi Bell-Huff

Eberhard Voit Named an SMB Fellow

Cristi Bell-Huff, Ph.D., from the Coulter Department is honored with an award by Women in Engineering (WIE) at Georgia Tech. Every year, Women in Engineering presents two awards to engineering faculty members who have had a special impact on students’ lives through their teaching excellence and by going the extra mile to encourage and support the students’ success. These awards are given on the belief that the learning environment is enhanced by professors who care, and that this increases student participation and retention. The awards are distinctive because they come from the students themselves.

Eberhard Voit, professor in the Coulter Department has been named a Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB) Fellow, one of the first in the organization’s history.

“When I started using math and primitive computing to address biological questions – in the last millennium, mind you – very few of my colleagues saw any value in this combination,” says Voit, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Systems Biology. Today, Voit is a pioneer in computational systems biology, an internationally respected, well-published scientist and author, teacher, mentor, and colleague, “and the epitome of an interdisciplinary thinker, researcher, and educator,” wrote one SMB colleague in a nomination letter for Voit.

“He is in my opinion the paradigm of a Fellow in the Society of Mathematical Biology.” Voit is one of only two new SMB Fellows worldwide in 2019.

Michael E. Davis and Phil Santangelo were promoted to full professor with tenure. Davis is an associate professor in both cardiology and biomedical engineering in the Coulter Department. Davis serves as director of the Emory+Children’s Heart Research and Outcomes (HeRO) Center.

His center develops the next generation of treatments for children with heart disease utilizing stem cell research, nanotechnology, and advanced imaging.

Research in Phil Santangelo’s lab is primarily focused on three areas: native RNA regulation, RNA virus pathogenesis, and RNA therapeutics and vaccines, where the application and development of imaging technology is applied to all three areas. His lab is also developing RNAbased therapeutics and vaccines.

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 31

FACULTY AWARDS

Vahid Serpooshan Awarded I3 WOW Research Award Vahid Serpooshan, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, was awarded an Imagine, Innovate, and Impact (I3) WOW Research Award through the Emory University School of Medicine (SOM).

The SOM Imagine, Innovate, and Impact (I3) Awards accentuate the theme of innovation, complementing the existing Emory University Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC) supported Synergy awards.

Serpooshan’s research project is entitled “PatientSpecific Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine Using 3D Bioprinting and Photon-Counting Computed Tomography.”

3D bioprinted tissue constructs have demonstrated tremendous potentials as medical patch devices in repairing damaged or diseased hearts. However, clinical applications of cardiac patch systems have been restricted by the poor integration of the patch with the recipient heart and difficulties in monitoring its function in the body.

By employing 3D bioprinting and photon-counting computed (PCCT) tomography technologies, his project aims at developing a new approach for bioengineering of patient-specific vascular patch devices and their tracking in vivo.

His lab will bioprint personalized cardiac patches to repair minipig heart tissue following a heart attack.

PCCT enables using multiple contrast agents to visualize the damaged and viable heart muscle/ vasculature, and to assess patch integration, its release of therapeutics, and blood perfusion at an unprecedented resolution. Establishing this novel, high-fidelity, theranostic platform with remarkably high precision, tunability, and reproducibility would be paradigm changing and open new prospects for a broad range of tissue engineering applications.

By employing 3D bioprinting and photon-counting computed (PCCT) tomography technologies, his project aims at developing a new approach for bioengineering of patient-specific vascular patch devices and their tracking in vivo.

Serpooshan selected for the Woodruff Health Educators Academy’s (WHEA) Teaching Fellowship

32 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

The WHEA Teaching Fellowship is a 12-month program for health science educators who want to advance their teaching skills. The fellowship includes monthly skills development workshops and monthly online intersession discussion groups. All sessions are organized around three domains: designing and planning learning, teaching and facilitating learning, and assessment of learning. Upon completion, fellows will be awarded a certificate of distinction in teaching.

FACULTY AWARDS

Synergy II/Nexus Awards Fund Collaborative Research Research proposal aims to pursue mapping the human “gaitome”

Professor Lena Ting, from the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, is part of an eightperson Emory-based research team that recently received a Synergy II/Nexus Award. Ting is the principal investigator for the project that received the award.

Their team’s project is titled “Mapping the Human ‘Gaitome’: Automated Analysis of IndividualSpecific Walking Patterns in Health and Disease.”

“Much about us as individuals is revealed simply by how we walk. When we walk, others may perceive our age, gender, socio-economic status, and mood. Walking speed has been referred to as the ‘fifth vital sign,’ associated with overall health.

Our objective is to develop novel methods to characterize the human gaitome, i.e. measure, model, compare, and classify individual-specific walking patterns in health and disease. Akin to the human genome project, this high-risk, high-

reward proposal leverages experimental, clinical, and computational work from the collaborators to develop a “sequencing” technique for human gait that.

Just as the Human Genome project has enabled us to understand the blueprint of our biology, our Gaitome project will elucidate the blueprint of our movement patterns. The integration of novel methods and hypothesis across basic science, machine learning, rehabilitation, and movement disorders is necessary to develop a method that can unravel the complex physiological interactions underlying how we move.

Ultimately our goal is to identify functional biomarkers to aid in diagnosis of a wide variety of orthopedic, neurological, and psychiatric disorders, and to provide functional targets for surgical, pharmacological, and other interventions that affect gait.

“Ultimately our goal is to identify functional biomarkers to aid in diagnosis of a wide variety of orthopedic, neurological, and psychiatric disorders, and to provide functional targets for surgical, pharmacological, and other interventions that affect gait,” said Ting.

Georgia Tech / Fall 2019 33

FACULTY AWARDS

Wilbur Lam Wins NIH Emerging Investigator Award The award is one of only seven NHLBI emerging investigator awards nationally this year

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health has given Wilbur Lam, M.D., Ph.D., an Emerging Investigator Award, which includes a seven-year grant of $5 million.

Lam is an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and in the Coulter Department. He is a clinical pediatric hematologist/oncologist at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

According to the NIH, the purpose of the Emerging Investigator Award Program is to promote scientific productivity and innovation by providing long-term support and increased flexibility to experienced investigators who currently already hold several NHLBI awards and whose outstanding record of research demonstrates their ability to make major contributions to heart, lung, blood and sleep research.

The award is intended to support a research program, rather than a research project, and to provide investigators with increased freedom to conduct

research that breaks new ground or extends previous discoveries in new directions.

“While we are developing microtechnologies to investigate the biophysics of hematologic processes at the micro-to-nano-scale, these microdevices can be adapted to function as novel pre-clinical disease models, clinical diagnostics and drug discovery platforms,” says Lam. “Overall, we use a ‘basement-to-bench-to-bedside’ approach in which the invention, translation and clinical assessment of diagnostic and therapeutic microtechnologies takes place under one scientific ‘roof’ with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of patients with blood disorders.”

Wilbur Lam Receives the Frank Oski Lectureship Memorial Award

34 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

The invention, translation and clinical assessment of diagnostic and therapeutic microtechnologies takes place under one scientific ‘roof’ with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of patients with blood disorders.

The award recognizes an outstanding clinical or laboratory investigator conducting cutting-edge research in the field of pediatric hematology/oncology. As this year’s national award recipient, Lam will give a plenary talk at the annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology in the spring of 2019.

FACULTY AWARDS

Department Wins Georgia Tech 2019 Diversity Champion Award The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University was presented with the 2019 Georgia Tech Diversity Champion Award. The Diversity Champion Awards recognize faculty, staff, students, and units who actively demonstrate and positively promote the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Tech.

Cassie Mitchell Selected as 2019 Diversity and Inclusion Fellow Cassie Mitchell, assistant professor in Coulter Department, was selected as a 2019 Diversity and Inclusion (DI) Fellow by Georgia Tech. As a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic and as a cancer patient, she has a passion to leverage her personal and academic experiences to positively impact lives both on and off campus.

As a DI Fellow, Mitchell cofounded the Georgia Tech ABLE Alliance, a new organization promoting inclusion, professional and social networking, and resource access for Georgia Tech students, faculty, and staff with disabilities. She serves as a faculty advisor for that club and is helping to build out its web and mentoring resources. In addition, she is also providing one-on-one mentoring for disabled students on campus and serving as a volunteer consultant to Georgia Tech administrators who are hiring disabled faculty or staff.

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Jacob Zelko Examines Short-term Medical Missions in Guatemala The occurrence of short-term medical mission (STMM) trips has grown dramatically in recent years. To help improve the effectiveness of these STMM trips, Jacob Zelko spent his summer participating in the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology’s Occupational Therapy (NAPAOT) Field School in Guatemala.

Zelko, a senior BME student from Horseheads, New York, worked intensively this summer in clinical and community settings gaining skills in research, observation, communication, and collaboration in a real hospital. Zelko, who learned Spanish as a second language, was

eager to investigate ways to improve STMM trips and integrate himself in Guatemala’s community and culture.

“Growing up, seeing my mom and dad serving others inspired me to seek ways to also help others,” said Zelko. “In Guatemala, we worked with healthcare professionals in the hospital, Obras Sociales del Hermano Pedro, that invites outside healthcare professionals, to help augment the hospital’s own medical care. In addition to investigating the effectiveness of STMM teams, I was investigating the effectiveness of knowledge sharing between the hospital’s healthcare workers and the visiting healthcare teams.

Summer Abroad Education Programs Enrich BME Students Biomedical engineering students can take courses over the summer in Galway, Ireland and in Beijing, China. Studying abroad gives students an opportunity to improve their global competencies while meeting their academic goals as students are able to take classes to fulfill their degree requirements.

The BME Galway Summer Program is situated in Galway, Ireland, where the surrounding west Ireland area has become the European capital for the healthcare and medical device industries.

This program, a collaboration between the Coulter Department and the National University of Ireland, Galway, seeks to leverage the remarkable concentration of medical device companies in the area. Third year BME student Samantha Kench remarked that “the BME Galway program is a once in a lifetime experience that every student should consider.”

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Another option for BME students places them in Beijing, China. The BME Beijing Summer Program is a collaboration between the Coulter Department and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Peking University (PKU).

This program affords the opportunity for an undergraduate research experience in the laboratory of a member of the PKU BME faculty.

Field trips to biomedical device companies (e.g.

GE Healthcare and Siemens Healthcare) and hospitals in Beijing and Shanghai complement classroom studies.

“My experience in Beijing was life changing, and I learned so much about the culture. It is interesting to see how different another culture can be, especially one that is nearly 1,000 years old,” said James Hankish, a senior BME student.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

BME Team Libi Medical Wins Highest Honor at Rice 360˚ Design Competition At the ninth annual Rice 360˚ Institute for Global Health design competition, The First Place Award and the People’s Choice Award went to Georgia Tech’s Libi Medical biomedical engineering team, whose fetal heart-monitoring technology, fetoMic, utilizes a microphone and app to detect and capture fetal heart rates.

This affordable and durable alternative to rudimentary fetoscopes is designed to better allow clinicians to assess the health of mother and baby during delivery.

Guided by the belief that “medicine is for everyone,” the student team ensured that fetoMic uses locally sourced materials with an easy-to-build design. The winning Libi Medical team members at the competition were Lizzy Kappler and Yahia Ali, biomedical engineering students in the Coulter Department.

Libi Medical, is the inaugural developing world capstone team out of the Coulter biomedical engineering department. As part of the project, the team visited Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in August of 2018 to talk with physicians, nurses, and midwives within their healthcare system. They identified a need for more sustainable, low-cost fetal heart monitoring solutions and spent two semesters developing and testing their prototype. The original Libi Medical student team members include Elianna Paljug (BME ‘19), Yahia Ali (BME ‘19), Hannah Geil (BME ‘19), and Elizabeth Kappler (BME ‘19). During the spring 2019 semester, the team brought on Jonathon Vehaun (CS ‘19) and Martino Lo (ID ‘20) to help with app development.

Libi Medical Won First Place and the People’s Choice Award

SecURO Takes First Place at Johns Hopkins University Healthcare Design Competition BME Team SecURO competed in this year’s Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Healthcare Design Competition. SecURO won first place in their respective division which earned them a $4,000 prize and trophy—which was given to BME Capstone Director James Rains.

SecURO, now comprised of BME undergrads Jared Brown, Bailey Klee, and Rachel Mann, was in the Advanced Healthcare track.

Sponsored by the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., they designed a circular suturing device that will help surgeons perform safer, more efficient prostate removal procedures, with improved patient outcomes. SecURO automates the reconnection of the bladder and urethra, saving time and money while reducing potentially devastating postoperative complications. The team also won the BME award at Georgia Tech’s fall design expo. Team members then included, in addition to Klee and Mann, Nicholas Quan and Madeline Smerchansky.

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STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Ethos Medical Wins 2019 Georgia Tech InVenture Prize and Makes Finals in Collegiate Inventors Competition

Three engineering students teamed up to develop a firstof-its-kind medical device that took home the top prize and $20,000 at the 2019 Georgia Tech InVenture Prize. Using ultrasound technology coupled with a custom-built guidance tool, team Ethos Medical has invented a guidance system to help physicians guide needles into the spine accurately and safely. The team is comprised of two recent Georgia Tech biomedical engineering graduates, Dev Mandavia and Cassidy Wang, and mechanical engineering alumnus Lucas Muller. The team was also selected as a finalist in the national Collegiate Inventors Competition, but did not win.

The team has been working full-time to launch the company since inventing the device on campus last year. They have also been working closely with doctors in the Atlanta area to develop a prototype that medical professionals will use.

“The next step for us is to begin the FDA testing process,” says Wang.

On top of the cash prize, Ethos Medical received a free U.S. patent filing by Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing valued at approximately $20,000.

MBID Grads Compete in Super Bowl LIII Event A startup business that was born in the Masters of Biomedical Innovation and Development (MBID) program at Georgia Tech was one of just five companies chosen to present their plans as a finalist in the NFL’s 2019 edition of the “1st and Future” competition on Super Bowl weekend. The annual competition, organized around the Super Bowl, is designed to spur innovation in player health, safety, and performance.

TendoNova did not win one of the two top prizes, “but it was a tremendous experience just to be a finalist,” said Shawna Khouri, one of the MBID grads who co-founded TendoNova. TendoNova showcased its innovative medical device, which targets chronic tendon pain, such as tennis elbow and plantar fasciitis. The company is developing a suite of specialized tools for minimally invasive orthopedic procedures that can be performed under ultrasound guidance in the physician’s office.

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STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Nusaiba Baker wins Georgia Tech’s Three Minute Thesis Competition Nusaiba Baker, a biomedical engineering M.D./Ph.D. candidate won first place in the Ph.D. competition at the final round of Georgia Tech’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) event. She presented her thesis work that involves using therapeutic nanoparticles to treat inflammatory diseases.

Two BME Teams Among DEBUT Winners Two teams of students from the Coulter Department were among six winning projects in the 2019 DEBUT (Design

by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams) Challenge. Earning $15,000 was a team of four students – Danae Argyropoulou, Pranav Dorbala, Alison Wong, Madhumita Baskaran – who designed a device to rapidly screen for C. difficile infection (CDI), an antibiotic resistant, intestinal bacterial infection that can be life threatening. The team came up with an inexpensive, unique solution – a paper-based screen requiring a single step, with quick results – to address a problem with a $6.3 billion annual impact. Winning the HIV/AIDS Prize of $15,000 was a BME team called Creative Edge Medical (Rachel Mann, Bailey Klee, Nick Quan), who developed packaging for scalpel blades that is both functional and protective, eliminating injuries and reducing exposure to bloodborne diseases.

The competition is sponsored by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB, part of the NIH), and VentureWell.

Anagha Krishnan Among 24 Under 24 Leaders and Innovators in STEAM and Space Award The Mars Generation (TMG) announced its second class of 24 Under 24 Leaders and Innovators in STEAM and Space Award winners. The group is comprised of young people from around the world who are breaking barriers in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) fields and bringing the sciences to the public through multidisciplinary interests.

Among this year’s 2019 winners is Anagha Krishnan, a third-year biomedical engineering undergraduate student, from the Coulter Department. Krishnan will be pursuing an M.D./Ph.D. and hopes to study the interactions between immune cells and the tumor microenvironment to develop better immunotherapeutic drugs to treat cancer.

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STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Tube Team Takes Top BME Capstone Honors A trio of undergraduates in Coulter Department took the department’s top Capstone Design Award. Winning the BME prize, and $1,000 was Tube Team, a trio of young women who developed a solution to organize IV catheter tubes to increase patient and medical staff safety during ICU transport.

The winning students were Emily Dunford, Arielle Margulies, and Sarah Nixon.

Lee-Kai Sun and Julia Woodall Win Goldwater Scholarships Anna Romanov and Julia Woodall Win Astronaut Scholarships Anna Romanov and Julia Woodall, undergraduate students in the Wallace H. Coulter Department, are winners of prestigious Astronaut Scholarships through the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF), which was created in 1984 by the six surviving Mercury 7 astronauts to help the United States retain a leadership position in technology and innovation by supporting the best and brightest scholars in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – the STEM fields – while commemorating the legacy of the nation’s pioneering space explorers.

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Georgia Tech BME students Lee-Kai Sun and Julia Woodall are 2019 recipients of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship.

The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation was established by Congress in 1986 to serve as a living memorial to honor the lifetime work of senator Barry Goldwater, who served his country for 56 years as a soldier and statesman, including 30 years in the U.S. Senate.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Carmen Carrion, a postdoctoral fellow in the STELAR lab at Georgia Tech, has won the Jumki Basu Scholar Award from the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST). The award given by NARST, the largest science research and teaching association, supports and nurtures promising young scholars from underrepresented groups.

Emily Madsen Uses Her Skills as a Painter and Sculptor to Illuminate Complex Topics

Kelsey Kubelick Wins Best Student Paper Award at IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium Kelsey Kubelick, a BME Ph.D. candidate, won the Student Paper Competition at this year’s IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium held in Kobe, Japan during October, 2018. She is currently working with professor Stanislav (Stas) Emelianov in the Ultrasound Imaging and Therapeutics Research Laboratory. Her paper’s research topic was centered around glaucoma.

Emily Madsen is an undergraduate biomedical engineering (BME) student who is using her skills as a painter and sculptor to illuminate complex topics. Through a student-run program based at Emory and Georgia Tech called Science.Art. Wonder., she has created a series of works designed to creatively interpret scientific research. She has worked with several researchers at Georgia Tech to bring art together with science in an effort to spark discussion about the researchers’ complex scientific topics. Madsen, who is entering

her third year as a BME student, has been a part of the program from the beginning and has partnered with two different researchers from two different departments and one large interdisciplinary research institute, the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech. Stephen Beckett, a researcher that Madsen worked with, says her sculpture depicting his research, “really explores how various types of abstractions can make us think and feel differently about our observations. For me, it really captures some of the key steps in the scientific process.”

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Research Focus Areas & Facilities Outstanding Medical Facilities and Resources

Neuroengineering

Cancer Technologies

»» »» »» »» »»

Emory Vaccine Center Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Grady Memorial Hospital Winship Cancer Institute

National Institutions Located Nearby »» Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (HQ) »» The American Cancer Society (HQ)

Research Facilities Immunoengineering

Cardiovascular Engineering

Biomedical Imaging & Instrumentation

Biomedical Informatics and Systems Modeling

Biomedical Robotics

Biomaterials and Regenerative Technologies

»» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »»

Teaching Facilities »» »» »» »» »» »»

Engineering Education

42 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Atlanta Clinical Research Network Sites Center for Advanced Brain Imaging Emory Pediatrics Building Emory School of Medicine and Research Centers Health Sciences Research Building Marcus Autism Center Marcus Nanotechnology Building Molecular Science and Engineering Building Parker Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience Roger A. and Helen B. Krone Engineered Biosystems Building Technology Enterprise Park U.A. Whitaker Building Wayne Rollins Research Center Whitehead Biomedical Memorial Building Winship Cancer Institute Woodruff Memorial Research Building Yerkes National Primate Research Center

Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center Egleston Children’s Hospital at Emory University Emory University Hospital Emory University Hospital Midtown; Grady Memorial Hospital Wesley Woods Geriatric Hospital

External Advisory Board External advisory board members provide an important outside perspective that is essential to maintaining the impactful relevance of our programs to industry. They play a significant role in vetting programs designed for students, alumni, and corporate constituencies to ensure we maintain the highest quality standards in our curriculum, practice and outreach.

Rafael Andino, M.S., M.B.A. Vice President, Engineering & Manufacturing Clearside Biomedical, Inc.

Lead of Camera Software Apple

Virginia L. Giddings, Ph.D

Caleb Appleton

Venture Capitalist Innovation Endeavors

Gilda Barabino, Ph.D.

Dean and Berg Professor The Grove School of Engineering at The City College of New York

Vivek Bhatt, Ph.D. CTO GE Healthcare

VP, R&D Intersect ENT

Elizabeth Harrison, Ph.D Chief Executive Officer MetaSystems Group, Inc.

Heather Hayes, Ph.D Applications Scientist Axion BioSystems

Jeff Lane, Board Chair

Kelly Bolden, M.D., FACS Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Washington, DC

Elias Caro

David Frakes, Ph.D.

VP Technology Development Wallace H. Coulter Foundation

Managing Partner Messner Lane Capital LLC

Brian Lehman

Global VP Commercial operations Electrophysiology and Heart Failure

Brad Miller, M.D.

Chief Medical Officer and SVP Ciperhealth

Angela Gill Nelms

Chief Operating Officer Florence Healthcare

Erin M. Spinner, Ph.D.

Associate Director Clinical Science and Strategy Mitral and Tricuspid Therapies Abbott

Kate Taylor

Medical Technology Entrepreneur and Angel Investor

Global Innovation Program Manager Boston Scientific

Xavier Lefebvre, Ph.D.

Sue Van

Chris Lee, Ph.D.

Global VP, Medtronic Clinical Operations Medtronic

President, Emeritus Member Wallace H. Coulter Foundation

The U.A. Whitaker Building is home to the Coulter Department on the Georgia Tech campus.

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GEORGIA TECH

EMORY UNIVERSITY

Creating the Next®

One Emory: Engaged for Impact

Georgia Institute of Technology U.A. Whitaker Building 313 Ferst Drive Atlanta, Georgia 30332 bme.gatech.edu

Emory University Health Sciences Research Building 1760 Haygood Drive Atlanta, Georgia 30322 bme.emory.edu

The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University affirms our institutions’ efforts to increase equity, diversity, and inclusion on our campuses. We strive to create a welcoming, diverse and inclusive environment that values, celebrates, and respects the individual and communal differences that make us human, and aspire to cultivate global leaders in engineering and medicine who are champions of inclusive excellence.

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Copyright 2019 • Georgia Institute of Technology