Recognition and Reward

RECOGNITION AND REWARD Prestigious fellowships will further graduate research

TWO BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING STUDENTS HAVE RECEIVED GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM (GRFP) AWARDS FROM THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION. The GRFP is a competitive program that recognizes and supports outstanding students who are pursuing research-based graduate degrees in science and engineering. Courtney Kay Carlson and Kimmai Phan are among 24 GRFP awardees from UCI who will receive three years of annual funding.

Carlson, who is earning a doctorate, works to engineer mammalian cells that will be able to record their own developmental history as they proliferate within living tissue. “There are many exciting applications for these engineered cells,” said Carlson, who is advised by Assistant Professor Chang Liu. The cells could benefit developmental biologists trying to understand complex multicellular organisms and be useful for clinical studies trying to uncover the causes of developmental disorders, congenital heart disease or cancer progression.

Carlson also won a two-year fellowship from the American Heart Association. She will receive $53,000 from the AHA in support of her research.

Phan, who graduated last spring with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and a minor in materials science and engineering, worked in the lab of her adviser, Assistant Professor Tim Downing. Her project, in collaboration with Associate Professor Anna Grosberg, sought to determine whether DNA methylation, an important epigenetic mechanism, plays a role in the topography-mediated maturity of cardiac muscle cells. “Being the daughter of parents with chronic diseases, I’ve always been interested in the intersection of medicine and engineering therapies to combat illnesses,” said Phan. “Understanding fundamentally how tissues and disease function at the gene expression level is so powerful as a tool to improve patient care and medicine.”

TWO BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING GRADUATE STUDENTS WITH THE SAME ADVISER WON NATIONAL AWARDS LAST YEAR. Erik GonzalezLeon was named a 2018 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellow and Evelia Salinas won the 2018 Career Development Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society. Both are doctoral students who work in the lab of UC Irvine Distinguished Professor Kyriacos Athanasiou.

Gonzalez-Leon uses self-assembling methods to tissue engineer the meniscus, the thin fibrous cartilage between the surfaces of joints. He adds biochemical stimuli during tissue culturing to enhance the meniscus’s mechanical properties in an effort to bring it closer to native tissue. Gonzalez-Leon and Athanasiou will receive $50,000 a year – including a stipend, a training allowance and an institutional allowance – for up to three years while Gonzalez-Leon completes his doctorate. “I am excited to be a representative of the HHMI Gilliam Fellowship, and I look forward to doing my part in advancing diversity in the sciences,” GonzalezLeon said. “This fellowship will allow me to focus not only on my own scientific endeavors, but also provides a platform for me to spark interest in the sciences among underrepresented groups.”

Like Gonzalez-Leon, Salinas tissueengineers cartilage found in the body’s joints, using different models of simulation to drive the engineered cartilage to behave more like the body’s cartilage. The BMES Career Development Award supports travel to the society’s annual meeting for underrepresented graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, early career faculty and early career professionals from underrepresented populations in biomedical engineering. Salinas received complimentary registration and a travel stipend to the October meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. “I am very pleased to have won this Career Development Award from BMES,” Salinas said. “To be recognized by BMES is truly an honor.”

Salinas and Gonzalez-Leon’s adviser, Athanasiou, was understandably pleased with his students. “Both of these students are outstanding and a pleasure to have in our department. We are so lucky to be surrounded by excellence,” he said.

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING DOCTORAL STUDENT RACHEL SMITH WON A 2018-19 GRADUATE DEAN’S DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIP AWARD FROM THE UCI GRADUATE DIVISION. The award, designated for students in their final year of graduate education, allows them to forgo non-research related employment and concentrate on completing their dissertation. Smith conducts computational analysis of brain signals in patients with epilepsy, specifically studying infantile spasms, a potentially devastating form of epilepsy that strikes within the first year of life. She is developing quantitative tools to assess how the infants’ brains are functioning differently from the brains of healthy babies, as well as building models to predict which patients are going to respond to treatment. “We hope that this will expedite the treatment process and improve patients’ long-term outcomes,” said Smith, who is advised by Beth Lopour, assistant professor.