Category Archives: BioEngineering

Tuesday, 9 May 2017, 3:28 pm Press Release: University of Auckland Bioengineering researchers showcase work at Waikato Mori school Researchers from the University of Aucklands Bioengineering Institute (ABI) will step outside their laboratories tomorrow and spend a day with 40 Year nine and ten pupils at Ng Taitea School in Hamilton. They will work hands-on with students demonstrating things like the intricate workings of our noses and eyes and how a baby breathes in vitro. This is the second year in a row the ABI, in partnership with Medical Technologies Centre of Research Excellence (MedTech CoRE) Outreach, has held an innovation day at Ng Taitea Wharekura. The Outreach programme aims to build strong relationships with students at high school level and then provide support as they progress to University, says Diana Siew, MedTechCoREs Strategic Relationships Manager, based at ABI. The MedTech CoRE Outreach has been co-designed with Ng Taitea Wharekura and aims to target the Mori community, particularly lower decile schools giving a little extra support to interested students to help them pursue STEM-related subjects. Our goal is not necessarily clinically oriented, says Siew. Students moving into tertiary education through our programme will have a chance to be mentored by … Continue reading →

Posted May 9, 2017 Atlanta, GA Bob Nerem has won some of the top awards and honors in his field, recognitions for his dedication and accomplishments over a long career as a trailblazing bioengineer. But this summer, hell receive the kind of honor that will outlast him, when the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) commits his likeness to bronze. ASME has established the Robert M. Nerem Education and Mentorship Medal to recognize individuals who play a role in influencing engineering careers in the growing field of bioengineering, said K. Keith Roe, president of the society. A key criteria is mentoring in the form of activities that are innovative above and beyond what is normally seen. That would be Nerem, founding director of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineers (NAE) and one of only three bioengineers to receive the Founders Award from that organization. Hes also a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nerem was instrumental in launching the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), serving as its founding … Continue reading →

Marine phytoplankton are famously photogenic. Take, for instance, diatoms. They are among the most common type of phytoplankton and are especially breathtaking: their cell walls are made of silica, a glass-like compound, and take a variety of forms including discs, tubes, and star-like structures. Scientists have long sought to understand the factors that contribute to the diversity of phytoplankton. Presumably all these different shapes have some ecological meaning, said Andrew Barton, an assistant professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Biological Sciences Division at the University of California San Diego. Some shapes might be hard to eat, or maybe are advantageous for acquiring scarce resources. Barton has just received the Simons Foundation Early Career Investigation in Marine Microbial Ecology and Evolution Award, which will support an interdisciplinary research project to attempt to answer this question. The project will use a combination of underwater microscope data from the Scripps Pier Plankton Camera operated by the Jaffe Laboratory for Underwater Imaging, environmental data from the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (SCCOOS), and numerical models that simulate plankton communities to understand the ecological reasons for the poorly understood diversity in phytoplankton shapes and sizes. The Scripps Plankton Camera is an underwater … Continue reading →

CLEMSON, South Carolina Rapid diagnostic tests for point-of-care diagnostics, diabetic-resistant coatings, HIV inhibitors and an impact-resistant, corrosion-prohibiting coating were among the 15 innovations for which Clemson University researchers received patents in 2016. Tanju Karanfil, vice president for research at Clemson University, says the patent awards are one example of the impact Clemson makes on the region. Image Credit: Craig Mahaffey / Clemson University The Clemson University Research Foundation(CURF) facilitates and manages technology transfer for Clemson faculty. Collaboration between researchers and CURF has produced more than 150 patents that are nowavailable to the private sector for licensing. The patent recipients received special recognition recently at an annual award event sponsored by theClemson Inventors Club, a select group of faculty chosen for their high level of research activity, which often produces inventions. Invention and innovation in research are just a few ways Clemson impacts the world, said Tanju Karanfil, vice president for research at Clemson. Congratulations to all the inventors for their hard work and dedication to academic research. Bob Quinn, executive director of theSouth Carolina Research Authority (SCRA) outlined the new vision for the organization. The patent awards are a great representation of the innovation happening at Clemson, Quinn said. We … Continue reading →

In his new book, The Body Builders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human,author and award-winning journalist Adam Piore says the new frontier that intrigues scientists and engineers today is the human body. He says amazing work and research is underway that melds technology with biology.These innovations can heal devastating injuries or even rewire the brain. Piore tells us about this evolving science through the stories of the people who develop the technology and the people who are transformed by it. Piore recently sat down with All Things Considered Host Bill Buchner. Below is a transcript of their conversation. You are a journalist by profession, a foreign correspondent at one point.So how did you come to write this book? I covered a lot of things, I covered Congress, I lived in Cambodia, and I went to Iraq, but one of the things that has always intrigued me in my journalism is stories of human resilience.Its always fascinated me how people overcome adversity and are able to live with setbacks. So a few years ago I came across the story of an incredible scientist named Hugh Herr.And his story so fascinated me that I sort of followed along that path and … Continue reading →

Bioengineering graduate takes off at Rocket Lab When Alex Anderson was a teenager growing up in Waiuku, he read a lot of science fiction and dreamt of one day building futuristic things like robots. Today Alex has arguably done even better than that. The 30-year-old Mt Eden resident who graduates from the University of Aucklands Bioengineering Institute with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, is now building rockets for a living. Its a dream job, he says of his role with Rocket Lab. Rocket Lab is a US company with a base of operations in New Zealand. They are developing launch vehicles to put small satellites into space, explains Alex. These satellites traditionally have to compromise on orbit to ride share with larger satellites. Rocket Labs Electron will lower the barrier to commercial space by offering frequent and cheap launches direct to orbit from the Mahia Peninsula on the North Islands East Coast. Alex is a vehicle test engineer with Rocket Lab and says his role involves testing all the various components and systems which make up a launch vehicle and feeding the results of those tests back to the designers. He has drawn on his general engineering background in instrumentation … Continue reading →

Forbes How Advances In Bioengineering Are Allowing People To Unlock Natural Resilience Forbes ... and programmed it to behave like a normal leg. When I visited his lab at MIT, he had a pair of those babies strapped on, and we walked across the icy quad to lunch. If that is not an expression of human resilience unleashed by bioengineering I ... Originally posted here: How Advances In Bioengineering Are Allowing People To Unlock Natural Resilience - Forbes … Continue reading →

Crippled by multiple sclerosis, the lab mice's hind legs and tails were limp with paralysis, but Lisa Tostanoski had an idea about how she could treat them. With a tiny needle, the doctoral student at the University of Maryland, College Park injected the mice with a dose of time-released medicine. Two weeks later the mice were scampering around their cages. "They were able to stand up on their hind legs," Tostanoski said. "We reversed the paralysis." The treatment, a complex combination of immunology and engineering, earned Tostanoski, 26, a prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, awarded to her and eight other students and teams earlier this month. The prize for the most promising young inventors in America awards her $15,000 for her medical invention to reverse symptoms of debilitating autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Her novel approach has shown promise for developing treatments in an area that has long eluded researchers. "If her invention that she's working on proves successful, it's a game changer," said Stephanie Couch, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program. "She didn't shy away from something that seems big and daunting." Autoimmune diseases occur when a person's immune system mistakes healthy cells in the body for a foreign … Continue reading →

April 26, 2017 Researchers at the Texas Biomedical Device Center (TxBDC) at The University of Texas at Dallas have been awarded a contract worth up to $5.8 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate a novel approach to accelerate the learning of foreign languages. The contract is part of DARPA's Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program, which seeks to advance the pace and effectiveness of a specific kind of learningcognitive skills trainingthrough precise activation of peripheral nerves, which in turn can strengthen neural connections in the brain. "Military personnel are required to utilize a wide variety of complex perceptual, motor and cognitive skills under challenging conditions," said Dr. Robert Rennaker, Texas Instruments Distinguished Chair in Bioengineering, director of the TxBDC and chairman of the Department of Bioengineering. "Mastery of these difficult skills, including fluency in foreign language, typically requires thousands of hours of practice," said Rennaker, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps. DARPA's TNT program aims to develop an optimized strategy to accelerate acquisition of complex skills, which would significantly reduce the time needed to train foreign language specialists, intelligence analysts, cryptographers and others. Rennaker and his colleagues at the TxBDC will focus on developing an … Continue reading →

ALBANY A pair of Albany High School science teams enjoyed tremendous success at competitions this year, furthering the local school systems academic reputation. The 15-member Science Olympiad team from AHS won its regional competition in March, then finished fifth at the Northern California championships on April 1. Also on April 1, a team of five students in the Biology Club finished second at the Cal Bioengineering Honor Society Bioengineering Competition. This year we werent really expecting anything at all, said Emily Lu, a sophomore who is on the Science Olympiad team. When they announced first we were all crying, she said of winning the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad (BARSO), the regional competition. The Science Olympiad team is Lu, Alex Kireeff, Amal Kaduwela, Brandon Chen, Evan Zhong, Maria Fedyk, Ishaan Das, Jonathan Luo, Milo Kearney, Nathan Skinner, Philip Lee, Ruby Tang, Thomas Lee, William Li and Yunfan Zhong. The team was advised by Albany High teacher Valerie Risk, as well as parent-coaches Ajith Kaduwela, Yishi Chen, Charles Lee and Annette Chan. The competition appeals to the students, most of whom have been competing in Science Olympiad since they attended Albany Middle School. This is definitely a team event but its … Continue reading →