Announcements

Amanda Chin, a second-year graduate student from Dr. Leo Q. Wan's laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Morphogenesis (TEAM), won the First Place Poster Award from the New Frontiers Symposium 2014: New Strategies and Technologies in Cancer Research, held in Albany, NY on Nov 14, 2014. Her abstract was also "deemed to be one of the best", and selected to give a podium presentation at the meeting. This award speaks highly of her research quality and presentation skills. The conference is organized by the Capital Region Cancer Research Group.

Glenn Monastersky, associate director of CBIS and professor of practice, biomedical engineering has been awarded $498,000 by the NYSTEM division of the New York State Department of Health to support the enhancement of STEM training for pre-college teachers. The 4-year educational effort will focus on human stem cell biology and the development of effective stem cell research teaching modules for area high schools, especially those within diverse and disadvantaged school systems.

Profs. Deanna Thompson and Ryan Gilbert received a $250K award from the New York State Spinal Cord Injury Research Program from the New York Department of Health. This funding will support Rensselaer’s efforts in biomaterials for neural engineering. Specifically, this contract will provide funding for a rapid, high content screening platform to analyze stem cells and primary cell behavior within 3D biomaterials. The seven color confocal and objective module with corresponding camera will allow for rapid imaging of large areas of cell-laden materials.

Undergraduate students at Rensselaer have been extremely successful with their applications for Society of Women Engineer's scholarships. A total of 14 Rensselaer students received SWE scholarships, four of these students are enrolled in BME. The BME RPI Dorothy M. and Earl S.

Juergen Hahn has been elected as the Program Coordinator for 2017 for AIChE's Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) division 10B. The duties of the program coordinator are to plan and oversee the activities related to AIChE conferences involving computing and systems technology sessions. One of his responsibilities will be to serve on the Board of Directors of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) in 2018.

Seven biomedical engineering students will be honored with Rensselaer's Founders awards. The award recipients are: Junior: Omar T. Abdoun, Carolyn Chlebek, Jorge D. Zhingre Sanchez Senior: Thomas A. Vaccaro Graduate Student: Anthony Certo, John F. Drazan, Nicholas J. Schaub The Founders Award of Excellence was established in 1994 to honor students who embody qualities of creativity, discovery, leadership, and the values of pride and responsibility at Rensselaer.

Leo Wan, an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department, has been selected to receive the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Ge Wang has received a multimillion dollar four year grant from NIH to work on a "High Dose Efficiency CT System" under the multi-PI U01 mechanism. The key points about the project are as follows. X-ray computed tomography (CT) is a corner stone of hospitals and clinics. There are 100 million CT scans annually worldwide. The high impact of CT has led to rapidly increased utilization, and at the same time public concern about the potential risk of x-ray radiation to patients.