Announcements

Dr. Deanna Thompson, with Dr. Pankaj Karande (Chemical and Biological Engineering Department), has been awarded a $330,000 3-year NSF grant titled, "Rational and Combinatorial Design of Biomaterials for Neural Engineering." This project represents a new approach for the design of biomaterials for engineering specific human tissues.

Dr. Dai has been awarded a four-year American Heart Association's National Scientist Development Grant ($308,000). The grant, awarded to junior faculty at their early career stage, is one of the most prestigious awards in Cardiovascular Medicine. The title of the project is "Arterial venous differentiation for tissue engineering application." In this project, Dr.

Dr. Deanna Thompson, with collaborators Drs. Lee Ligon (Biology Department) and Shep Salon (Department of Electrical, Computer, & Systems Engineering), has been awarded a 4-year $1.41 million R01 grant from NIH/NIBIB titled, "Directed Formation of Enhanced 3 - dimensional oriented Schwann Cellular Arrays For the Repair of Large - Gap Peripheral Nerve Injuries." Schwann cell (SC) participation is key participant supporting re-growth following peripheral nerve injury.

Dr. Intes has been awarded a two-year, $378K R21 grant from the National Cancer Institute at the NIH. The grant will be used to develop a Multispectral Fluorescence Molecular Tomography (MFMT) tool capable of simultaneous tracking of multiple fluorophores in vivo in small animals. The new technique represents a significant development in the field of biomedical engineering. In particular MFMT will allow to track biological processes in vivo and provide plethora of information on diseases states, and help development of new targeted drugs.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Deanna Thompson is utilizing more than $300,000 in New York state funding as part of the state stem cell research program, NYSTEM, to study adult neural stem cells. The NYSTEM program is New York’s $600 million publicly funded grant program to advance scientific discovery in the area of stem cells. For more information, please read the article in RPI News.

Dr. Corr received an NSF Career Award for his project, entitled "CAREER: Engineering Functional Muscle - Tendon Structures using Scaffold - Free Cell - Based Directed Assembly and Theoretical Modeling". He was also awarded an NIH two year R56 grant to investigate the "Control of Stem Cell Microenvironments for White and Brown Adipogenesis" from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Dr. Dai received a two year R21 grant award from National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to study how to control stem cell differentiation for vascular tissue engineering applications using the cell-printing technology in his lab.

We are happy to announce that the collaboration between RPI’s BME Capstone Design and the Center for Disability Services has been awarded this year’s annual Technology Innovation Award by the Center for Economic Growth. The award is based on the strong collaboration between our Capstone Design course and the work our students have done over the last 6 years with the Center for Disability Services. Within RPI, we share the recognition with the MDL who has worked with the Center for the last two years.