Faculty News

Several department faculty recently received grants from The The Whitaker Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to engineering research that improves medical care.

• Assistant Professor Wendy C. Crone (also engineering physics) received a three-year, $210,000 grant that will support her research into nickel titanium (NiTi) biocompatibility in implantible medical devices. NiTi is a shape-memory alloy that scientists increasingly are applying in implantible devices. Crone hopes to develop plasma-source ion implantation as a new surface-modification technique that will improve NiTi devices' biocompatibility and retain the alloy's bulk shape-memory behavior without negatively affecting its mechanical behavior.

• Assistant Professor Susan C. Hagness (also electrical and computer engineering) received a $207,000 grant, which will support her research into the use of microwave radar imaging for breast cancer detection as a complement to the standard use of X-ray mammography. Despite progress, X-ray mammography still produces a relatively high number of false negative and false positive diagnoses, says Hagness. She is researching whether images from microwaves—the same microwaves used to communicate with digital cellular phones, only at lower power—will offer the sensitivity to solve those problems. She has also started a research partnership with Frederick Kelcz, a UW-Madison associate professor of medicine and an expert on breast cancer detection.

• Assistant Professor Weiyuan Kao (also pharmacy) received a three-year, $207,000 grant. Kao's overall research goal focuses on the role of biomaterials in the management of various pathological conditions. The grant will support his research into the engineering macrophage function by novel biomaterials containing biomemetic oligopeptides.

• Professor Amit Lal (also electrical and computer engineering) received a three-year, $210,000 grant. His microelectromechanical creations could give surgeons an incomparable new edge in medicine. Lal has created a new class of medical cutting tools etched from silicon wafers, using some of the same lithography techniques behind integrated circuits. His silicon blades are up to 10 times as sharp as the advanced medical tools made from metal. The technology could lead to greater precision for highly sensitive procedures, such as cataract surgery or neurosurgery, or it could be used in the development of a genuine first in medicine: painless needles. Lal currently has six patents pending with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation on his devices, which span a range of uses.

Associate Professor Regina M. Murphy (also chemical engineering) was one of eight UW-Madison faculty members awarded 1999 Romnes Fellowships for extraordinary achievement at an early stage in their careers. She studies the molecular basis of Alzheimer's disease to design new, effective therapies. The $50,000 fellowships have been funded since 1975 by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), and awarded by the research committee of the UW-Madison Graduate School. The fellowships provide research support for faculty who have received tenure within the past four years and already have made an impact on their fields. The awards are named after the late H.I. Romnes, former chair of the board of AT&T and former president of the WARF Board of Trustees.