STUDENT NEWS: UNDERGRADUATE
Student symposium: Sharing
research, building skills
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Students shared research
via posters at the symposium.
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JPG) |
ast April, discussions of microfluidics, neural
engineering, microelectromechanical systems, magnetic resonance imaging,
tissue mechanics, biometrics and other such topics highlighted the first
Biomedical Engineering Symposium. The event, which drew about 60 faculty
and student attendees, offered BME students the chance to improve their
presentation skills and share their research with the engineering community.
During the symposium, 11 graduate students delivered
talks on their projects, while five undergraduates answered questions
about their research poster presentations. Seven faculty members judged
each entrant. The idea of a symposium originated a couple of years ago
during a brainstorming meeting of Biomedical
Engineering Student Society (BMES) officers, says organizer Ryan
Kobs, now a BME graduate student and former BMES president.
The officers hoped the event would enrich the academic
lives of BME students and involve more graduate students. “That
year proved to be too busy for a symposium, so I used this past year
to develop and organize the event,” Kobs says.
Kobs, who received support from BMES, the Engineering
Medicine and Biology Society, Polygon Engineering Council and the BME
department, was pleased with the symposium’s turnout. “The
speakers did an excellent job and there were many people in attendance
throughout the day,” he says. “This was a great event that
now has a strong base that will allow for development in the future.”
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Prototype of the
patented positiioner
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JPG) |
Biopsy positioner patented
In May, the U.S. Patent Office issued patent
No. 6,558,337 for the “Positioner for Medical Devices Such As
Biopsy Needles.” Created by then-biomedical engineering students
Bill Andrae (BS ’02), Eric Dvorak (BS ’01) and Justin Kolterman
(BS ’01) for Associate Professor of Radiology Frederick Kelcz,
the invention is an apparatus that can be used to position a medical
device with respect to the human body during medical procedures. The
students developed the positioner in a biomedical engineering design
course taught by Professor Frank
Fronczak.
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Congratulations
BME Graduates!
Summer
2003—BS
Hallam, Michael
Puccinelli, John
Stefonek, Tracy
December
2003—BS
Agard,
Kathleen
Asti, Brian
Benton, Corey
Connemara, Rafael
Goldsworthy, Jane
Kosir, Michael
Martinez-Diaz, Gabriel
Michaels, Sarah
Moga, Benjamin
Nelson, Darceé
Palmer, Christine
Potter, Wyatt
Schmidt, David
Thurlow, John
Expected:
May 2004—BS
Birkeneder,
Eric
Bou-Reslan, Hani
Chakravarty, Rajit
Donatell Gabriel
Gerhart, Jacqueline
Hale, Audrey
Harris, Matthew
Khosropour, Andrea
Kinney, Kevin
Kolpin, Sarah
Lam, Yuk-Ki
Moeljadi, Herlina
Quinn, Kyle
Rotroff, Joel
Rozmenoski, Andrea
Staerkel, Bryan
Toth, Megan
Trier, Steve
Vandehey, Nick
Vanderpool, Rebecca
VanDeWeghe, Andrew
Williams, Kelly
Wright, Kevin
Summer 2003—MS
Karnani,
Madhu
Nadolski, Timothy
Schmidt, Erin
Wang, Liya
December 2003—MS
Balasubramanian,
C.
Graf, Adam
Grover, Joel
Hingorani, Rittu
Kahn, Joshua
Meyer, Marie
Oza, Ashish
Victorey, Paul
Zhang, Jie
Expected:
May 2004—BS
Alford,
Sara
Ander, Sarah
Dalal, Reema
Kobs, Ryan
Leach, Crystal
Meister, David
Phillips, Jeffrey
Skala, Melissa
Tan, Liming
Summer 2003—PhD
Tangwongsan,
Chanchana
December 2003—PhD
Zeringue,
Henry
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Undergrads published
Four former BME undergraduate
students (now alumni) have authored scientific papers based on their
undergraduate design or research projects. They are:
• Paul F. Laeseke (BS ‘01) was the lead
author and Kelly R. Stevens (BS ‘02) a co-author of “Postbiopsy
Bleeding in a Porcine Model: Reduction with Radio-frequency Ablation—Preliminary
Results,” published in the May 2003 issue of Radiology. The project’s
purpose was to test a biopsy needle modified for use of radio-frequency
(RF) energy to produce hemostasis after core biopsy of liver or kidney.
Among the paper’s authors also were Professors Frank J. Fronczak
and John G. Webster.
• Gabriel Martinez-Diaz (BS ’03) was the
lead author and Darcee Nelson (BS ’03) a co-author of “Mechanical
and Chemical Analysis of Gelatin-Based Hydrogel Degradation,”
published in Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics, 2003, 204, No. 14.
The two authored the paper with Assistant Professors Wendy Crone and
Weiyuan John Kao. The research examined the interrelated effect of environmental
pH and temperature, gelatin backbone modification and content on the
tensile and degradative property of interpenetrating networks containing
gelatin and poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate.
BME scholar receives honors
A chancellor’s scholar,
Gabriel Martinez-Diaz (BS ’03), received the Andrew J. Weimer
Outstanding Scholar Award for his contributions to the chancellor’s
scholarship program. Throughout his four years at UW-Madison, he has
been a tireless advocate of the program, assisting prospective and continuing
scholars with a variety of needs, and making presentations about the
program to a variety of audiences, including high school counselors
and prospective students—many of whom he has phoned at his own
expense.
In addition, Martinez-Diaz received a $2,500 national
scholarship from the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and,
as a 2003 finalist for the university’s Theodore Herfurth Award
for Initiative and Efficiency, was recognized for his academic achievement,
significant social contributions through extracurricular activities,
degree of self-support, and ability to communicate.
BME senior in USA Today top-20 academics
USA Today has named
Jacqueline Gerhart, a biomedical engineering senior, to its College
Academic All-Stars first team. The publication’s program honors
60 undergraduates representative of outstanding students around the
country, and who excel not only in the classroom, but in leadership
both on and off campus.
Gerhart maintains
a 3.8 GPA and hopes to be a physician. Among her activities, she volunteered
with a Salvation Army MEDIC clinic and won a grant to build a database
to track patient care, analyze trends and promote preventative care;
she currently is working to add MEDIC reading volunteers and transportation
programs.
In addition, she
is Women in
Science and Engineering program coordinator, a member of the engineering
student council, a team leader of Engineering Projects in Community
Service, triathlon team workout leader, and was 2000 homecoming queen..
Student leadership award winner
Biomedical engineering sophomore Christopher M. Klundt received a UW-Madison
Excellence in Student Organization Leadership Award in May. The award recognizes
students who, through their involvement in student organizations, are having a positive
effect on campus and student life. Before he was officially a student here, Klundt regularly
worked 20 hours a week to revive the university's collegiate forensics team, which
disintegrated in 1989 due to budget cuts. It now has 18 registered members and in 2003
finished third at the Novice Nationals competition.
STUDENT NEWS: GRADUATE
Students receive DOD fellowships
BME graduate students Carmalyn Lubawy and Melissa
Skala have received Department of Defense Breast Cancer Pre-doctoral Fellowships.
The fellowships provide three years of support for doctoral studies. Their
advisor is BME Assistant Professor Nimmi
Ramanujam.
BME alumna joins WARF
The Wisconsin
Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) recently hired Jeanine Burmania
(BS ’01, MS ’02) as a licensing assistant in the biological
sciences. Drawing on her experience in molecular biology, cell culture,
polymer synthesis, drug release studies and development of diagnostic
assays, Burmania will manage select technologies within WARF’s
bioscience portfolio, evaluate licensing opportunities and assist with
marketing efforts.
Traineeship melds computational and biological
sciences
Now a PhD student in the department, Amy Butterworth
completed a Computation and Informatics in Biology and Medicine (CIBM)
traineeship last summer with Associate Professor David
Beebe and Oncology Assistant Professor Caroline Alexander.
The CIBM program,
funded via a grant from the National Library of Medicine, enhances opportunities
available to undergraduate, predoctoral and post-doctoral students in
crossdisciplinary training in bioinformatics. With her funding, Butterworth
studied the modeling of population dynamics in normal and pathologic
mammary epithelium.
