Dear Friends of BME,    

 

Greetings from Irvine!

Fall quarter has brought crisp air and vibrant energy from our incoming and returning students. Biomedical engineering continues to attract the brightest and highest-achieving students, with an incoming class of 120 freshmen and 25 new graduate students. In addition, we are pleased to announce new assistant professor Chang Liu as our 20th core faculty member. Liu, who specializes in the engineering of genetic systems and also the burgeoning field of synthetic biology, will join us Jan. 1, 2013. Look for a more detailed introduction of Liu in the spring newsletter.

Assistant Professor Wendy Liu  has been awarded a 2012 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's New Innovator Award for her proposal titled "Engineering Biomaterials to Exert Molecular Control of Immune Cell Function."

Liu, who is affiliated with The Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology, seeks to develop biomaterials that inhibit local immune cells.

Professor Vasan Venugopalan will lead a new interdisciplinary graduate program in biophotonics, the development and application of optical technologies to advance biomedical science and healthcare.  

Venugopalan, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, received a five-year, $3 million Integrative Graduate Education & Research Traineeship (IGERT) grant from the National Science Foundation to create a doctoral-level program that integrates physics, chemistry, engineering and the life sciences. As many as six new students will be enrolled annually into the Biophotonics Across Energy, Space & Time program.

Professor Steven C. George, M.D., Ph.D., director of The Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology in The Henry Samueli School of Engineering, has received two major grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) aimed at creating 3-D chips with living cells and tissues that accurately model the structure and function of human organs such as the lung, liver and heart.  

"We will be developing microtissues that mimic cardiac and cancer tissue, and these microtissues will be receiving nutrients like oxygen through real human blood vessels," said George. "We believe reproducing this complexity is necessary to mimic more closely the human response to new drugs."   

Biomedical engineering graduate student, Nizan Friedman,  presented research at the inaugural Broadcom Foundation University Research Competition sponsored by Broadcom Foundation.

Friedman's project, "MusicGlove: A Music-Based Hand Rehabilitation Device," creates a new, intensive and highly motivating rehabilitation regimen that can reduce long-term hand impairment from stroke, high-level spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury and other conditions.