U.Va. to Lead Creation of Worldwide Bioengineering Network, thanks to new NSF Partnerships for Innovation Award

When it comes to new solutions for human disease and injury, undergraduate bioengineering programs have a lot to offer: talented students, experienced mentors, corporate partnerships, and a host of university resources. A new National Science Foundation “Partnerships For Innovation” (PFI) Award at the University of Virginia aims to harness these resources--and multiply their effect by “going global.”

The 3-year $600K grant sets in motion a network of 15 universities and 14 corporations across 18 nations and 6 continents. The group will collaborate on multi-university undergraduate design projects, international corporate internships, and capstone incubators to nurture translational technologies. More information can be found at www.bmeplanet.org.

News and Notes

Associate Professor Jeff Holmes joins U.Va. Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University, where he was a founding member of its BME Department and launched a world-class research program in cardiac biomechanics. His focus: the development of the scar tissue and the remodeling of heart muscle after a heart attack. Jeff’s research addresses a number of questions: What role do mechanical forces play in shaping the composition and three dimensional structure of the scar tissue that forms after a heart attack? How does the evolving structure of this scar tissue determine its mechanical properties? How do those mechanical properties influence overall function of the infarcted left ventricle in the short-term, and what role do they play in guiding remodeling and the potential progression to heart failure in the long term?

Assistant Professors Brett Blackman and Brian Helmke are co-investigators on a new $2.5M NIH Bioengineering Research Partnership (BRP) Award led by Professor Martin Schwartz (Microbiology/BME). The overall aim of the project is to elucidate the role of integrin signals in response to atherogenic flow and develop new approaches to inhibit the inflammatory pathways.

Jason Papin, Assistant Professor, received a prestigious $400,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation for his pioneering work developing computational methods to analyze large biological networks. Here he will be building a model to predict how an intractable parasite may respond to various perturbations, while concurrently modeling the host’s associated immune response. These methods could have tremendous impact on infectious disease and may be applicable to a variety of other disease processes.

William Guilford, Associate Professor, received a $440,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to test the hypothesis that the bond between actin and myosin in muscle cells is mechanically tuned to function under physiological conditions.

Cato Laurencin, Professor, has been elected to chair the AIMBE College of Fellows. Earlier this year, Cato’s lab received national press for developing a three dimensional braided polyester scaffold that holds promise as a future treatment option for torn anterior cruciate ligaments (ACLs).

Scott Robertson is the 2007 Virginia Engineering Foundation Outstanding Student. This is one of the Engineering School’s top distinctions, and it’s the third year in a row that a BME major has earned it. Scott is now working for GE’s Healthcare Division as part of the Edison Engineering Development Program.

For its 2007-08 funding cycle, the U.Va.-Coulter Partnership awarded $600,000 (total) to eight translational research teams at the University of Virginia. All the teams are jointly led by a BME faculty member and a U.Va. clinician.  Two Coulter projects have already obtained follow-on funding or license deals from outside of U.Va., and all have generated patent disclosures. A cardiac MRI team led by Craig Meyer (BME) and Chris Kramer (Cardiology/Radiology) has generated 9 patent applications alone, four of which have been fully converted by Siemens.

Graduate students Erwin Gianchandani (Jason Papin’s lab) and Drake Guenther (Bill Walker’s lab) both earned the Award for Excellence in Scholarship in the Sciences and Engineering. This $5000 award recognizes scholarship proved through academic excellence, journal publications, patents, and presentations at national meetings.

A $21K grant from the National Collegiate Investors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), awarded to Assistant Professor Timothy Allen, will fund BIOM 433: Advanced Design in BME. This new course fills the “design gap” common to many undergraduate curricula. It provides a bridge between introductory design courses, usually taught in the first or second year, and fourth year capstone design projects.