TISSUE ENGINEERING · Newsletter September 2014. 4. Marjolein van der Meulen becomes BME Chair. 6....

Newsletter

September 20144

Marjolein van der Meulenbecomes BME Chair

6

Cornell BME wins 2013 BMES Diversity Award

7Meet the 2014 NSF Fellows

TISSUE ENGINEERING 8

BME

2 | BME Newsletter 3 | BME Newsletter

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR: MICHAEL L. SHULER

W elcome to our 2014 Newsletter with best wishes to all of our friends and alumni. While 2013-

2014 brought many good things our way, we are particularly excited for 2014-2015.

Marjolein van der Meulen has become the new chair of BME as of July 1, 2014. You will read more about Marjolein in the next article, but I believe that we are fortunate to have her step into the chair’s role. She has been at Cornell for almost 20 years with a primary appointment with the Sib-ley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and also an appointment as a Senior Scientist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. HSS is the ortho-paedic component of Cornell Weill Medical College. She is currently the Swanson Pro-fessor of Biomedical Engineering with a re-search focus on orthopaedic biomechanics. As you will see in the next article, she has had important leadership roles at Cornell and is well-prepared to lead the BME effort at Cornell.

The building renovation of Kimball Hall has begun and will provide space for

BME, Mechanical and Aerospace, and Ma-terials Science faculty. BME has been allo-cated two faculty laboratories in Kimball. With a growing department, this space will be very important to us until a new build-ing for BME is completed.

Another important milestone for the department is the approval by the Cornell Board of Trustees of a proposal to initiate a B.S. degree program in BME. Our proposal now moves to New York State, which must approve all degree programs in the state.

We hope that this process will be suc-cessful, but realize that it will take signifi-cant time before the program may become a reality.

The department was honored by the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) with the BMES 2013 Diversity Award. It is the first time the award as been given to an organization or department rather than an individual. Our success continues with

32% of the entering class of Ph.D.s for 2014 from underrepresented minority groups.

We continue to be successful with our students winning NSF Fellowships with six of our current students being awarded NSF Fellowships and two of our incoming Ph.D. students have NSF Fellowships. Since 2008, we have had 48 NSF fellows in the Ph.D. program, which is remarkable for a depart-ment with a modest size.

We have added one new faculty mem-ber, Iwijn De Vlaminck, who is currently a post-doctoral associate at Stanford work-ing with Professor Steve Quake. He begins January 2015 at Cornell and will develop new approaches for single-cell genomics measurements and to understand the ecol-ogy of heterogeneous cell states.

Our students and faculty continue to do well as can be seen from the list of awards and recognitions they have re-ceived. Two of our fairly recent Ph.D. stu-

BME MESSAGE

dents, Robby Bowles and Ben Hawkins, have initiated independent academic careers at Utah and San Jose State University, respectively.

I have been proud to have served Cornell and BME as its founding chair. It is with great pleasure that I look at what has been accomplished with the efforts of the staff, students, external advisory board, and BME faculty. Much still needs to be done to achieve our goal of being a high-ly effective full service department. I am pleased that Marjolein van der Meulen has agreed to become chair and to work with the department to achieve our goals.

Sincerely,

Michael L. ShulerProfessor and former Chair

T o educate students to understand the human body as an integrated system through quantitative en-

gineering analysis and to use that un-derstanding to design better therapeutic strategies, devices, and diagnostics.

THE BME MISSION

ABOUT THE COVERResearch image from the Cosgrove lab showing rejuvenated muscle stem cells repairing damaged muscle fibers (green) in aged mice. To read more about this research, see page 11. Published online in Nature Medicine, February 16, 2014

2014 ADVISORY BOARDDavid AndersonGentis, Inc.

William BentleyUniversity of Maryland, College Park

Al Di RienzoBiomedical Institute of the Americas

Kenneth R. DillerUniversity of Texas, Austin

Fred Dinger IIIENTrigue Surgical, Inc.

Avram A. EdidinRelievant, Inc.

David J. FarrarThoratec Corporation

Andrew D. FirlikFoundation Medical Partners

David R. FischellAngel Medical Systems

Kevin HealyUniversity of California, Berkeley

Matthew JenusaitisOCTANe

Steven M. KloskCambrex Corporation

Deborah LeckbandUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Gloria MatthewsGenzyme Corporation

James M. McCormickFirst Manhattan Consulting Group

Larry V. McIntireGeorgia Institute of Technology/Emory University

Donald E. MorelWest Pharmaceutical Services

Rich NewmanSyracuse University

Buddy D. RatnerUniversity of Washington

George TruskeyDuke University

Bruce TrombergUniversity of California, Irvine

Craig A. WheelerMomenta Pharmaceuticals

CORNELL BME NEWSLETTER

is published once a year by the Department of Biomedical Engineering

at Cornell University.

Chair:Marjolein van der Meulen

Managing Editor:Nozomi Nishimura

Photography: All photos by University Photography unless otherwise noted.

Cornell University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action

educator and employer.

Michael L. Shuler


SWANSON PROFESSOR OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING MARJOLEIN VAN DER MEULEN

W e are pleased to announce that Marjolein C.H. van der Meulen has accepted our offer to serve

as the Chair of the Department for a five-year term starting July 1, 2014 and ending June 30, 2019.

Marjolein van der Meulen is the Swan-son Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell Univer-sity. Her research in orthopaedic biome-chanics focuses on musculoskeletal mech-anobiology and bone biomechanics. She is interested in the modulation of musculo-skeletal tissues by mechanical loading and in the determinants of skeletal structure and load bearing function, both relevant to diseases such as osteoporosis and osteoar-thritis.

She received her S.B. from MIT and M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, all in Mechanical Engineering. Before join-ing the faculty at Cornell, Professor van der Meulen worked for three years as a biomedical engineer at the Rehabilitation R&D Center of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in Palo Alto, California. In 1995, she received an NIH FIRST Award and in 1999 an NSF Faculty Early Career Develop-ment Award. Professor van der Meulen is a member of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR), the Amer-ican and European Societies of Biomechan-ics, and the Orthopaedic Research Society. She is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Society of Mechanical Engi-neers. Professor van der Meulen is the Sec-retary of the Orthopaedic Research Society, Deputy Editor for the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, member of the NIH Skeletal Biol-ogy, Structure and Regeneration study sec-tion, and steering committee member for the IBMS Sun Valley Workshop on Muscu-loskeletal Biology. She recently served on

the ASMBR Task Force on Atypical Femur Fractures.

Professor van der Meulen has served in many important leadership roles at Cornell. Most recently, she was the Associate Dean of Research in the College of Engineering. She was also a Co-PI and co-founder of the NSF-funded CU-ADVANCE Center for the hiring, promotion, retention and advance-ment of women faculty. She also serves on the advisory board of Diversity Programs in Engineering. In addition, she has strong connections to Weill Cornell Medical Col-lege as a Senior Scientist at the Hospital for Special Surgery.

We are delighted to have her serve in this vitally important role and anticipate growth and success under her leadership. We will benefit greatly from her experience, breadth of vision, and commitment to edu-cation and outreach.

SALUTATION FROM PROFESSOR VAN DER MEULEN

Being selected as the new chair of Bio-medical Engineering at Cornell is quite an honor and responsibility. Mike Shuler has led a decade of incredible success follow-ing the establishment of the department in 2004. The faculty, staff and students are outstanding as evident from the recent ac-complishments described in Mike’s letter.

The opportunities in BME at Cornell are quite exciting. Looking forward major highlights of the future will include:

• Hiring the Robert Langer Endowed Chair in Biomedical Engineering, • Establishing a new undergraduate major, the first new major in the College of Engineering at Cornell since materials science and

engineering was founded in 1964, and • Designing and constructing a new BME building.

As my transition progresses, I look forward to getting to know the entire Cornell BME community, including those of you beyond our Ithaca campus reached by this newsletter. While we will provide updates to you in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me with your thoughts and updates.

Sincerely,

Marjolein C. H. van der Meulen James M. and Marsha McCormick Chair of Biomedical Engineering Swanson Professor of Biomedical Engineering

BME WELCOME

MARJOLEIN VAN DER MEULEN BECOMES BME CHAIR

Marjolein van der Meulen

Professor van der Meulen (second from the left, middle row) with her lab group

(Continued on next page)


The Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) selected Cornell’s Department of Biomedical Engineering to receive the 2013 Biomedi-cal Engineering Society’s

(BMES) diversity award. It was the first time the award was given to a group or or-ganization. This reflects the department’s comprehensive approach taken to promote diversity.

The BMES Diversity Award honors an individual, project, organization or in-stitution for outstanding contributions to improving gender and racial diversity in biomedical engineering. The award is giv-en for a broad range of activities, including research, education, and services that im-prove diversity in biomedical engineering industry and/or academia. It recognizes

lifetime achievements as well as innovative or high impact activities.

Cornell BME has been highly success-ful in recruiting, matriculating, graduating, and promoting the success of female and underrepresented minority Ph.D. students. Last academic year, the department’s Ph.D. program had 114 with 43% women and 15% underrepresented minorities. This year, we matriculated new Ph.D. students with 37% women and 32% underrepresent-ed minorities.

BMES attributed the department’s suc-cess to its “inclusive programming, facul-ty-student engagement, cross-institutional

partnerships and outreach programs.” Our department strives to promote diversity one student at a time through individual conversations between talented recruits and our faculty and current students. The department brings a large fraction of our faculty to the BMES annual meeting to encourage talented students from all back-grounds to consider Cornell for graduate studies. The department has also estab-lished relationships with predominantly minority serving undergraduate institu-tions to encourage top students from these institutions to apply to Cornell.

CORNELL BME WINS 2013 BMES DIVERSITY AWARD

BME AWARDS

Lawrence Bonassar (Associate Chair), Chris Schaffer (Director of Graduate Studies), and Michael Shuler (Chair) accept the BMES Diversity Award from Gilda Barabino (BMES President) at the 2013 BMES Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA.

TThe Department of Biomedical Engineering proudly con-gratulates the eight students who won the 2014 National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship.

This year’s winners are (from the left, top row) Leah Pag-nozzi, David Bassen, Aniqua Rahman, (bottom row) Gregory Fe-dorchak, Neymar Ortiz-Otero, Jonathan Matheny, (not pictured) Kory Grayson, and Liz Feeney.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program helps “en-sure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engi-neering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The pro-gram recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in the NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathe-matics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions.”

EIGHT WIN NSF GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

P rofessor William Olbricht is currently serving as the Direc-tor of the Particulate and Multiphase Processes (PMP) pro-gram at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF is

the largest supporter of basic research in science and engineering with an annual budget of about $7 billion. Program directors serve one- to four-year terms, after which Professor Olbricht will return to Cornell full-time. In addition to deciding which proposals in the program receive funding, program directors champion research initiatives and new directions for the nation. In order to evaluate and fund a wide variety of research, NSF uses a peer review pro-cess that relies on proposal reviews from other scientists. Among Professor Olbricht’s duties are to select the panels of scientists who review research proposals based on intellectual merit and broader impact. Particulate and Multiphase Processes program is in the Di-vision of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems and covers the physics and chemistry of systems consist-ing of particulates or multiple phases of matter. Topics are as var-

ied as bubbles, fluid suspensions and blood flow with applications ranging from biotechnology to manufacturing.

Professor Olbricht says one of the highlights of the position is the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge research from experts in other fields. He also enjoys learning about, and supporting cre-ative approaches to science and engineering. For example, Profes-sor Olbricht participated on a panel on scientific research inspired by origami.

PROFESSOR OLBRICHT SERVES AS NSF PROGRAM DIRECTOR

William Olbricht


TISSUEENGINEERING: FACULTY

Lawrence BonassarDr. Bonassar’s research group focuses

on the regeneration and analysis of mus-culoskeletal tissues, including bone and cartilage. The approach involves a mul-tidisciplinary strategy using techniques in biomechanics, biomaterials, cell biolo-gy, and biochemistry. Applications of this technology include the repair of articular cartilage, intervertebral disc, trachea and craniofacial defects.

Read more:Reiffel, A.J., Kafka, C., Hernandez, K.A.,

Popa, S., Perez, J.L., Zhou, S., Pramanik, S., Brown, B.N, Ryu, W.S., Bonassar, L.J., Spector, J.A., “High Fidelity Tissue Engineering or Pa-tient-Specific Auricles for Reconstruction of Pe-diatric Microtia and Other Auricular Deformi-ties” PLoS One 8:e56506, 2013.

Jonathan ButcherDr. Butcher’s research group focuses

on identifying engineering principals reg-ulating embryonic valvular development and applying these to motivate new regen-erative engineering strategies for heart and valve disease. His lab has developed exper-tise in three areas necessary to undertake this effort: multi-scale intercellular mecha-nobiology, quantitative volumetric live im-aging, and 3D tissue printing.

Read more:Mahler, G.J.*, Farrar, E.*, and Butcher, J.T.

“Inflammatory cytokines induce endothelial to mesenchymal transformation in valve endothe-lial cells via Akt/NFkB.” Arteriosclerosis, Throm-bosis, and Vascular Biology 2013 Jan;33(1):121-30. *Denotes equal contribution by the authors.

Ben CosgroveProfessor Cosgrove’s research group,

which started at Cornell this July, develops and implements systems bioengineering approaches to study the signaling network dysregulations underlying the decline of stem cell function and tissue regeneration in aging and disease. His laboratory is broadly interested in understanding how stem cells use the integrative action of their regulatory circuitry to interpret and bal-ance diverse streams of microenvironmen-tal “information.”

They focus on mouse-model systems that exhibit aging-related declines in regen-erative capacity, including skeletal muscle, liver, and hematopoietic tissues. This work aims to reveal new therapeutic approach-es to reverse the progression of aging and prolong the regenerative capacity of these tissues. Dr. Cosgrove provided foundation for this approach in a recent paper from his postdoctoral research, which was highlight-ed by the editors of both Science (343:950, 2014) and Nature (506:268–269, 2014).

Read more:B.D. Cosgrove, P. M. Gilbert, E. Porpiglia, F.

Mourkioti, S. P. Lee, S. Y. Corbel, M. E. Llewellyn, S. L. Delp, H. M. Blau. 2014. “Rejuvenation of the muscle stem cell population restores strength to injured aged muscles.” Nature Medicine 20 (3): 255-264.

Claudia Fischbach-TeschlMicroenvironmental conditions (e.g.,

3-D cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix in-teractions) are critically important in tumor induction and progression, and mediate the establishment of metastases at prefer-ential target sites. By exploring diversified tissue-engineered model systems and poly-meric growth factor delivery strategies, our research aims at elucidating microenviron-mental events that currently impair the prognosis of cancer patients and to develop new drug delivery systems for more effec-tive treatment of cancer.

Read more:Chandler E.M.*, Seo B.R.*, Califano J.P., An-

dresen Eguiluz R.C., Lee J.S., Yoon C.J., Tims D.T., Wang J.X., Cheng L., Mohanan S., Buckley M.R., Cohen I., Nikitin A.Y., Williams R.M., Gourdon D., Reinhart-King C.A., Fischbach C., Implanted adipose progenitor cells as physicochemical reg-ulators of breast cancer. Proc Natl Acad Sci U.S.A., 2012, (25):9786-91 *denotes equal contribution

Rejuvenated muscle stem cells repair of damaged muscle fibers (green) in aged mice,

enhancing their strength to youthful levels.

Jonathan Butcher

Ben Cosgrove

Claudia Fischbach-Teschl

Lawrence Bonassar Tumor cells within 3-D porous polymetric matrices


Cynthia Reinhart-KingCancer and atherosclerosis, while very

different diseases, have numerous similar-ities in both the behaviors of the cells and the changes in tissue properties: both dis-ease states are marked by uncontrolled cell growth and proliferation, increased cell mi-gration, inflammatory cell recruitment, in-creased growth factor production, changes in extracellular matrix production and tis-sue stiffness. Using techniques and exper-tise from the fields of tissue engineering,

biomaterials, microfabrication, mechanics and chemistry, we have designed, built, and utilized systems that can be tuned to match the chemical and mechanical prop-erties of the diseased microenvironment. To build these models, we characterize normal and diseased tissue using micros-copy, biochemistry and mechanical testing. We use this information to build accurate in vitro models and then use these models to understand how changes in the micro-environment promote disease. As an ex-ample of this approach, in recent work, we demonstrated that the naturally-occurring, age-related changes that occur in the me-chanical properties of arteries contribute to atherosclerosis progression by altering endothelial cell contractility, disrupting the barrier integrity of the endothelium[1]. Notably, inhibition of increased endothelial

cell contractility can restore barrier func-tion both in vitro and in vivo. These results point to a novel mechanism by which ag-ing leads to atherosclerosis. Using similar approaches to study metastasis, we have found metastatic cells can adopt a fol-low-the-leader approach when escaping a primary tumor, where leader cells carve out microchannels that follower cells can use to move through the stroma[2]. Here, we fab-ricated microchannels in 3D collagen gels that mimic the paths made by leader cells and we used these models to investigate the molecular mechanisms driving the mo-tility of follower cells[3]. This approach (in vivo characterization -> model building -> identification of molecular mechanism -> in vivo therapy) will lead to the identifica-tion of novel therapeutic targets designed to prevent metastasis.

• 1. Huynh, J., et al., Age-related intimal stiffening enhances endothelial perme-ability and leukocyte transmigration. Sci Transl Med, 2011. 3(112): p. 112-122.

• 2. Carey, S.P., et al., Leading malignant cells initiate collective epithelial cell invasion in a three-dimensional het-erotypic tumor spheroid model. Clin Exp Metastasis, 2013.

• 3. Kraning-Rush, C.M., et al., Micro-fabricated collagen tracks facilitate single cell metastatic invasion in 3D. Integr Biol, 2013. 5: p. 606-16.

TISSUEENGINEERING: RESEARCH

Lawrence Bonassar

As we age, our muscles get weaker and lose their ability to repair themselves. The proficient regenerative capacity of healthy muscle depends on a rare popu-lation of resident stem cells. These cells, often called satellite cells, are alerted to divide and repair muscle tissue following minor injuries. Scientists have known that the muscle stem cells struggle to repair tis-sues in older humans and animal models, but they have not been able to identify the cellular changes responsible for the decline, nor have they developed effective drug strategies to counteract it.

A recent study led by Ben Cosgrove, a new BME faculty member, published in Na-ture Medicine has demonstrated for the first time that muscle stem cells isolated from old mice, equivalent in age to 80 year-old humans, are inherently defective in repair-ing muscles, even when transplanted into healthy, young mice. Dr. Cosgrove and col-leagues in his postdoctoral research group showed that aging-accumulated changes to a molecular signaling circuit driven by the protein p38 MAP kinase in the muscle stem cells themselves underlies their defective function.

This provided an intriguing chance to target the signaling defect and rejuve-nate the function of the old stem cells. To

achieve this, Dr. Cosgrove engineered a biomaterial hydrogel substrate with a tunable compliance to support the muscle stem cells outside of the body and then de-veloped a pharmacological drug treatment to interfere with the aberrant p38 signaling circuit. In response to these synergistic bio-physical and biochemical stimuli, the old muscle stem cells multiplied rapidly and gained a youthful ability to engraft and repair muscles. Critically, transplantation of this rejuvenated stem cell population back into the damaged muscles of old mice enhanced their strength back to those of healthy young mice.

The potential of this “rejuvenation” stem cell therapy for impacting the treat-ment of muscle ag-ing has grabbed the attention of the re-generative medicine field. The paper was highlighted as by the editors of both Science and Nature upon its publication. It has even been written about in lifestyle magazines such as Men’s Journal.

Dr. Cosgrove says, “our finding that these defective cells can be enhanced out-side the body and be used to strengthen muscles has excited lots of people.” He explains, “though the cells cannot be used like a blood transfusion, they hold promise to help specific injured muscles in aged in-dividuals. There is a long way to go to im-prove and adapt this knowledge to human patients but our work has provided a jump start.”

His research here at Cornell will fo-cus on finding improved combinations of therapies that aid in tissue regeneration in the elderly. “Youthful tissue regeneration is going to require treating both the defec-tive stem cells and the changes in the tissue itself. By engineering and analyzing more complete biomimetic models of aged tis-sues, I believe we can get there.”

TISSUE ENGINEERING FIELD FACULTYCarl BattMaterials Science & EngineeringAdele BoskeyWeill Cornell Medical College

C.C. ChuFiber Science & Apparel DesignMatthew DeLisaChemical & Biomolecular EngineeringLara EstroffMaterials Science & EngineeringYingxin GaoMechanical & Aerospace Engineering Delphine GourdonMaterials Science & Engineering

Dan LuoBiological & Environmental EngineeringMinglin MaBiological & Environmental EngineeringAbraham StroockChemical & Biomolecular EngineeringJeffery VarnerChemical & Biomolecular Engineering

REVERSING MUSCLE AGING BY REJUVENATING ITS STEM CELLS

BME Assistant Professor Ben Cosgrove and colleagues have resolved a strategy to rejuvenate dysfunctional muscle stem cells from elderly mice to generate a therapeutically effective cell population for counteracting age-related muscle weakening. The cell-treatment approach entails a combination of soft hydrogel engineered with appropriate biophysical parameters and biochemical targeting of the MAPK signaling pathway.


BME WELCOMES IWIJN DE VLAMINCK

B efore moving into biomedical en-gineering, Iwijn De Vlaminck was trained as an electrical engineer at

the KU Leuven, Belgium, and his Ph.D. work, with Gustaaf Borghs at IMEC in Bel-gium, focused on topics in applied physics. Postdoctoral training at the TU Delft in the lab of Cees Dekker and later at Stanford University in the lab of Stephen Quake al-lowed him to pursue an interest in bioengi-neering and biology.

De Vlaminck has been interested in developing precision measurement prin-ciples along the way. Most recently, as a postdoc in the Quake lab, he co-developed a simple blood test for the occurrence of graft rejection in transplantation. In close collaboration with Stanford Hospital, the Quake lab team demonstrated that donor DNA circulating in the plasma of heart and lung transplant recipients signals rejection and that donor DNA can be counted accu-rately via shotgun sequencing. Transplant patients are strongly immunosuppressed to prevent graft rejection and as a conse-quence of their weakened immune system transplant recipients are prone to infec-tions. The Stanford team showed that the spectrum of infectious agents can be mea-sured using sequencing and they discov-

ered that the composition of viral agents reflects the level of immunosuppression of the patient.

In the lab of Cees Dekker at the Tu Delft, the Netherlands, De Vlaminck’s re-search concerned the molecular biology of cellular DNA repair mechanisms. He was in particular interested in the mechanism of sequence recognition in homologous re-combination, an intricate repair pathway that enables the error-free repair of DNA breaks. Homologous recombination relies on the pairing of the broken DNA molecule with a second DNA molecule with similar, homologous sequence. The sequence pair-ing is mediated by a protein filament of RecA. The team from Tu Delft developed an instrument based on optical manipula-tion of a single DNA molecule and a single RecA filament. Sensitive measurements of the dynamics of intermolecular interac-tions allowed the Delft team to formulate a new model for homology recognition that captured the sensitivity and speed of homology recognition in the cell. The Delft team furthermore developed a host of tech-niques that increase the throughput of sin-gle molecule measurements.

Single-molecule measurement tech-niques have allowed a new perspective on molecular biology by providing access to information on the structural, temporal

and spatial heterogeneity of biomolecular interactions. In a similar vein, single-cell genome sequencing techniques are cur-rently revolutionizing biology by provid-ing access to the genetic heterogeneity of cells and the transcriptomic heterogeneity of cell types and cell states. Single-cell se-quencing is consequently becoming an ex-citing field in biomedical engineering at the junction between biophysics and genomics. In the Quake lab, De Vlaminck studied sin-gle-cell sequencing methods, in particular methods for the robust amplification of in-dividual microbial genomes. As a new fac-ulty at Cornell, De Vlaminck will develop single-cell genomics measurements that re-tain information about temporal dynamics and spatial context. The lab will use these techniques to study the role of chemical gradients and cellular microenvironments in the ecology of heterogeneous cell states. The lab will furthermore pursue avenues to go beyond genomic and transcriptomic measurements in single cell biology. The lab will apply single-cell genomics to the study of the heterogeneity of disease states at the single cell level, in particular in the context of infection. De Vlaminck will join the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell in January of 2015.

BME NEW FACULTY FACULTY INTHE NEWS

Biomedical engineers in the King Lab have discovered a new way to fight cancer by attaching a cancer-kill-er protein to white blood cells that destroys metas-

tasizing cancer cells on contact.Metastasis is the spread of cancer cells

to other parts of the body and is responsi-ble for over 90% of cancer-related deaths. While there are many successful ways to treat a primary tumor such as radiation or chemotherapy, the small distant metastases are difficult to treat. This is the phase of the disease that the King Lab targets.

King and his colleagues introduced two proteins into the bloodstream: E-selec-tin (an adhesive that can bind to the surface of white blood cells) and TRAIL (Tumor Necrosis Factor Related Apoptosis-Induc-ing Ligand). When TRAIL binds to the sur-

face of a cancer cell, the cancer cell is pro-grammed to kill itself through apoptosis. Most normal cells are protected against the effects of TRAIL. Together, E-selectin and

TRAIL coat white blood cells effectively creating an army of cancer killing machines in the blood-stream.

King hopes that that the research will proceed to more sophisticated in vivo mod-els and ultimately human clinical trials sometime in the future.

The King lab was widely featured in popular press for their discovery of a new way to fight cancer by attaching a can-cer-killer protein to white blood cells that de-stroys metastasizing cancer cells on contact.

PROTEIN DESTROYS METASTASIZINGCANCER CELLS

Michael King with graduate students Elizabeth Wayne and Michael Mitchell in the King laboratory.

Unnatural Killer Cells. Mitchell et al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A. 111 (3): 930-5.

Cell-free DNA is found in abundance in plasma and offers an information-rich window into human physiology, published in Science Translational Medicine on June 18, 2014, Vol. 6, Issue 241, p. 241ra77

Iwijn De Vlaminck


Lawrence Bonassar’s bioengineered ears won first place at the World Technol-ogy Summit.

Claudia Fischbach-Teschl was elected to serve as a permanent member of the NIH study section ‘Tumor microenvironment.’

Jesse Goldberg won the Klingenstein Fellowship in the Neurosciences.

Chris Schaffer was elected to serve on the University Faculty Committee.

Michael King won the 2013 Outstand-ing Speaker Award from the American As-sociation of Clinical Chemistry (AACC). This award recognizes his achievement in earning a speaker evaluation rating of 4.5 or higher during a 2013 continuing education activity accredited by AACC. King was also elected to the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Col-lege of Fellows, Class of 2014. The College of Fellows are the most accomplished and distinguished leaders in the fields of medi-cal and biological engineering in academia, industry and government.

Cynthia Reinhart-King was elected to the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Council of BMES.

Xiling Shen received an NSF Young In-vestigator CAREER Award.

Ankur Singh was selected as a recip-ient of the Rising Star Award for the 2014 Biomedical Engineering Society Cellular and Molecular Engineering (BMES-CMBE) meeting held in La Jolla, CA. The theme for this scientific meeting was Multi Scale Mechanobiology—From Morphogenesis to Nuclear Mechanotransduction.

Yi Wang was named an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) fellow for his contributions to cardiovascu-lar magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) de-velopment and quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), which have been adopted in clinical practice and provides a biomark-er for many major diseases including stroke and neurodegenerative diseases.

FACULTYAWARDS

ALUMNIPROFILES

ALUMNIRobby Bowles, Ph.D. 2011

Robby Bowles agreed to join the facul-ty of the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering in Fall of 2014. Bowles came to Cornell in 2005 after receiv-ing his B.S.E. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Cor-nell under the supervision of Professor Lar-ry Bonassar, with his research focusing on tissue engineering approach to treating de-generative disc disease. Since 2011, he has been a postdoctoral associate at Duke Uni-versity studying biochemical and mechani-cal contributions to back pain. He has pub-lished 7 papers on the topic of therapeutics for spinal disorders and has won multiple awards including Best Poster Award at the World Forum for Spine Research and an F32/Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctor-al Fellowship from the NIH.

Benjamin Hawkins, Ph.D. 2011

After graduating, Benjamin Hawkins received a fellowship from the National Research Council to conduct postdoctoral research at the National Institute of Stan-dards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithers-burg, Maryland. Under the guidance of David Ross and Samuel Forry in the Bio-assay Methods Group, Hawkins worked to develop and characterize a microfluidic technique for growing and studying bacte-rial biofilms. Biofilms are surface or inter-face associated aggregates of bacterial cells and excreted lipids, polysaccharides, DNA, proteins, and other biomolecules. Biofilms play a central role in a number of indus-tries, but notably are implicated in more than 80% of nosocomial (hospital acquired) infections. Currently published standards for growth and characterization are cum-bersome and wasteful; his work aimed to streamline the growth and characteriza-tion process using microfluidics. Charac-terization of traditional macro-scale and

micro-scale biofilms is an essential part of developing a new standard measurement platform for biofilm research. In August of 2012, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Biomedical, Chemical, and Materials Engineering Department at San José State University. He will continue to work in microfluidics and dielectrophore-sis and applying those fields to the study of biofilms of Mycobacterial species. In ad-dition to his research interests, Hawkins is also teaching graduate and undergraduate courses including Biotransport Phenome-na, Biomedical Microfluidic Systems, and Senior Design. One of his primary efforts in this area is to develop an “immersion program” for his students that will give them clinical exposure and provide some measure of the experience he received in the BME program at Cornell, one which has proved invaluable in providing con-crete context for his work as a Biomedical Engineer.

Elizabeth Wellings, M.Eng. 2011Since graduating in May 2011, Eliza-

beth Wellings has been working as a prod-uct development engineer at Biomet, an or-thopedic implant company. After working in the medical device industry for several

FACULTY AWARDSLawrenceBonassar Professor, Associate Chair of BME

Michael R. King Professor

Ankur Singh Assistant Professor

Yi Wang Professor

Xiling Shen Assistant Professor

Jesse H. GoldbergAssistant Professor

Chris B. Schaffer Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies

CynthiaReinhart-King Associate Professor

Claudia Fischbach-TeschlAssociate Professor

Effective August 2013: Chris Schaffer became the new Director of Graduate Studies.Effective January 2014: Law-rence Bonassar was promoted to the rank of Full Professor.

PROMOTIONS & TENURE


ALUMNIPROFILES

GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS & GIVING

years, Wellings decided that she was more interested in the clinical side of biomedical engineering, so she chose to go to medical school to pursue a career in orthopedic surgery. Wellings will be starting medical school in August 2014. She attributes the strength of her medical school applica-tion to her industry experience. For those looking to practice medicine in the future, the trend in applicants is leaning towards non-traditional applicants who have pur-sued other careers and have real-world ex-perience.

Christopher Gabryluk, M.Eng. 2010After graduating from the BME M.Eng

program in 2010, Christopher Gabryluk spent 6 months in the Zimmer Trauma Sales Academy before joining the Zimmer Upstate New York team as an orthopaedic trauma and biologics sales rep for the city of Buffalo, N.Y. In March of 2013, Gabryluk was hired as Zimmer’s U.S. Sales Educa-tion Manager for the Extremities and Trau-ma business units at the company’s global headquarters in Warsaw, IN. He married his wife, Gillian, on May 18th, 2013 in her hometown of St. Catharines, Ontario before she finished her Canada/U.S. immigration process and was able to move to Indiana in July. Garbyluk describes work as a “true pleasure.” He trains sales reps from all over the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Australia,

and Asia/Pac in surgical techniques, prod-uct design, and sales strategies. He has also gotten to be a part of new product launch-es on both the training development and marketing sides. On March 30th of this year (2014), he and his wife welcomed their son, Benjamin Bernard Gabryluk, into the world and into their home in Winona Lake, IN.

Abby George, M.Eng. 2012

Abby George entered the Biomedical M.Eng program at Cornell to become more specialized within the broad spectrum of biomedical engineering, specifically with bone mechanics. At Cornell, George worked with Dr. Chris Hernandez’s research team designing and developing alignment fix-tures for rat vertebral surgeries. She began her professional career at Lumenous Device Technologies in Sunnyvale, CA working as an Applications Engineer developing pro-cesses for manufacturing vascular stents. For the past year, George has been work-ing as a Service Development Engineer at Accuray Inc. where she has had the oppor-tunity to work on The CyberKnife®, a ro-botic radiosurgery system that saves cancer patients’ lives. Her time at Accuray is spent preparing for new product introduction to the field and ensuring continued support of the CyberKnife® System worldwide. When

she’s not working with robots, she enjoys horseback riding and exploring the beauti-ful outdoors of Northern California.

Alex Morency, M.Eng. 2012

Alex Morency completed his M.Eng degree in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University in the Fall of 2012 and has since been working for Baxter Health-care. Baxter Healthcare is a global health-care company that develops, manufactures and markets products that save and sus-tain the lives of people with hemophilia, immune disorders, infectious diseases, kidney disease, trauma, and other chronic and acute medical conditions. Morency is currently in a rotational program called the Technology Development Program (TDP) designed to accelerate the development of talented engineers by exposing them to Baxter’s businesses through a variety of critical assignments and targeted training. He works in the manufacturing side of en-gineering working on an exciting project for a home peritoneal dialysis (PD) device. This project involves a collaborative team including members of their supply chain and design center to develop a strategy and find areas of opportunity for the cost-out initiative. He was given the direct respon-sibility to coordinate this effort and lead the assignment.

Earlier this year, Donald Mo-rel M.S. ’83, Ph.D. ’84 MSE gave to BME to establish a graduate fellowship in his name to recognize and re-cruit talented Ph.D. students.

The first Donald Morel Fellowship will go to an incoming first-year Ph.D. student, Amanda Rooney. Rooney received her un-dergraduate degree in biomedical engi-neering from the University of Minnesota where she graduated summa cum laude and was an officer in the Tau Beta Pi Engi-neering Honor Society. As an undergradu-ate, she worked with Professor Jack Lewis to test and model the mechanical proper-ties of tissue-engineered cartilage. While tissue engineering holds great promise for creating tissues that can be used to repair or replace damaged organs in patients, a challenge remains to properly match the properties of engineered constructs with the native tissue they are meant to replace. This is especially true for the musculoskel-etal system, for which the engineered tissue must have mechanical properties that can withstand the functional loads associated with movement. Rooney’s work aims to help refine the techniques for measuring and modeling the mechanical properties of engineered and native tissues. With better tools to characterize engineered tissues, such as the cartilage Rooney worked on, researchers will be able to more rapidly op-

timize the approaches to creating these tis-sues and develop workable solutions that can improve the lives of patients.

GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS VITAL TO SUCCESS OF STUDENTS AND FACULTY

Graduate students are the lifeblood of faculty research, particularly for junior fac-ulty who are working to earn tenure. The competition for the top students entering graduate school is intense. Fellowships are an important recruiting tool required to compete with our peers. Fellowship sup-port is particularly important in the first year of graduate study not only to attract outstanding students to Cornell BME but also to provide flexibility for matching new students with research advisers. Fel-lowship support is more attractive to pro-spective students than working as a teach-ing assistant or having to meet the specific requirements of a research grant. Financial considerations are an inevitable part of the decision process, particularly when the competition is intense and our peer institu-tions make compelling support offers. For continuing students these fellowships are also critical to leverage our federal funding for research and graduate training. Fellow-ships allow graduate students to follow their passions and faculty to pursue early stage ideas. Your support is critical to our ability to attract and retain outstanding graduate students. First-year Ph.D. student Amanda Rooney

MORELESTABLISHES GRADUATEFELLOWSHIP

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW TOSUPPORT BME, CONTACT

June Losurdo, Director of [email protected] • 607-254-1643


AWARDS

Olufumilayo Adebayo,a third year Ph.D. student in the van der Meulen Lab, won the 2014 Zellman War-haft Commitment to Diversity Graduate Student award in recognition for her work in programs supporting the retention of un-dergraduate students.

Aparna Ashok,M.Eng ’13, was awarded Best Poster for her Master of Engineering project poster at the 2nd annual Student Research Summit at the General Electric (GE) Global Research site in Niskayuna, NY on Friday, August 9th, 2013.

Maya Bakshi,an undergraduate student in the Lammerd-ing Lab, was selected for the 2014 Teach for America Corps.

Sara Che,a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Shuler and Stokol Labs, won the Hsien and Daisy Yen Wu Memorial Award.

Huanhuan Chen,a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Shen Lab, won a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Physical Science Oncology Center (PSOC) Trans-Network Young Investigator Award.

Emily Farrar,a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Butcher Lab, won the 2014 Zellman Warhaft Com-mitment to Diversity Graduate Student award in recognition for her work in pro-grams supporting the retention of under-graduate students.

Frank He,a third year Ph.D. student in the Fischbach Lab, won the Hsien and Daisy Yen Wu Me-morial Award.

Natalie Kelly,a fourth year Ph.D. student in the van der Meulen Lab, received an ASBMR Harold M. Frost Young Investigator Award to at-tend the 44th Sun Valley Workshop on Musculoskeletal Biology in Sun Valley, Ida-ho, August 3-6, 2014. Her abstract is enti-tled “RNA Seq-based Gene Expression in Mechanically Loaded Mouse Cortical and Cancellous Bone” by N.H. Kelly, J.C. Schi-menti, F.P. Ross, M.C.H. van der Meulen.

Julie Kohn,a second year Ph.D. student in the Rein-hart-King Lab, received an Engaged Learn-ing and Research Conference Grant Award.

Maureen Lynch,a postdoctoral researcher in the Fischbach Lab, will be an Assistant Professor of Me-chanical Engineering at University of Mas-sachusetts, Amherst in January 2015.

Gabriel Lopez,an undergraduate summer REU in the Lammerding Lab, won the Outstand-ing Presentation Award and Certificate Achievement in the Engineering, Physics and Mathematics Category for his poster “Designing a Microfluidic Device to Study the Deformability of Cancer Cells” at the 2013 Annual Biomedical Research Confer-ence for Minority Students (ABRCMS) in Nashville, Tenn.

Brooke Mason,a sixth year Ph.D. student in the Rein-hart-King Lab, was awarded a student trav-el grant from the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).

Kevin Martin,an undergraduate student in the Rein-hart-King Lab, received an undergradu-ate research award from the Engineering Learning Initiative.

Joseph Miller,a third year Ph.D. student in the Rein-hart-King Lab, was awarded a grant from the Kavli Institute to build an optical plat-form for imaging strains in tissue in collab-

oration with Susan Panullo at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Michael Mitchell,a fifth year Ph.D. student in the King Lab, won the 2014 AIChE Separations Division Graduate Student Research Award. Mitch-ell was also 1 of 20 students selected to par-ticipate in the Northeastern Future Faculty Workshop held April 14-27, 2014. Mitchell received a travel award to give an invited talk at the 5th Advanced Study Institute on Global Healthcare Challenges in Antalya, Turkey.

Jorge Mojica-Santiago,a second year Ph.D. student in the Bonas-sar Lab, earned the Second Place Poster Award at the 2nd International Spine Re-

search Symposium in Philadelphia, P.A. for his paper titled “Characterization of Ca-nine-Sized Alginate/Collagen Tissue-Engi-neered Intervertebral Discs.”

Samantha Olyha,an undergraduate student in the Lammerd-ing Lab, was awarded a Marshall Scholar-ship to study at Oxford University.

Jennifer Puetzer,a fifth year Ph.D. student in the Bonassar Lab, was named to the Young Investigator Council of the journal Tissue Engineering. Puetzer also won first place at the Ph.D. student paper competition at the World Congress of Biomechanics for her paper titled, “Development of Tissue Engineered Menisci with Physiologically Distributed Loading.”

Aniqua Rahman,a first year student in the Reinhart-King Lab, received an honorable mention from the Ford Foundation.

Kirk Samaroo,a fifth year Ph.D. student in the Bonassar Lab, won second place at the Ph.D. student

paper competition at the World Congress of Biomechanics for his paper titled, “Preven-tion of Cartilage Degeneration by Intraar-ticular Treatment with Lubricin-Mimetics in the Rat Following Anterior Cruciate Lig-ament Transection.”

Bo Ri Seo,a sixth year Ph.D. student in the Fischbach Lab, won award for best poster presenta-tion for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineer-ing at the Gordon Research Conference.

Elizabeth Wayne,a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Schaffer Lab, was 1 of 8 recipients of the 2014 Cook Award from Cornell University. The Cook Award is named in honor of the late Con-stance E. Cook, Cornell’s first woman vice president, and the late Professor Emeritus Alice E. Cook, founding member of the Ad-visory Committee on the Status of Women. The Award honors individuals who de-serve recognition for their commitment to women’s issues and their contributions for changing the climate for women at Cornell.

STUDENT & POSTDOC AWARDS

Emily Farrar

Julie Kohn

Joseph Miller

Bo Ri Seo

Jorge Mojica-Santiago

Aniqua Rahman

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