<![CDATA[Study: New Microfluidic Device Facilitates Sensory Integration Research]]> 27349 For all animals, perception and behavior are usually multisensory processes, often involving stimuli such as taste, smell, and touch, which are detected by distinct sensory neurons.

Understanding sensory integration is an important problem in neuroscience, because all animals need to figure out what stimulatory input is relevant and how to respond to changes in the environment for survival.

The study of information processing mechanisms in multi-modal sensory integration remains challenging. But researchers in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) have developed a microfluidic device that can provide well-controlled stimulation in multiple modalities while allowing optical recording of neuronal responses in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans).

The use of C. elegans in neuroscience research is common due to its small and well-defined nervous system, containing 302 neurons. Although a simple organism, many of the molecular signals controlling its development are also found in more complex organisms, such as humans. C. elegans is known to respond to variety of sensory cues, such as smell, taste, touch, oxygen level, and temperature.

ChBE PhD candidate Sol Ah Lee, a member of Professor Hang Lu's Fluidics Lab, explains that before she developed the new microfluidics device, researchers could deliver mechanical or chemical stimulation to C. elegans, but not multi-sensory cues with the same piece of technology.

“No one had attempted this kind of device that can deliver multiple types of stimulation to C. elegans,” says Lee, who is co-lead author of the study, “Multimodal Stimulation in a Microfluidic Device Facilitates Studies of Interneurons in Sensory Integration in C. elegans.”  The other co-lead author is Yongmin Cho, ChBE PhD 2017, who is a Lu lab alum and now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School.

The study, which will be the cover article of the March issue of the journal Small, describes the researchers’ engineering approach and several important results enabled by this new device.

A major goal of the study was to observe interneurons that integrate the sensory and internal signals. The nervous system also includes sensory neurons that interface directly with the environment and motor neurons that convey commands to muscles.

Although the anatomical connectivity of these sensory systems and the role of each sensory neuron have been independently characterized, the integration of these signals and whether and how the neurons modulate each other’s activities has been largely unknown, the study says.

“With this study, we showed how the worms actually integrate multiple environmental cues, and we use it to explore genetic and circuit mechanisms for multisensory integration,” Lee says.

Depending upon the timing and intensity of the stimuli delivered, researchers could see sensitization, a non-associative learning process in which repeated administration of a stimulus results in an enhanced response, as well as habituation, another form of non-associative learning in which an animal decreases or ceases responding to a stimulus after repeated or prolonged stimulation.

The study also found that the activities of the interneuron PVC (whose function had not been studied much) can be modulated prior to stimulation within and cross modalities. Furthermore, this phenotype is likely mediated by peptidergic signaling and possibly monoamines. Previous studies have implicated both monoamine and peptide neuromodulators in driving sensitization in many species.

“These results are thus important steps towards understanding neuromodulation and multisensory integration,” the study says.

The researchers foresee that their microfluidic device technology “will be powerful in studying a broad range of problems for the multisensory integration in brain, such as arousal, sensitization/desensitization, habituation, and modulations of internal states.”

In addition to Lee, Cho, and Lu, the study was conducted by, ChBE undergraduate student Kirby Broderick, Yee Lian Chew, and William R. Schafer of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (UK).

Description of journal cover image below:

The researchers developed a microfluidic platform that can deliver spatially and temporally controlled combination stimuli to C. elegans to study the functional role of interneurons in multisensory integration. The cover depicts the roundworm being stimulated by mechanical and chemical stimuli in the device. The nervous system integrates these stimuli to generate behavioral outputs - forward, backward, and pause.

]]> Floyd Wood 1 1582813343 2020-02-27 14:22:23 1582813343 2020-02-27 14:22:23 0 0 news 2020-02-27T00:00:00-05:00 2020-02-27T00:00:00-05:00 2020-02-27 00:00:00 Brad Dixon

]]>
369891 369891 image <![CDATA[Hang Lu]]> image/jpeg 1449245856 2015-12-04 16:17:36 1475895105 2016-10-08 02:51:45 <![CDATA[BioE]]>
<![CDATA[The Future of Poster Sessions]]> 28153 Ahmet Coskun has seen the future for the ubiquitous poster session and it is paperless. Coskun, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Georgia Tech and Emory University, instead envisions a more vibrant way to present research to participants at scientific conferences and other gatherings.

“Paper posters fail to explain the dynamic properties of our imaging data, so we cannot adequately connect our research with the audience,” says Coskun, who is also a researcher in the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Tech, where he directs the Single Cell Biotechnology Laboratory. There, an interdisciplinary team of researchers interested in photons, ions, and electrons (and their interactions with cells) combines large-scale experiments and computational analysis to address fundamental challenges in infections, cancers, and immunology to create image-based technologies to reveal the spatial nature of biological systems.

To help address the issue of adequate representation of a biological system’s dynamic properties, Coskun earlier this year launched the Bioengineering (BioE) Media Lab at BME, an interactive studio lab designed to integrate emerging digital technologies with cellular imaging and analysis tools for unconventional scientific explorations and innovative educational teaching platforms. It’s through the BioE Media Lab that Coskun and graduate researcher Mythreye Venkatesan have introduced their new concept for digital research posters. They write all about it in a in a recently published paper in Communications Biology (an open-access journal from Nature Research publishing).

In a sense, Coskun and Venkatesan are like artists trying to develop the best medium to convey their vision. In this case, that vision involves images at the cellular scale, a changing biological landscape that doesn’t translate effectively to static pictures and graphs. So, taking a cue from the art community, they’ve employed multiplexed imaging for movies of cells as a demonstration of their digital poster idea, which provides, “an interactive and low-cost tool for next-generation sharing platforms,” they write.

“We found that there is a crucial need for innovation that bridges the gap between old-fashioned poster presentations and current visual technologies,” says Coskun.

In their report, entitled, “Digital posters for interactive cellular media and bioengineering education,” the team presents a solution that they believe could be a transformative interactive tool in research fields that utilize complex molecular, cellular, organ-level, or structural media.

The team uses a digital art frame developed by American technology company Meural, which developed a platform that enables the upload of digital art galleries via a wireless network. Coskun says the widely-available technology was the perfect canvas on which to design digital research posters.

“The nice thing is, you can easily update the poster using a smartphone or computer app,” Coskun says. “We update our research every month, easily. We get new results and new discoveries of how cells are behaving. The digital poster concept allows a dynamic presentation that we can change as our results change.”

In the paper they also offer insight into future generations of digital posters, which will feature folding displays controlled by touchscreen and motion controls. Their idea would involve lightweight (i.e., easy to transport) interactive displays that unfold to poster size. They also envision digital technologies being deployed as instructional platforms, writing, “virtual reality offers training opportunities for students and researchers in engineering and medicine. Digital posters, therefore, have great potential for bioengineering education that generates cellular and medical imaging datasets.”

In addition to the technological, functional, and educational potential for digital posters, Coskun and Venkatesan also offer economic argument in support of the new paradigm.

“On average, a paper poster will cost $100, and in a month or two, you need another one. The costs really add up,” Coskun says. “There’s an initial cost with the digital posters of about $500. But, as long as our hardware and software are compatible and stays current with state of the art visual technology, that poster will be very useable.”

 

]]> Jerry Grillo 1 1576068392 2019-12-11 12:46:32 1576075604 2019-12-11 14:46:44 0 0 news Coskun lab presents concept for digital posters for interactive cellular media and bioengineering education

]]>
2019-12-11T00:00:00-05:00 2019-12-11T00:00:00-05:00 2019-12-11 00:00:00 Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]>
629906 629907 629906 image <![CDATA[Ahmet Coskun]]> image/png 1576067922 2019-12-11 12:38:42 1576067922 2019-12-11 12:38:42 629907 image <![CDATA[BioE Media Lab]]> image/jpeg 1576068097 2019-12-11 12:41:37 1576068097 2019-12-11 12:41:37
<![CDATA[An Age of Empowerment: Meet Hang Lu]]> 34829 Even before Hang Lu found her career focus, she knew she wanted to do something different.

As she was finishing her Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she found her interest wandering to other disciplines. She took a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in a medical school studying neurogenetics.

“It was partially serendipitous. I didn’t know this was the thing I would do,” she said, referring to her research work. But those two years gave her a chance to test things, explore, and — as she puts it — play.

Read the full story

]]> Kimberly Short kshort6 1 1546975622 2019-01-08 19:27:02 1546975765 2019-01-08 19:29:25 0 0 news Even before Hang Lu found her career focus, she knew she wanted to do something different.

]]>
2019-01-04T00:00:00-05:00 2019-01-04T00:00:00-05:00 2019-01-04 00:00:00 Kristen Bailey

Institute Communications

]]>
615905 615905 image <![CDATA[An Age of Empowerment: Meet Hang Lu]]> image/jpeg 1546617696 2019-01-04 16:01:36 1546617696 2019-01-04 16:01:36 <![CDATA[Read the Full Story]]>
<![CDATA[BioE Strikes Silver]]> 28153 British writer, futurist, explorer, and inventor Arthur C. Clarke said that new ideas go through three stages: “It can't be done. It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. I knew it was a good idea all along!” Ajit Yoganathan, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, is familiar with all three stages.

As the architect of the Bioengineering Interdisciplinary Graduate Program – BioE – at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he can confidently claim a firm hold on the third one. He always knew it was a good idea, even if it took some colleagues a little longer to come around. 

“Georgia Tech was losing students who were interested in bioengineering to other places, like Duke, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins,” says Yoganathan, Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Faculty Chair and a Regents’ Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Georgia Tech and Emory. “That was the main factor driving creation of a bioengineering program here – we weren’t attracting the students we wanted.”

That doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore. Now one of the top-ranked programs of its kind in the nation, BioE observed its 25th anniversary, Friday, May 11, at the fifth annual BioE Day celebration. The first interdisciplinary graduate program at Georgia Tech, BioE remains one of the most popular, with 108 students from eight different home schools or departments currently enrolled.

“In many ways, BioE has been a trailblazer,” says Rob Butera, associate dean for research and innovation in Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering and, like Yoganathan, a researcher in the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, administrative headquarters for BioE.

“Now, of course, we have a number of interdisciplinary programs across campus, like Robotics and Machine Learning, among others. But because of BioE, the engineering schools are familiar with the concept,” adds Butera, who was the BioE program director, 2005-2008, following the departure of previous director, Tim Wick.

 

BioE Buy-In

Yoganathan, who served as BioE director from its inception (first as a Master’s program with the Ph.D. launching shortly thereafter) until 2004, says the program got an early buy-in from a number of schools.

“Mechanical engineering, electric engineering, aerospace engineering – they partnered with us early on, and the College of Computing came on board as well,” says Yoganathan, who was in the School of Chemical Engineering which, ironically, did not buy into the bioengineering program at first. This was the early 1990s. There weren’t that many bioengineering programs around. For Georgia Tech, this was a new idea.

“It was painful,” Yoganathan quips. “They were dubious at first, but they came along.”

Now called the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE), it’s one of eight departments that now feed the BioE program, along with aerospace engineering, biomedical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, electrical and computer engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, and the College of Computing.

Students can enroll in BioE by selecting one of those home departments, which is where BioE’s 133 participating faculty come from.

“One of the keys to the program’s success is, all of the department chairs get it,” says Butera, a professor with joint appointments in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.

The support of faculty is what drives the program, according to Butera. Without that engagement from home departments, there wouldn’t be a BioE program. Now, at 25 years old, BioE buy-in is a virtual slam-dunk. The participants, even from the more hesitant departments, saw the light long ago.

“The BioE program has been instrumental in allowing ChBE faculty to boldly pursue interdisciplinary research programs,” says David Sholl, ChBE chair. “The cross-pollination of expertise that has occurred in research groups that are able to include BioE students from a range of backgrounds is a wonderful example of Georgia Tech’s culture of valuing collaboration.”

 

One Staffer to Rule Them All

Throughout its history, the BioE Program has never had more than one full-time staffer, in addition to the faculty director and deputy director (currently Andrés García and Hang Lu, respectively). So far, two people have made lasting impressions as BioE academic advisors – Chris Ruffin, who passed away in 2013, and Laura Paige.

“Personally, I think Chris left an indelible mark on this program,” says Paige, BioE's current staff of one. “He was a leader and the face of this program. I’m not sure what my mark will be, but I am very aware that I had big shoes to fill and I try very hard to emulate him every day.”

Shortly after Ruffin died, BioE introduced the annual Christopher Ruffin Student Leadership Award, given to a student whose influence, ideals, and activities throughout his/her time in the BioE program leave a lasting impression, like Ruffin, who Butera describes as, “the voice of the program from an internal perspective.”

Most of the time, when a student had a question about the program, the stock answer was, “ask Chris.” Now, García’s stock answer is, “ask Laura.”

“Dedicated academic advisors like Laura and Chris make the program run smoothly and successfully,” says García, who has been director of the program since 2008, a period of time almost equal to Yoganathan’s. “They are the champions for the program. The huge success of BioE is a direct result of these wonderful advisors.”

While the official title has traditionally been “academic advisor,” Paige is more like an overall program administrator. If you ask BioE students about the different hats she wears, you’ll get a list that includes confidant, friend, enforcer-of-rules, events organizer, file auditor, liaison with home schools.

 

Grounded in Engineering

While staffers like Paige and Ruffin have been the administrative glue holding the disparate pieces of a graduate degree program together, the true success of the program, according to García, “is the lasting impact that our graduates have in academia, industry, government, and society as a whole. Our graduates are thought leaders and drivers of their professional and personal communities. We can talk about all the great metrics – numbers, GPA, pedigrees, papers – but this is what really counts and what I am most proud of.”

BioE stresses the role of the individual within the team – it provides a personalized curriculum, based on the student’s research interests, allowing for flexibility. As a discipline, BioE is a bit broader than its close cousin, BME.

“BioE is for students who are really interested in different disciplines – they want to be mechanical engineers or chemical engineers and learn how to apply that knowledge and those skills to solving biological problems,” says Wick, professor and senior associate dean in the School of Engineering at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. “BioE isn’t all about medical problems and human health. It has other focus areas also, such as agriculture.”

There is a great emphasis for BioE students on engineering fundamentals – they have to complete nine credit hours in engineering fundamentals.

“In my experience, nearly all bioengineering graduate programs are designed to build upon an undergraduate degree in the same field,” says Tom Bongiorno, an R&D project manager and stem cell scientist at California-based X-Therma, who earned his BioE Ph.D at Georgia Tech in 2016. “The BioE program at Georgia Tech is unique because it is designed to train extremely talented engineering students who have a focused interest in bioengineering but may lack formal training in biology.”

So, as a mechanical engineering undergraduate, Bongiorno found a perfect fit.

“My graduate lab certainly combined expertise in biology and engineering, but was strongest in engineering,” says Bongiorno, who happened to win the Ruffin Leadership Award. “The program prepared me for my current role as R&D project manager by endowing a full set of skills, including the abilities to understand both broad and deep scientific principles, to constructively criticize experimental plans, to optimize utilization of materials and researchers’ time and, perhaps most importantly, to communicate clearly with a diverse team.”

 

Celebrating 25 Years

Five years ago, BioE students and administrators came together to form BioE Day, an event designed to unify the grad program’s students and faculty, who come from all of those different home schools and are immersed in a wide range of research topics.

It’s a day that celebrates the end of another academic year. This time, they celebrated 25 years of BioE. There were the usual BioE Day events – a research poster session and rapid fire research presentations from the students, as well as recognition of the outstanding advisor and outstanding research paper, won this year by Mark Styczynski, associate professor in ChBE, and Monica McNerney, a student in his lab.

Styczynski couldn’t be present, so he did the next best thing. He sent a movie, a hilarious send-up of the Netflix series Stranger Things called Advisor Things.

“Now you know a little more about my advisor,” McNerney said, struggling to keep a straight face.

This year, there were two keynote speakers: Georgia Tech graduate Abigail Wojtowicz, formerly of García’s lab, spoke about career development, and told the story of her path from a Ph.D. to a career in industry. Later in the day, BME Associate Professor Manu Platt delivered a stirring presentation on the need to embrace diversity, to continue fostering an inclusive graduate program.

“Diversity always pays off – it isn’t charity,” Platt told a packed room in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building, including past BioE directors Yoganathan and Butera, among others.

Then, before adjourning to dinner across Atlantic Drive at the Petit Institute, García announced the winners of the annual BioE Day awards: Brett Klosterhoff won the rapid fire competition. Josh Hooks won for his research poster, and got a big hand when he was announced as the Christopher Ruffin Student Leadership Award winner. It’s become one of the most cherished prizes for any Georgia Tech BioE student. The other, of course, is a diploma.

 

 

]]> Jerry Grillo 1 1526083175 2018-05-11 23:59:35 1526236395 2018-05-13 18:33:15 0 0 news Bioengineering Interdisciplinary Graduate Program celebrates 25 years at BioE Day

]]>
2018-05-11T00:00:00-04:00 2018-05-11T00:00:00-04:00 2018-05-11 00:00:00 Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]>
606114 606113 606117 606118 606115 606116 606120 606114 image <![CDATA[We are BioE]]> image/jpeg 1526082357 2018-05-11 23:45:57 1526082357 2018-05-11 23:45:57 606113 image <![CDATA[Garcia and Wojtowicz]]> image/jpeg 1526082172 2018-05-11 23:42:52 1526082172 2018-05-11 23:42:52 606117 image <![CDATA[Ajit Yoganathan]]> image/jpeg 1526082541 2018-05-11 23:49:01 1526082541 2018-05-11 23:49:01 606118 image <![CDATA[Rapid Fire presenters]]> image/jpeg 1526082613 2018-05-11 23:50:13 1526082613 2018-05-11 23:50:13 606115 image <![CDATA[Josh Hooks]]> image/jpeg 1526082412 2018-05-11 23:46:52 1526082412 2018-05-11 23:46:52 606116 image <![CDATA[BioE cake]]> image/jpeg 1526082468 2018-05-11 23:47:48 1526082468 2018-05-11 23:47:48 606120 image <![CDATA[Laura Paige]]> image/jpeg 1526090663 2018-05-12 02:04:23 1526090663 2018-05-12 02:04:23
<![CDATA[Two Trainees Sharing Nerem Travel Award]]> 28153 Michael Hunckler and Anne Marie Sweeney-Jones will use their Nerem Travel Awards to reach opposite corners of the globe in pursuit of lofty, wildly different research goals in a historic year for the 13-year-old program.

Launched in 2005 by friends and colleagues of Bob Nerem, founding director of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the travel award typically supports travel costs for one graduate student or post-doctoral trainee traveling outside of the U.S. for research. But this year, for the first time, two winners are sharing the award.

Sweeney-Jones, from the lab of Petit Institute researcher Julia Kubanek, will use her portion for underwater research with the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. Meanwhile Hunckler, who works in the Petit Institute lab of Andrés J. García, is using his to visit the University of Toronto, where he’ll work alongside stem cell biologists on his ongoing goal to find a treatment Type 1 diabetes, a disease he and his brother have been battling for years.

“When I was in third grade, my younger brother was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and I vowed that I would help him, in some way, alleviate the daily struggles he faced,” recalls Hunckler, who was diagnosed six years later, during his first week of high school. “I finally was able to appreciate firsthand the burden that diabetes had on my brother’s life.”

The experience reinvigorated his interest in alleviating the consequence of the disease, continuing through his undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame and now at Georgia Tech, where he is a third-year BioEngineering PhD student working in the García lab to develop game-changing solutions for treating diabetes.

As lead engineer of the collaboration with the Toronto team, Hunckler hopes to integrate the advanced biomaterial development of the García lab with the stem cell biology techniques of the Nostro lab.

“I find it critically valuable that I understand the stem cell work being done by the Nostro lab, and it will be immensely valuable for the Nostro lab to understand the biomaterials techniques that we are implementing,” says Hunckler. “So, this travel grant will allow me to learn their research, teach our research, and facilitate a fruitful collaboration for the remainder of my PhD and beyond.”

Almost 8,000 miles away in another hemisphere, Sweeney-Jones will be back in somewhat familiar waters. She visited Fiji last year as part of a study abroad program, and had a chance to do some exploring.

“I’ve actually had a chance to dive twice in Fiji, but this will be an amazing opportunity to go back and actually do some field research,” says Sweeney-Jones, a PhD student in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry who will work in Fiji with the lab of University of the South Pacific researcher Kate Soapi.

The Kubanek lab looks at how marine organisms use chemical cues for defense, mating, habitat selection, and food tracking. Sweeney-Jones is interested in studying natural products derived from marine organisms that have potential pharmacological activity.

While in Fiji this summer, “I want to identify compounds that are active against malaria and infectious worms,” she says. “And see what ecological roles these compounds have in their natural environment.”

Previous Nerem Travel Awards have sent trainees from Georgia Tech across the planet, to some of the world’s top research universities and institutions, including the Karolinska Institute (Sweden), the RIKEN Brain Science Institute (Japan), the National University of Singapore, the University of Twente (The Netherlands), Queensland University of Technology (Australia), and the Max Planck Institute (Germany), among others.

From the program’s beginning, Nerem has always stressed the importance of getting out of familiar surroundings to experience research.

“This award has never been about sending a student to a conference,” Nerem says. “This is about going to another laboratory in another place and sharing your research while learning research techniques from other experts.”

 

]]> Jerry Grillo 1 1520964468 2018-03-13 18:07:48 1521213655 2018-03-16 15:20:55 0 0 news Michael Hunckler and Anne Marie Sweeney-Jones traveling to different corners of the world for their research

]]>
2018-03-13T00:00:00-04:00 2018-03-13T00:00:00-04:00 2018-03-13 00:00:00 Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]>
603729 603729 image <![CDATA[Nerem Travel Award 2018]]> image/jpeg 1520964283 2018-03-13 18:04:43 1520964283 2018-03-13 18:04:43
<![CDATA[Rubbing Shoulders with the Giants]]> 28153 Dennis Zhou, a fifth-year BioEngineering Ph.D. student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been invited to attend the 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, June 24-29, in Lindau, Germany.

Zhou will be among the 600 young scientists (undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral researchers) from across the world sharing the unique atmosphere of the annual event, which brings together more than 40 Nobel Laureates to meet and inspire this next generation of researchers.

“Basically, it’s a chance for us to share our excitement in science,” says Zhou, whose home school is the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. “I’m pretty overwhelmed and beyond excited about this. I mean, I’ve never met a Nobel Laureate before, so it truly is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

In the lab of Petit Institute researcher Andrés García, Zhou’s research focuses on cell adhesion. Specifically, his studies explore how cells generate forces as they adhere to their environment, “and how these forces are transfused in the signaling pathways within the cell,” he says.

“It’s very basic cell biology, but since adhesion is such an essential process, we hope our results may be applicable in the clinic one day,” Zhou adds. “For example, adhesion is implicated in the disease processes of diseases like cancer and atherosclerosis.”

While the notion of rubbing shoulders with past winners of the Nobel Prize is overwhelming to Zhou, he hasn’t really had time to catch his breath – he’s been busy with research.

“It’ll really sink in over the next few months,” he says. “But Georgia Tech has such a strong history of sending people to this meeting, so I’m going to talk to some of the previous attendees from Tech and learn from their experience.”

 

]]> Jerry Grillo 1 1520719273 2018-03-10 22:01:13 1520882463 2018-03-12 19:21:03 0 0 news BioEngineering/BME grad student Dennis Zhou invited to attend annual meeting of Nobel Laureates

]]>
2018-03-10T00:00:00-05:00 2018-03-10T00:00:00-05:00 2018-03-10 00:00:00 Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]>
603607 603607 image <![CDATA[Dennis Zhou]]> image/jpeg 1520718826 2018-03-10 21:53:46 1520718962 2018-03-10 21:56:02
<![CDATA[BioE Day: A Community Celebrates Itself]]> 28153 BioEngineering (BioE) Day was greeted by threatening skies that eventually emptied themselves all over Atlanta, but the downpour couldn’t dampen the spirits of the bioengineering students, faculty, and staff who took part in the fourth annual event.

Taking the fun inside the Petit Institute Biotechnology building (the BioE program’s headquarters), Georgia Tech’s community of bioengineering graduate students assembled to fete themselves, as they have near the end of each spring semester since 2014. This year’s indoor celebration included a keynote speech, rapid fire presentations, a poster session, and convivial gatherings over lunch, supper, and games.

But, as in previous years, the climactic moment of BioE Day was the presentation of awards, particularly the Chris Ruffin Student Leadership Award, named for the longtime, former academic advisor for the BioE graduate program. This year’s winner is Kathleen Bates, a graduate student since 2012, who is based in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE).

“She embodies the type of leadership that makes the program proud and would have made Chris Ruffin smile,” wrote Hang Lu, ChBE professor and Bates’ advisor, in her nomination letter.

The Ruffin Award is given to a student whose influence, ideals, and activities leave a lasting and positive impression, raising the bar for future BioE classes. The qualities considered are strong leadership and community-based activities, such as peer mentoring, teaching, and service. All of which makes the down-to-earth Bates a perfect choice for 2017.

In addition to serving as the research chair for the Bioscience and Bioengineering Unified Graduate Students (BBUGS), she has been the social chair for BioE students and previously was professional development chair for BBUGS. She’s been a mentor in the Petit Undergraduate Scholars program and has also mentored several other undergrads and high school students (in the Project ENGAGES program, while demonstrating steady leadership skills in Lu’s lab).

Other BioE awards were given for Outstanding Student Paper (Yogi Patel), Outstanding Poster (Kirsten Parratt), Outstanding Rapid Fire Presentation (Stephen Schwaner), and Outstanding Faculty Advisor (Ross Ethier, professor and interim chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering).

Sean Coyer led off the day’s activities with a keynote speech that offered tips and tricks for life after grad school. Coyer was a former student of Andrés García, director of the BioE program, researcher in the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, and professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. Coyer’s post-grad school path has led him to W.L. Gore & Associates, where he’s product development director.

While Coyer’s presentation offered intentional, helpful advice to the grad students assembled in the Petit Institute atrium, Ethier’s address as BioE’s top faculty advisor for 2017 took a slightly different direction, but was no less inspirational.

Ethier shared the eight most helpful lessons he’s learned by accident. These include:

• Take advantage of interesting opportunities.

• Do something that helps people.

• It’s all about people you work with.

• Do something you are passionate about.

• Be a force for good – despite all that is happening.

• Your most important asset is your reputation.

• Don’t stay in your comfort zone.

• Hire the best people and let them do their thing.

The implication was that a lot of the best people were sitting right there in the room already, including Bates, the Ruffin Award Winner, whose quiet leadership has made an impact in Georgia Tech’s bio-community.

“We as a community often neglect the quiet type of leaders,” Lu pointed out. “Those who are not extroverts, who do not seek attention, and yet are quietly doing many things to benefit the community and motivating others. I firmly believe she is one such leader among our student community that deserves recognition.”

 

CONTACT:

Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]> Jerry Grillo 1 1493995519 2017-05-05 14:45:19 1494249522 2017-05-08 13:18:42 0 0 news Kathleen Bates wins Chris Ruffin Student Leadership Award at fourth annual bioengineering program event

]]>
2017-05-05T00:00:00-04:00 2017-05-05T00:00:00-04:00 2017-05-05 00:00:00 Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]>
591428 591429 591427 591428 image <![CDATA[BioE - Award winners]]> image/jpeg 1493995081 2017-05-05 14:38:01 1493995081 2017-05-05 14:38:01 591429 image <![CDATA[BioE Day - Q&A]]> image/jpeg 1493995205 2017-05-05 14:40:05 1493995205 2017-05-05 14:40:05 591427 image <![CDATA[BioE Day - Games]]> image/jpeg 1493994959 2017-05-05 14:35:59 1493995468 2017-05-05 14:44:28
<![CDATA[Serving a Larger Cause]]> 28153 Of course Alyssa Pybus was a cross-country runner in high school.

A first-year student in the BioEngineering Graduate Program, headquartered at the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Pybus spent her childhood moving across country, across oceans, across the planet.

“That’s life in a military family,” says Pybus, whose home school is the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.

She enjoyed the life, so when it was her time, she also chose to serve in the military. Pybus, who earned her undergraduate degree in bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is now a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves.

“I guess that makes me kind of the black sheep of the family,” she adds, smiling, because her father, two brothers and sister are in the Navy, all of which means Veterans Day is something like a family holiday for the Pybus clan.

That dedication to serving a larger cause, a trait Pybus says she inherited from her father, is shared by her fellow BioE grad student, Troy Batugal, an Army reservist who is currently attending mandated Basic Officer Leader Course (BOLC) in military intelligence, a four-month training exercise at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

Like Pybus, Batugal was inspired by his family to serve.

“My father is a doctor and my mother is a nurse, so I grew up around healthcare, and this concept of helping others, of service to others. That influenced my decision to serve in the military,” says Batugal, a second-year grad student who earned his undergraduate degree from Cornell University.

Both BioE students were involved in ROTC. They were commissioned as second lieutenants upon earning their undergraduate degrees and successfully completing their ROTC commitments.

“That ROTC experience was so valuable,” says Batugal, whose academic base at Georgia Tech is the School of Materials Science and Engineering. “ROTC helped pay for my undergraduate education, but more important, it made Georgia Tech possible because of the discipline it taught me, the lessons in time management.”

Batugal, who grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, works and studies in the lab of Ravi Kane, a Petit Institute researcher and professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, whose group specializes in the design of polyvalent ligands. It’s not exactly the path Batugal expected years ago.

“I wanted to be a physician for a long time, up until my early undergraduate years,” he says. “That’s when I really got into engineering, particularly materials science engineering. I discovered the biomedical applications of materials, discovered how versatile polymers were, how they can be used in a medical environment, and that led me to bioengineering.”

Going forward, Batugal says he’d like to continue lab research, perhaps working in government, combining his bioengineering background with his Army specialty – military intelligence. “I went in that direction because I wanted to pick up new skills that were very different from engineering,” Batugal says.

Meanwhile, Pybus wanted experience in engineering of a different sort. At Georgia Tech, she works in the lab of Petit Institute researcher Levi Wood, an assistant professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, whose work is focused on applying systems analysis approaches and engineering tools to identify novel therapeutic targets for inflammatory diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

In the Army, she’s part of a construction company, the platoon leader for about 25 Army engineers (plumbers, electricians, carpenters, heavy equipment operators, and so forth). The main task is planning, designing and constructing roads and buildings. Like Batugal, the ROTC experience gave her an appreciation for time management, mentorship, “and how to tactfully get things done. I developed good leadership skills and organizational skills balancing classes and ROTC while I was at MIT,” she says.

But her experience as a military kid taught Pybus how to roll with the punches and get used to new environments. Her past addresses include North Carolina, Virginia, Panama, Rhode Island, Germany, Tennessee, Florida, California, Hawaii (where she did most of her high school), Bolivia and two weeks in Bahrain.

When she was considering her military options, Pybus was leaning toward active duty, the fulltime option. It wasn’t until her senior year at MIT, after spending a summer doing research that she decided on the best of both worlds: grad school and military service.

“I really liked the research and when I heard my friends talking about their grad school plans, I thought more about it and realized that this was what I really wanted, long-term,” says Pybus. “So I can still serve in the military as a reservist, but my primary focus is going to be on bioengineering, because I realized that this kind of research is just another form of public service.”

 

CONTACT:

Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]> Jerry Grillo 1 1478872970 2016-11-11 14:02:50 1478872970 2016-11-11 14:02:50 0 0 news BioE students Alyssa Pybus and Troy Batugal balance military and lab commitments

]]>
2016-11-11T00:00:00-05:00 2016-11-11T00:00:00-05:00 2016-11-11 00:00:00 Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]>
583772 583773 583772 image <![CDATA[Troy Batugal]]> image/jpeg 1478872547 2016-11-11 13:55:47 1478872547 2016-11-11 13:55:47 583773 image <![CDATA[Alyssa Pybus]]> image/jpeg 1478872622 2016-11-11 13:57:02 1478872622 2016-11-11 13:57:02
<![CDATA[BioE Day Builds Community]]> 28153 BioE Day, held May 12 at the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, once again lived up to its promise as a community-building event. And this time there was an added bonus: an impromptu juggling exhibition, which seems appropriate, given the interdisciplinary, multi-tasking (and sometimes fast-paced) nature of life in the BioEngineering graduate program.

BioE Day was designed specifically to unify the graduate program’s students and faculty, who come from many different home schools and are immersed in a wide range of research topics. The event incorporates research, competitions, awards, fellowship, games, and a keynote address by Bob Nerem, founding director of the Petit Institute.

“I’m thrilled the students recommended Bob,” said Andrés García, BioE faculty advisor. “He’s my friend and mentor. He’s ‘Uncle Bob.’”

Nerem delivered his address, entitled, “Bioengineering: Building a New Discipline, a Personal Journey.” He talked about living in Norway as a child and about his career. Nerem began in aeronautical engineering and gravitated toward bioengineering after NASA recruited him to help the organization better understand how launch and re-entry from orbit affects the human body. Since then, he’s been a leading researcher in bioengineering for more than 40 years, focusing primarily on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you may end up somewhere else,” Nerem said, offering a suitable theme for his career, borrowed from the wisdom of Yogi Berra.

Following Nerem’s address and lunch, the students engaged in a poster competition and a rapid-fire presentation competition, which was won by Joshua Hooks and Tom Bongiorno, respectively.

Winners of the 2016 BioE Outstanding Paper award (grad student Jordan Ciciliano) and Outstanding Advisor award (Krishnendu Roy, professor in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering) made research presentations. 

Hooks and Bongiorno were then given their awards, and Bongiorno was named winner of the Chris Ruffin Student Leadership Award, which recognizes exemplary leadership and community involvement.

BioE Day was supposed to end with a cookout and games in courtyard, but rain pushed the fun inside, where a couple of cornhole games ensued, but not before the bean bags were co-opted by several members of the staff, faculty and student body, who demonstrated heretofore unseen juggling skills and may have laid the groundwork for a new competition at the next BioE Day.

 

CONTACT:

Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]> Jerry Grillo 1 1464005090 2016-05-23 12:04:50 1475896902 2016-10-08 03:21:42 0 0 news Nerem speech highlights annual Bioengineering grad program celebration

]]>
2016-05-23T00:00:00-04:00 2016-05-23T00:00:00-04:00 2016-05-23 00:00:00 Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]>
538941 538951 538971 538961 538941 image <![CDATA[Garcia and Nerem]]> image/jpeg 1464703200 2016-05-31 14:00:00 1475895326 2016-10-08 02:55:26 538951 image <![CDATA[BioE Honorees]]> image/jpeg 1464703200 2016-05-31 14:00:00 1475895326 2016-10-08 02:55:26 538971 image <![CDATA[Nerem Stands Tall]]> image/jpeg 1464703200 2016-05-31 14:00:00 1475895326 2016-10-08 02:55:26 538961 image <![CDATA[Kirsten BioE]]> image/jpeg 1464703200 2016-05-31 14:00:00 1475895326 2016-10-08 02:55:26
<![CDATA[GT's Bioengineering Graduate program announces its Summer 2011 graduates]]> 27195 Georgia Tech's Interdisciplinary Bioengineering graduate program announces its Summer 2011 graduates who completed their masters or doctorate degrees.  

The program was established in 1992 and has since graduated over 170 students in a broad spectrum of research by over 90 participating faculty from the Colleges of Engineering, Computing, Sciences, and Architecture as well as Emory University School of Medicine.  The BioE Program is interdisciplinary in that it is not a standalone academic unit like most departments or schools at Georgia Tech. Rather, 8 different academic units from the Colleges of Engineering and Computing make up the program.  However, the BioE Program provides the degree requirements for students accepted into the program. This approach allows a flexible, integrative and individualized degree program that enforces depth and breadth in coursework, a solid bioengineering research experience, and yet is reflective of the disciplinary background of the student's home school. Importantly, the BioE Program provides research opportunities for students with any participating program faculty, allowing tremendous diversity and flexibility for research topics and advisors.

Summer 2011 graduates:

Erskine Benjamin - BIOE/ME - MS (Non-Thesis)
Jonathan Bergdoll - BIOE/ECE - MS (Non-Thesis) - Paul Hasler, Advisor
Ashley Carson Brown - BIOE/BMED - PhD - Thomas Barker, Advisor
Matthew Crane - BIOE/ChBE - PhD - Hang Lu, Advisor
Bhargav Kumar Errangi - BIOE/BMED - PhD - James Rilling, Advisor
Julie Johnson - BIOE/ME - MS (Non-Thesis) - Don Giddens, Advisor
Sungho Kim - BIOE/BMED - PhD - Don Giddens, Advisor
Peng Meng Kou - BIOE/BMED - PhD - Julia Babensee, Advisor
Jennifer Megan Munson - BIOE/ChBE - PhD - Ravi Bellamkonda, Advisor
Jessica Marie O'Neal - BIOE/ME - PhD - Robert Guldberg, Advisor
Edward Allen Phelps - BIOE/ME - MS (Non-Thesis) - Andres Garcia, Advisor
Andrew Lawrence Raines - BIOE/BMED - PhD - Barbara Boyan, Advisor
Sarah Shieh - BIOE/ME - MS (Non-Thesis) - David Ku, Advisor
Kelly Straub - BIOE/ME - MS (Non-Thesis) - Rudy Gleason, Advisor


]]> Colly Mitchell 1 1314091211 2011-08-23 09:20:11 1475896199 2016-10-08 03:09:59 0 0 news GT's Bioengineering Graduate program announces its Summer 2011 graduates

]]>
2011-08-19T00:00:00-04:00 2011-08-19T00:00:00-04:00 2011-08-19 00:00:00 Chris Ruffin

]]>
69525 69525 image <![CDATA[GT cap]]> image/jpeg 1449177264 2015-12-03 21:14:24 1475894609 2016-10-08 02:43:29 <![CDATA[BioEngineering website]]>
<![CDATA[Researchers Predict Age of T Cells to Improve Cancer Treatment]]> 27206 Manipulation of cells by a new microfluidic device may help clinicians improve a promising cancer therapy that harnesses the body's own immune cells to fight such diseases as metastatic melanoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and neuroblastoma.

The therapy, known as adoptive T cell transfer, has shown encouraging results in clinical trials. This treatment involves removing disease-fighting immune cells called T cells from a cancer patient, multiplying them in the laboratory and then infusing them back into the patient's body to attack the cancer. The effectiveness of this therapy, however, is limited by the finite lifespan of T cells -- after many divisions, these cells become unresponsive and inactive.

Researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University have addressed this limitation by developing a microfluidic device for sample handling that allows a statistical model to be generated to evaluate cell responsiveness and accurately predict cell "age" and quality. Being able to assess the age and responsiveness of T cells -- and therefore transfer only young functional cells back into a cancer patient's body -- offers the potential to improve the therapeutic outcome of several cancers.

"The statistical model, enabled by the data generated with the microfluidic device, revealed an optimal combination of extracellular and intracellular proteins that accurately predict T cell age," said Melissa Kemp, an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "Knowing this information will help facilitate the clinical development of appropriate T cell expansion and selection protocols."

Details on the microfluidic device and statistical model were published in the March issue of the journal Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, Georgia Cancer Coalition, and Georgia Tech Integrative Biosystems Institute.

Currently, clinicians measure T cell age by using multiple assays that rely on measurements from large cell populations. The measurements determine if cells are exhibiting functions known to appear at different stages in the life cycle of a T cell.

"Since no one measurement is a perfect predictor, it is advantageous to concurrently sample multiple proteins at different time points, which we can do with our microfluidic device," explained Kemp, who is also a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Professor. "The wealth of information we get from our device for a small number of cells far exceeds a single measurement from a population the same size by another assay type."

For their study, Kemp, electrical engineering graduate student Catherine Rivet and biomedical engineering undergraduate student Abby Hill analyzed CD8+ T cells from healthy blood donors. They acquired information from 25 static biomarkers and 48 dynamic signaling measurements and found a combination of phenotypic markers and protein signaling dynamics -- including Lck, ERK, CD28 and CD27 -- to be the most useful in predicting cellular age.

To obtain biomarker and dynamic signaling event measurements, the researchers ran the donor T cells through a microfluidic device designed in collaboration with Hang Lu, an associate professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. After stimulating the cells, the device divided them into different channels corresponding to eight different time points, ranging from 30 seconds to seven minutes. Then they were divided again into populations that were chemically treated to halt the biochemical reactions at snapshots in time to build up a picture of the signaling events that occurred as the T cells responded to antigen.

"While donor-to-donor variability is a confounding factor in these types of experiments, the technological platform minimized the experimental data variance and allowed stimulation time to be precisely controlled," said Lu.

With the donor T cell data, the researchers developed a model to assess which biomarkers or dynamical signaling events best predicted the quality of T cell function. The model found the most informative data in predicting cellular age to be the initial changes in signaling dynamics.

"Although a combination of biomarker and dynamic signaling data provided the optimal model, our results suggest that signaling information alone can predict cellular age almost as well as the entire dataset," noted Kemp.

In the future, Kemp plans to use this approach of combining multiple cell-based experiments on a microfluidic chip to integrate single-cell information with population-averaged techniques, such as multiplexed immunoassays or mass spectrometry.

This project is supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)(Grant No. R21CA134299). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigator and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA

Media Relations Contacts: Abby Robinson (abby@innovate.gatech.edu; 404-385-3364) or John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu; 404-894-6986)

Writer: Abby Robinson

]]> Abby Vogel Robinson 1 1299027600 2011-03-02 01:00:00 1475896098 2016-10-08 03:08:18 0 0 news Researchers are accurately predicting T cell age and quality in order to improve the effectiveness of the cancer therapy known as adoptive T cell transfer, which is currently limited by the cells' finite lifespan.

]]>
2011-03-02T00:00:00-05:00 2011-03-02T00:00:00-05:00 2011-03-02 00:00:00 Abby Robinson
Research News and Publications
Contact Abby Robinson
404-385-3364

]]>
64717 64718 64719 64717 image <![CDATA[Catherine Rivet, Abby Hill and Melissa Kemp]]> image/jpeg 1449176765 2015-12-03 21:06:05 1475894569 2016-10-08 02:42:49 64718 image <![CDATA[Melissa Kemp]]> image/jpeg 1449176765 2015-12-03 21:06:05 1475894569 2016-10-08 02:42:49 64719 image <![CDATA[Microfluidic device]]> image/jpeg 1449176765 2015-12-03 21:06:05 1475894569 2016-10-08 02:42:49 <![CDATA[Melissa Kemp]]> <![CDATA[Hang Lu]]> <![CDATA[Molecular & Cellular Proteomics paper]]> <![CDATA[Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering]]> <![CDATA[School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering]]>
<![CDATA[BioE Student Anna Liu Named ARCS Scholar]]> 28153 Anna Liu, in her second year of pursuing a Ph.D. in bioengineering and biomedical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been named an ARCS Scholar.

Liu, a graduate research assistant in the lab of Todd Sulchek (associate professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and a faculty member of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience), will receive $7,500 from the ARCS (for Advancing Science in America) Foundation’s Atlanta chapter.

“The ARCS award is a nice source of buffer funds,” says Liu. “So we can use it to fill in any small gaps in, say, specialty project materials, attending conferences, or just personal expenses.”

The ARCS Foundation, a national organization of women started in 1958, has granted about $92 million in awards to more than 9,000 students determined to be the best and the brightest in their fields.

ARCS Foundation Atlanta (comprised of about 150 philanthropic women) supports scholars from Emory University, Morehouse College, and the University of Georgia, in addition to Georgia Tech. The Atlanta chapter has awarded about $4.5 million to more than 400 scholars since it was incorporated in 1992.

The awards are given to students pursuing degrees in science, engineering, and medical research. Liu’s research in the Sulchek lab is focused on the microfluidic processing of cells for cancer therapy and diagnostics.

“I’m interested in applying my research knowledge to the biotech industry after graduation,” she says. “I want to apply multidisciplinary approaches to combat and diagnose cancer.”


LINKS:

ARCS Foundation

ARCS Atlanta

 

CONTACT:

Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]> Jerry Grillo 1 1472559388 2016-08-30 12:16:28 1653584976 2022-05-26 17:09:36 0 0 news Graduate research assistant from Sulchek lab recognized among the “best and the brightest”

]]>
2016-08-30T00:00:00-04:00 2016-08-30T00:00:00-04:00 2016-08-30 00:00:00 Communications Officer II - Parker H. Petit Institute for - Bioengineering and Bioscience

]]>
570481 570481 image <![CDATA[Anna Liu]]> image/jpeg 1472573158 2016-08-30 16:05:58 1475895379 2016-10-08 02:56:19