2010 News Archives


Professor Laurel Carney Receives a 2010 R01 Grant

November 15, 2010

Biomedical Engineering and Neurobiology & Anatomy Professor Laurel Carney has received funding for her 2010 R01 grant entitled: Developing and Testing Models for the Auditory System with & without Hearing Loss. This study involves testing listeners with both normal hearing and hearing loss. The project focusses on the development of computational models that will assist in the testing of signal processing strategies for hearing aids.

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Associate Professors Andrew Berger and Hani Awad Receive Provost's Multidisciplinary Award

July 12, 2010

Associate Professors Andrew Berger (Optics) and Hani Awad (BME) were among the recipients of a 2010-2011 Provost Multidisciplinary Award (PMA) for a study entitled Noninvasive optical monitoring of bone degradation in a mouse model of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This study will develop a noninvasive optical method of measuring bone fragility in genetically modified mice developing severe RA as they receive both anti-inflammatory medication and complementary drugs that try to preserve bone health. By providing a better way of tracking bone fragility in living animals, this work will generate new understanding of how bone disorders develop and how medicines can treat them more effectively in both animals and humans.

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Sally Child Celebrates 45th Anniversary at the University of Rochester

July 1, 2010

This month the RCBU recognizes Sally Child's 45 years of employment at the University of Rochester! Sally began employment at the University of Rochester in June 1965 in the Department of Electrical Engineering. She was first hired by Professor Edwin Carstensen as a technician for his laboratory that was dedicated to studying the biological effects of ultrasound and electric fields. Sally worked with Professor Carstensen for over 30 years, and in that time established herself as a key member in the broader community of scientists involved in advancing the use of ultrasound in medicine and biology. Upon the retirement of Professor Carstensen, Sally began to work with Professor Diane Dalecki and moved to the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2000. Again, her efforts focused on researching the use of ultrasound in diagnostic imaging and developing new therapeutic applications of ultrasound.

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Anne Luebke, Ph.D. and Loisa Bennetto, Ph.D. Awarded Collaborative Pilot Grant

June 3, 2010

Anne Luebke, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Neurobiology & Anatomy and Biomedical Engineeering, and Loisa Bennetto, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Clinical and Social Psychology, have been awarded a collaborative pilot grant to study whether physiological-based biomarkers of cochlear efferent strength will be impaired in the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) population.

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BME Faculty Have Big Designs

May 25, 2010

BME faculty members Amy Lerner and Scott Seidman know about design. In fact, they have "designed" a program that allows senior BME students to tackle real-world challenges. Now in its tenth year, the two-semester Senior Design program, overseen by Lerner and Seidman, provides seniors with hands-on experience working with real clients. Lerner and Seidman guide the students to apply everything they've learned to solve problems faced by clinicians and industry.

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Dr. Kevin Parker named Engineer of the Year

April 13, 2010

Dr. Parker, dean emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, past director of the Rochester Center for Biomedical Ultrasound (RCBU), and the William F. May professor of engineering in the department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) has received the 2009 Engineer of the Year Award given by the Rochester Engineering Society.

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New NIH Training Grant for Hearing, Balance, and Spatial Orientation Research

March 5, 2010

The University of Rochester has recently been awarded a Training Grant (T32) from the NIH National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders entitled Training in Hearing, Balance, and Spatial Orientation. This Training Grant involves the collaborative efforts of the Departments of Otolaryngology, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurobiology & Anatomy. The Grant will support PhD students, MD-PhD students, Post-doctoral fellows and Medical Residents in BME, Neuroscience, and Otolaryngology who are involved in research related to the auditory and vestibular systems. This Training Grant is an important resource for the University of Rochester's Center for Navigation and Communication Sciences, which provides technical and administrative support for 25 faculty members who are conducting research in this area. The 5-year grant will provide approximately $1.5 million dollars of support for several trainees each year. In association with the Training Grant, a new graduate-level course entitled Hearing and Balance: Structure, Function and Disease will be offered starting in Fall 2010. This new Training Grant is an exciting advance for the strong and growing community of auditory and vestibular researchers at the University of Rochester.

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BME Senior Design Class Students Tackle Radiation Research Project

March 4, 2010

Students in the BME Senior Design class are participating in a project inspired by a radiation research contract recently awarded to URMC by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. BARDA would like a quick, easy blood test that accurately measures radiation exposure. A team of students for the Senior Design Class is developing an early prototype for the project as a proof-of-concept.BME seniors Katie Litts, Camile Enriques, Jonathon Kung, and Sean Virgile are working to develop RAD Radiation Analysis Dosimetry, a high throughput device to measure radiation in blood samples. The customer is Walter O'Dell, Ph.D., from the departments of Radiation Oncology and Biomedical Engineering, and one of the co-investigators on the contract. The team is supervised by Richard Waugh, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

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BME Undergraduate Hannah Watkins Awarded Prestigious Xerox Undergraduate Fellowship

February 25, 2010

The SEAS Xerox Undergraduate Fellows Program is a highly competitive program to provide engineering undergraduates with an opportunity to participate in a research experience in SEAS during the summer preceding their senior year. Additionally, students will receive independent study course credit for the continuation of their work during the fall and spring semesters of their senior year. Selection criteria include research interests, competitive academic performance, and intellectual ability and curiosity. Hannah will continue her work in the Benoit Lab focusing on Hydrogel Culture Environments for Regenerative Medicine Applications.

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RCBU Member Develops Collaborative Research Opportunities with UR BME and Peru

February 8, 2010

In 2009, RCBU member Ben Castaneda successfully defended his PhD thesis, Extracting Information from Sonoelastogrphic Images. He returned to his home country of Peru, where he accepted a new faculty position in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP). He was also appointed as the director of a newly created Medical Imaging Research Laboratory. In that capacity, Ben heads PUCP’s new master's degree program in Signal and Digital Image Processing. The program is research oriented, with an emphasis on developing new mathematical models and their application to solving real problems.

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Dr. Kelley Madden Receives Department of Defense IDEA Award

February 1, 2010

Dr. Kelley Madden has received funding from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program for a 2-year study that seeks to understand how an important stress pathway, the sympathetic nervous system, influences breast tumor growth and metastasis. Specifically, this study will determine if the sympathetic nervous system encourages growth of blood vessels into a tumor (angiogenesis). A unique aspect of this project is to determine if the sympathetic nervous system alters the effectiveness of therapy targeting and destroying tumor blood vessels (antiangiogenic therapy). Understanding how a stress pathway influences tumor growth will open the door to therapeutic options targeting the sympathetic nervous system. Importantly, therapies targeting sympathetic nervous system signaling pathways are already in use in the clinic for safe, chronic treatment of heart disease, offering the possibility of rapid clinical application of our findings. This project continues work that has been previously funded by the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester.

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Promotions within the Office of Technology Transfer Widen Opportunities for BME Entrepreneurship

January 21, 2010

Gail Norris, formerly the director of the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) for the College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering, will assume a newly created position of vice-provost of the OTT. Former deputy director Corine Farewell has been promoted to director of the office. The promotions underscore the University's commitment to increase the commercialization of research and design by staff and students.

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