Featured Stories
2024 CAREER Award Recipient: Flavia Vitale
Flavia Vitale, Associate Professor in Bioengineering in Penn Engineering and in Neurology in Penn Medicine, works to meet this need, developing accessible and affordable solutions for the diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of people with neurological disorders. “I started my research career in biomedical engineering hoping to one day help humanity,” says Vitale, who is also a 2024 recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her work. “But it wasn’t until I gained a more diverse skill set during my doctoral and postdoctoral research across chemical engineering and materials science that I was able to do that in a real way.” READ MORE
Penn ADAPT “Hacks” Bedsores, Wins Prize
Brianna Leung, a rising senior majoring in Bioengineering and minoring in Neuroscience and Healthcare Management at the University of Pennsylvania, led a diverse team of student scientists and engineers to resounding success at the 2024 Cornell Health Tech Hackathon, where the team won the $3,000 Grand Prize. Held in March 2024 on Cornell’s campus in New York City, the event brought together students from 29 different universities for a weekend of finding “hacks” to patient wellness and healthcare issues inspired by the theme of “patient safety.” Leung serves as President of Penn Assistive Devices and Prosthetic Technologies (ADAPT), a medical-device project club whose members pursue personal projects, community partnerships and national design competitions. READ MORE
Who, What, Why: Lasya Sreepada on Decoding Alzheimer’s Disease
Lasya Sreepada has always been fascinated by the brain and the underlying biology that shapes how people develop and age. “My curiosity traces back to observing differences between myself and my sister,” says Sreepada, a Ph.D. candidate in Bioengineering whose research unites efforts across Penn Medicine and Penn Engineering. “We grew up in the same environment but had remarkably different personalities, which led me to question what drove these differences and which brought me to the brain.” READ MORE
Accelerating CAR T Cell Therapy: Lipid Nanoparticles Speed Up Manufacturing
In a new paper in Advanced Materials, Michael J. Mitchell, Associate Professor in Bioengineering, describes the creation of “activating lipid nanoparticles” (aLNPs), which can activate T cells and deliver the genetic instructions for CARs in a single step, greatly simplifying the CAR T cell manufacturing process. “We wanted to combine these two extremely promising areas of research,” says Ann Metzloff, a doctoral student in Bioengineering and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Mitchell lab and the paper’s lead author. “How could we apply lipid nanoparticles to CAR T cell therapy?” READ MORE
Highways to Health: Bicontinuous Structures Speed Up Cell Migration
One of the most important but least understood aspects of healing is cell migration, or the process of cells moving from one part of the body to another. “If you are an ambulance out in the woods,” says Karen Xu, an M.D/Ph.D. student in Medicine and Bioengineering, “and there are no paths for you to move forward, it will be a lot harder for you to get to a site that needs you.” Earlier this year, Xu co-authored a paper in Nature Communications describing a new cue to help cells get to where they need to go: a material made chiefly of hyaluronic acid and gelatin, two gooey substances commonly found outside cells in joints and connective tissue. READ MORE
Alison Pouch Wins 2024 Cardiac Center Innovation Award
Congratulations to Alison Pouch, Assistant Professor in Bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and in Radiology in the Perelman School of Medicine, on winning a 2024 Cardiac Center Innovation Award for scientific research from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)’s Philly Spin-In. Pouch’s study, titled “Systemic Semilunar Valve Mechanics and Simulated Repair in Congenital Heart Disease,” is a collaboration with Matthew Jolley, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at CHOP. READ MORE
BE Events
MEAM Seminar: “Biomedical Innovations for Global Health Research and Technology (BIGHEART): NOAS, EXODUS, iTEARS, and BOAS”
BE-Grace Hopper Distinguished Lecture: Melody Swartz, PhD “Immunoregulatory roles of lymphatic vessels in cancer and opportunities for immunoengineering”
Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering Symposium Honoring Kurt Petersen: “Small Tech, Big Impact: The Development and Commercialization of MEMS Sensors & Actuators:
Why Penn Bioengineering?
Welcome to Penn, home to one of the oldest and most successful bioengineering departments in the United States. Our undergraduate and graduate programs consistently rate among the top 10 in the country. Bioengineering capitalizes on Penn’s great institutional strengths, including a compact urban campus of 12 separate schools, geographic proximity linking the engineering and medical schools within one city block, and a collaborative, integrated environment.
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