Two biomedical engineering doctoral students won prestigious international research awards at the recently concluded Society for Biomaterials Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.
Two biomedical engineering doctoral students won prestigious international research awards at the recently concluded Society for Biomaterials Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.
Gazell Mapili won the society's overall graduate student research award for "outstanding achievement in biomaterials research" for her studies on tissue engineering. She was selected from a group of 20 nominees worldwide. Gazell's research focuses on microfabricated tissue engineering scaffolds in which growth factors can be spatially and temporally organized. These 3D polymer structures can be used to study how bone-marrow derived progenitor cells, can simultaneously grow into bone and cartilage in a pre-designed pattern.
Also honored was Sudhir Kasturi, who received the society's STAR award for his research on the development of novel vaccine delivery systems to treat blood cancers. STAR awards are based on peer-review scores of submitted abstracts. Sudhir, who is graduating in May 2006, has developed surface-functionalized polymer microspheres that can deliver multiple drugs and have shown promise in treating B cell lymphoma in animal studies. Chemical Engineering students, Don Owens, also received one of the STAR awards.
