Engin grad earns outstanding dissertation award

Lijie Zhang (Ph.D., BME, 2009), won the Joukowsky Family Outstanding Dissertation Award for her thesis "Biologically Inspired Rosette Nanotube Nanocomposites for Bone Tissue Engineering, Orthopedic, and Vascular Applications".

The letter reads that she was selected out of over 200 PhD graduates this year for her superior achievement in research. The award will be given out during the Graduate School Commencement ceremony.

Lijie is now completing a post-doc at Rice University.

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Gao receives award

Huajian Gao has been selected to receive the 2009 Robert Henry Thurston Lecture Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers “for groundbreaking research on mechanical properties of both engineering and biological systems across multiple length scales”. Formal presentation of the award is scheduled to take place at the Robert Henry Thurston Lecture, during the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition, November 13-19, 2009.

About the Robert Henry Thurston Lecture Award:

The Robert Henry Thurston Lecture was established in 1925 in honor of Robert Henry Thurston (Brown, B.S., Civil Engineering, 1859), the first president of ASME and a farseeing leader in science and engineering. The Robert Henry Thurston Lecture, presented annually at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress, provides an outstanding leader in pure or applied science or engineering with the honor of presenting to the Society a lecture that encourages stimulating thinking on a subject of broad technical interest to engineers. The Robert Henry Thurston Lecture was elevated to a Society award in 2000.

Robert Henry Thurston (1839-1903) was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His father, Robert Lawton Thurston, manufactured steam engines in Providence. The young Robert Henry Thurston went to Brown University, where he graduated as a civil engineer in 1859. He was the first professor of mechanical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology (in 1871). There he established Stevens’ mechanical engineering curriculum. Historians credit Thurston with establishing the first US mechanical engineering laboratory for conducting funded research at an academic institution for higher learning. He was the first president (1880-82) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

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Kumar selected for keynote

Professor Sharvan Kumar will deliver the Keynote Lecture in the symposium, Modeling and Deformation Behavior of Non-Cubic Metals at the JSME Materials and Mechanics Conference 2009, July 24-26, 2009 in Sapporo, Japan.

The conference details are presented here: http://www.jsme.or.jp/conference/mmdconf09-2/index.html

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Nanotechnology and regenerative medicine

Nanotechnology is contributing greatly to regenerative medicine, particularly by creating nanometer pores and associated nanometer surface features to improve bladder tissue growth while inhibiting bladder calcium stone formation, which is a common disease affecting 5.2% of adults in the US with a high rate of recurrence.

The article covers the work of Young Wook Chun (BME PhD student from Professor Webster's lab) who is creating nanostructured polymers to repair injured bladders.

http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/38783

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Webster discusses intricacies of nanomaterials

Excerpts from Globe and Mail article:
Thomas Webster, an associate professor of engineering at Brown University in Providence, R.I., says that to peer at the intricacies of various tissues, such as bone or skin, through a super-powered microscope is to enter the nano world at a glance.

“Toxicity is incredibly important for us to understand when we're making these materials or when we're using them,” said Dr. Webster, whose own research includes designing nanomaterials for such orthopedic applications as joint replacements and limb prosthetics.

More on this article from the Globe and Mail on April 9, 2009.

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Neuroengineering Master Classes

Brown University Division of Engineering,
Center for Biomedical Engineering, and
Brown Institute for Brain Science

Present NeuroEngineering 1220 “Master Classes”

As part of the Spring ‘09 NeuroEngineering 122 (ENGN 1220) course,
several visiting experts will introduce core neurotechnologies of
clinical relevance.

This series is directed toward the undergraduate and graduate
students enrolled in ENGN 1220, but we open these “master classes”
to other students and researchers interested in Neuroengineering.

All lectures are from 1:00 – 2:20 pm, in
Barus and Holley, Seminar Room 190, or
Sidney Frank Hall Life Sciences Bldg., Marcuvitz Auditorium 220

Tues., 3/10
B & H 190
“Fundamentals of EEG”
Sydney Cash, M.D., Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital
Thurs., 3/12
B & H 190
“Fundamentals of MEG”
Sydney Cash, M.D., Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital
Thurs., 4/16
SFH 220
“Fundamentals of Functional Electrical Stimulation”
Robert F. Kirsch, Ph.D.
Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland VA Med. Center
Tues., 4/21
B & H 190
“Fundamentals of Retinal Prostheses”
Joseph F. Rizzo, M.D.
Harvard Medical School, Mass. Eye & Ear Infirmary, and Boston VAMC
Thurs., 4/23
SFH 220
“Fundamentals of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation”
Alvaro Pascual-Leone, M.D., Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Host: Profs. Leigh Hochberg and Arto Nurmikko, Div. of Engineering, 863-2869
Administrative Contact: Sandra Van Wagoner, Div. of Engineering, 863-1415

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Kumar's recent accomplishments

Professor Sharvan Kumar's recent accomplishments:

1) Invited Speaker: DPG (German Physics Society) Spring Meeting; Metal and Material Physics Division, Dresden Germany, March 22-27, 2009.

2) Invited as an Internal Evaluator for : The Inter-Max-Planck Institutes Research Program, "The Nature of Laves Phases" March 16-March 24, 2009, Germany.

3) Awarded the JSPS Fellowship (Japan Society for Promotion of Science Fellowship) by the Government of Japan to visit Japan for a month to give multiple seminars etc. Will be hosted by Tohoku University. Period July 15 - August 15, 2009.

4) Keynote Speaker for the Symposium "Metals and Intermetallics for High Temperature Applications" at Euromat 2009 --The Federation of European Materials Societies, to be help Sept 07-10, 2009.

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