AMProtection, a company formed by IGERT Fellows Todd Alexander and Lindsay Lozeau, competed against nine other entrants in The Venture Forum’s 2014 Five Minute Pitch Contest held on March 11, 2014.   AMProtection is a company that uses antimicrobial peptide coating to reduce infection in orthopedic implants.  Todd and Lindsay won the poster contest portion of the event for which they will receive $250.

The Pitch Contest has become an integral part of The Venture Forum’s commitment to fostering entrepreneurship and the growth of technology-based businesses, and is designed to generate investment interest for participating entrepreneurs.

Recently, as part of the IGERT class -Translational Engineering for Dissertation Research, the fellows toured the Johnson & Johnson DePuy facility in Raynham, MA.  Here they learned about the state of the art facility that trains surgeons from all over the world to use their internal medical device products, ranging from craniofacial products to spinal supports. Overall, they were all impressed with how such a large company had such a small company feel. 

Kristen L. Billiar, associate professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, has been elected a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Only about 2 percent of ASME’s more than 130,000 worldwide members have attained the fellow grade.

The first biomedical engineering professor at WPI to receive this honor, Mr. Billiar, who has an appointment as an adjunct associate professor of surgery at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, has also been named to the executive board of ASME’s Bioengineering Division and appointed an associate editor for ASME’s Journal of Biomechanical Engineering.