Month: May 2015

Congratulations to IGERT student Katrina Hansen for receiving an Alfred R. and Janet H. Potvin Award. The award is given to outstanding graduate and undergraduate students in biomedical engineering. Katrina was one of three students to receive the award this year.

Alfred Potvin was an EE undergraduate student at WPI in 1960-64, and has enjoyed a varied professional career in BME in both academia and industry. He founded the BME program at The University of Texas at Arlington as a joint program with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and served as its first Chairman. Today, it has over 175 graduate students. He also founded and served as Director of the Medical Instrument Systems Division at Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis, and concluded his career as Dean of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University and Purdue University at Indianapolis where he developed the foundation for its BME Department with the IU Medical Center and Purdue University in West Lafayette. He also served as a member and as a Chairman of the advisory committee for the BME Department at WPI during Dr. Bob Peura’s tenure as Department Chairman.

Sarah Hernandez recently attended the Gordon Conference Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics in Tuscany, Italy where she presented a poster titled “Novel PRMT8 isoform is essential for cell viability”. Sarah was awarded registration to the conference for winning the i3 Best Presentation award in 2014.

On April 14, 2015 The Venture Forum held it’s annual 5 minute Pitch Contest where the 10 finalist are given 5 minutes to pitch their buisness to a panel of judges. VitaThreads, a company that began based on the work of  WPI prof. Glenn Gaudette and George Pins, was awarded second place and a $1,500 cash prize.  AMProtection, a company started by students Lindsay Lozeau and Todd Alexander was awarded the top prize of $500 in the poster competition for the second year in a row.