IGERT News Posts

Professor Terri Camesano is the lead organizer and co-director of NATO’s Advanced Research Workshop series titled “Nanotechnology to Aid Chemical and Biological Defense” and takes place September 22-26 in Antalya, Turkey. The workshop’s focus is on nanoscale science and technology as applied to pathogens like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Francisella tularensis (tularemia), and Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax. The goal is to eventually engineer new materials that can detect and defend against many biological and chemical agents at the atomic and molecular levels.

Professor Camesano, is presenting a talk about the potential to use naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides to detect biological threats and IGERT fellow Todd Alexander is also presenting at the workshop.

Professor Frank Hoy recently gave a presentation at the Global Research Symposium on Marketing and Entrepreneurship Doctoral Consortium: “Finding partners in other disciplines.” The presentation focused on our collaborations here at WPI —  ways we’ve come together and results. This meeting took place in Santa Cruz, CA, July 29 – 31.

Physic professor Qi Wen (CoPI) together with (PI) prof. Yuxiang Liu, from mechanical engineering, were recently awarded nearly $450,000 by the National Science Foundation over a period of 3 years. 

Tissue cells live in a nonlinear and heterogeneous three-dimensional (3D) environment. However, existing techniques for cell mechanics studies only work in uniform media and mostly on 2D surfaces. The proposed research will develop a compact, dexterous, and robust fiber optical trapping system, namely optical chopsticks, and apply it for cellular mechanics study in 3D matrices. The optical chopsticks are capable of simultaneously applying forces and measuring cell responses in a non-contact fashion. This research will transform the study of cellular mechanics in the native 3D environments.

 

Prof. Frank Hoy was interviewed by Fox 25 Boston on Wednesday, August 13th in regards to the Market Basket situation.

 

http://www.myfoxboston.com/clip/10467841/business-professor-discusses-friday-deadline-for-protesting-market-basket-employees

 

Lindsay Lozeau is enjoying her internship at TEI Biosciences, where she is challenged every day. She is learning CLSI standard and ASTM standardized testing methods and has even established her own assays to study particular things on the products. Lindsay has also been involved with a variety of projects, small animal surgeries, some colorimetric assays, doing histology studies, and other types of biochemical assays.

Lindsay has experienced firsthand what it’s like to own a company, set up collaborations and develop new products. All of this has been such a tremendous experience in teaching her what it takes to reach her ultimate goal of owning a company.

Second year IGERT fellow, Katrina Hansen is spending the summer setting up new collaborations at the University of Bath in Bath, England.  She is working in the lab of Dr. Marianne Ellis alongside Dr. Ellis’ graduate student Sam Acott, who visited the Gaudette lab last year.  Katrina is focusing on comparing cell seeding parameters on the fibrin threads that she has been pioneering in Prof. Gaudette’s lab at WPI.

Though busy with her research, Katrina had some time for site seeing. She recently went to London to enjoy the celebration of the Queen of England’s birthday. There she saw Queen in her horse drawn carriage during the parade.

At WPI’s Touch Tomorrow Festival held on June 14^th in conjunction with a NASA Centennial Challenge, the public had a chance to see some of the exciting research being conducted by Prof. Greg Fischer.

Prof. Fischer’s student, IGERT fellow Chris Nyzc, was on hand to demonstrate the robotic rehabilitation glove. This wearable device uses cables to control the opening and closing of the hand. The glove is most commonly used in restoring lost motor skills by helping the brain rebuild neural pathways lost as in the case of a stroke. The system would allow patients to perform this repetitive motion therapy in their homes and chart their progress with the computer monitoring system.

In Prof. Fischer’s Automation and Interventional Medicine (AIM) Laboratory  people got a chance to use a remote control to manipulate a robotic surgical arm and see a 3D printer used to build parts needed in the research. Also, on display was the research from his recently awarded NIH grant which tests a new, minimally invasive approach to treating brain tumors that promises to accurately destroy malignant tissue while leaving surrounding tissue unaffected.

Prof. Terri Camesano will assume the position of Dean of Graduate Studies, effective July 1, 2014. Prof. Camesano is recognized by experts in her field and faculty colleagues and students across the WPI campus. She has built a stellar record as a highly productive and successful researcher. Prof. Camesano has been an outspoken and engaged proponent for growing the graduate programs in size, diversity and quality, and has been a dedicated advocate on behalf of the graduate students.

Terri Camesano, professor of chemical engineering and assistant dean of engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), received the 2014 Chairman’s Exemplary Faculty Prize during the university’s 146th Commencement exercises on May 17, 2014.

The tradition of awarding the prize, which honors WPI faculty members for overall excellence, was established in 2007 through the personal philanthropy of Donald K. Peterson ’71, then chairman of the WPI Board of Trustees, and is continued this year by current board chairman Warner Fletcher.

The Chairman’s Exemplary Faculty Prize, in the amount of $10,000, recognizes and rewards faculty members who excel in all relevant areas of faculty performance, including teaching, research and scholarship, and advising.

Camesano joined the WPI faculty in 2000 after earning a BS in chemical engineering and environmental science at the University of Rochester, an MS in environmental engineering at the University of Arizona, and a PhD in environmental engineering at Pennsylvania State University. Over the course of more than a decade, she has conducted pioneering research on the biochemical mechanisms bacteria use to adhere to living and non-living substrates. To perform their functions— whether starting infections or causing tooth decay—bacteria must stick to surfaces, where they can form antibiotic-resistant colonies called biofilms.

She has developed novel techniques for studying her tiny subjects—for example, using the atomic force microscope to measure the forces that hold bacteria in place. By exploiting what she learns about bacterial adhesion, she has been able to identify compounds that can disrupt adhesion and prevent biofilm formation. In work that gained extensive media coverage, she showed how E. coli bacteria stick to cells in the urinary tract, and how compounds in cranberry juice prevent adhesion—and infections. She is also studying natural antimicrobial peptides, including those from fish gills, with the goal of developing coatings that can prevent biofilm formation on all kinds of surfaces, including medical implants. And she is exploring tools that can kill virulent bacteria in soil.

Camesano’s research has been funded by a number of awards from federal agencies and organizations, including a highly prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award, additional grants from the NSF, and awards from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Army. Her work has resulted in more than 60 scholarly publications and book chapters, one edited book, more than 100 presentations, and invited lectures in the United States, Australia, and Europe.

A creative and innovative educator, Camesano brings her enthusiasm for discovery to her classroom, welcomes undergraduates into her lab, and in 2002 established a partnership with École Nationale Supérieure des Industries Chimiques (ENSIC) in Nancy, France, through which more than 50 chemical engineering majors have gained global experience while working on their major projects.

Over the past decade, she has helped create and run several high-profile, federally funded academic programs. She was the principal investigator for an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program that gave undergraduates from across the country the opportunity to teach in the two-week BioDiscovery Camp for middle-school girls. She also established an innovative program for middle-school teachers, also funded by the NSF. A goal of these programs and of an annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day that Camesano spearheads to inspire girls to think about one day pursuing careers in engineering.

Currently, Camesano is the principal investigator on five-year, $3 million award through the NSF’s highly competitive Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program. The first such award received by WPI, it is funding an innovative graduate program in biofabrication through which students learn to conduct research in an emerging area of biomedicine and to translate their discoveries into innovative solutions that can improve people’s lives.

Despite the heavy demands of her extensive research, teaching, and advising activities, Camesano has been active in service to the university and her profession. For example, is on the editorial board for the highly regarded journal Applied & Environmental Microbiology and she is organizing an Advanced Research Workshop on Nanotechnology to Aid Chemical and Biological Defense; funded by NATO, it is planned for September 2014 in Antalya, Turkey.

To explore her interest in academic administration, she won an appointment as a HERS Faculty Fellow at the Wellesley College Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration and was selected for the inaugural class of ELATE (Executive leadership in Academic Technology and Engineering) fellows at Drexel University. With that preparation, earlier this year she was selected to serve as WPI’s first assistant dean of engineering.

 

On May 1, 2014, there were over 100 corporate partners at the In Great Company Event organized by the Dean’s office, with the keynote speaker from Raytheon.  Lindsay conversed with representatives from simplex Grinnell, stantec and Tyco. Lindsay was one of four graduate students presenting her poster from the Engineering Department. Lindsay felt this was a really great opportunity to share AMProtection research and potential with some really important people.