Participants will be creating a recreation of a vascular stent using aluminum foil. They will use a balloon on the end of a straw to simulate the balloon angioplasty and catheter procedure used to help fix clogged arteries. The cardboard tube will act as their tissue model that they can test different stent designs with.

We want to see your work!  Take a photo or video and upload it here to our special TouchTomorrow virtual bulletin board!


Brian Ruliffson

My name is Brian, I am a graduate student at WPI. I am a big fan of learning new things, cooking, video games, and science! I believe that as long as someone wants to learn how to do something, they can learn how to do it and they can do it well. I have been in three different biomedical engineering labs. The first one was all about repairing and replacing bone in people that may have lost bone in a car crash or some other accident. The second lab was all about growing cartilage from stem cells to help people with osteoarthritis or sports injuries to their joints. The third lab, which I’m currently in right now, is all about improving our ability to recreate the body in the lab; all with the goal of having something we can test out medicines and therapies on before we rely on animal or human trials.