Day: April 30, 2018

Research Excellence Fund Awards Announced for 2018

Jeremy Bos in the labThe Vice President for Research Office announced the 2018 Research Excellence Fund (REF) awards and thanked the volunteer review committees, as well as the deans and department chairs, for their time spent on this important internal research award process. The awardees in the College of Engineering are listed below:

Infrastructure Enhancement (IE) Grants

Portage Health Foundation (PHF) Infrastructure Enhancement (IE) Grants

  • Jingfeng Jiang “JJ” (BME/LSTI) – Electromechanical Biomechanical testing apparatus (ACUMEN [3KN systems])

Research Seed (RS) Grants

Portage Health Foundation (PHF) Mid-Career (MC)

Minerick Attends Michigan Venture Capital Association Event

Michigan Entrepreneurial and Investment Map
Michigan Entrepreneurial and Investment Map

Jim Baker (Pavlis Honors College and Innovation and Industry Engagement) and Adrienne Minerick (CoE) participated in the Michigan Venture Capital Association (MVCA) 12 @ 12 event in Ann Arbor on Tuesday (April 24, 2018). The event included 12 participants identified by MVCA as leaders from Michigan’s entrepreneurial community to participate in a roundtable discussion on strategies to create greater access to capital and associated challenges for early-stage technology commercialization activities including building investment expertise across the state and retaining entrepreneurial talent within the state.

BME Researchers Review Tissue Engineered Vascular Graft Advancements

TEVG Diagram of blood flow and components
Developing a biocompatible blood-contacting surface remains a major challenge for tissue engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs). This paper reviews the current state of TEVGs with an emphasis on the blood-contacting surface, which includes general vascular physiology and developmental challenges, materials currently employed in TEVGs, and strategies to modify blood-contacting surfaces to resist thrombosis and control cellular recruitment.

Tissue engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs) are beginning to achieve clinical success and hold promise as a source of grafting material when donor grafts are unsuitable or unavailable.

Daniel Radke, Wenkai Jia, Dhavan Sharma, Kemin Fena, Guifang Wang, Jeremy Goldman, and Feng Zhao have a review accepted in Advanced Healthcare Materials. The article “Tissue Engineering at the Blood-Contacting Surface: A Review of Challenges and Strategies in Vascular Graft Development” is an invited review which is a follow-up to a previous research publication: “Aligned nanofibrous cell-derived extracellular matrix for anisotropic vascular graft construction,” Advanced Healthcare Materials. 2017; 6:1601333 (1-6).

This is a timely and comprehensive review article that references extensive publications. It covers significant technological advances regarding tissue engineered vascular grafts for cardiac disease treatment. The review focuses on the challenge of developing a biocompatible blood-contacting surface.

The research group includes faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students in the department.