BME Highlights

Newsletter Archive
 

Fall 2023

BME in the News
December 2023
Biomedical engineering students were recently featured on CBS News for building mobility trainers for children with disabilities. If you would like to help support this project and other endeavors, please donate to the David A. Rice Design Endowed Fund in Biomedical Engineering here.

Congratulations to Students and Alums
December 2023
Congratulations to BME alums and graduate students Kelly Vinh, Ethan Hernandez, and Rachel Soans, and their colleague Ben Breen for their advancement in the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) 2023 “$100,000 Start an SUD Startup” Challenge!  They've been selected by the NIDA judges to receive the Stage 1 prize of personalized entrepreneurial mentoring for each team for their proposal titled Vaping Cessation Device: Reimagining the E-Cigarette.  See the full list of winners here.

Congratulations to Katelynn Montgomery, PhD
December 2023
Congratulations to Katelynn Montgomery on successfully completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Third Trimester Amniotic Fluid Characterization of Cells And Extracellular Vesicles For The Prevention Of Necrotizing Enterocolitis”, on December 15, 2023.

Congratulations to Elisabet A. Olsen, PhD
November 2023
Congratulations to Elisabet A. Olsen on successfully completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Systems and methods for engineering tumor microenvironments and stromal tissue niches in microphysiological models of cancer pathophysiology”, on November 27, 2023.

Congratulations to Nancy M. Kim, PhD
November 2023
Congratulations to Nancy M. Kim on successfully completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Multiplexed Approach To Elucidate Sequence-Function Relationships Of Transcription Factor-Based Biosensors”, on November 15, 2023.

Spring/Summer 2023

Congratulations to Haoran Ma, PhD
August 2023
Congratulations to Haoran Ma on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, "Multiscale Computational Modeling of Human Lung", on August 25, 2023.

Congratulations to Rani Brooks, PhD
June 2023
Congratulations to Rani Brooks on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, "Synthetic Biology Tools to Overcome Phage Therapy Limitations", on June 7, 2023.

Congratulations to Graduating Master's Students
May 2023
Congratulations to Omar Ahmad, Carolina Chi, Matthew Comella, Caroline Culp, Kali Dancisak, Parris Debrow, Mari Domingo, Sophia Knepper, Erika Kudryk, Tara Parker, Andrew Pettus, Rachel Tabor, Chris Wang, and Marjorie Williams, who  all received masters' degrees in biomedical engineering in May.

Annual Truss Bust
May 2023
In April the freshman statics class participated in the annual Truss Bust Competition.  Students designed and built model bridge trusses, which were then tested to see how much stress they could withstand before breaking. The statics class is taken by prospective BME and PEP students.

See the video here

Congratulations to Shelby E. White, PhD
April 2023
Congratulations to Shelby E. White on successfully completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, "Active and Passive Contributions to Vaginal Biomechanical Function with Reproductive Age, Elastic Fiber Disruption, and
Postpartum Remodeling", on April 27, 2023.

Congratulations to Gemini Zhang, PhD
April 2023
Congratulations to Gemini Zhang on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, "Dynamic, directional, and heterogeneous functional connectivity of human brain: a neuroimaging study", on April 14, 2023.

Congratulations to Jayant Saksena, PhD
January 2023
Congratulations to Jayant Saksena on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Utilizing Laser Direct Writing to Fabricate In Vitro Bioengineered Systems for Elucidating Cellular Dynamics in Breast Tumor and Wound Microenvironments”, on January 17, 2023.

Fall 2022

Congratulations to Kristie Huda, PhD
November 2022
Congratulations to Kristie Huda on successfully completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Whole-Body Therapeutic Response Monitoring and Feasibility of Clinical Translation of Photoacoustic Imaging”, on November 28, 2022.

Congratulations to Biomedical Engineering faculty
November 2022
Congratulations to our faculty who received recognition at the Tulane Research, Scholarship, & Artistic Achievement Awards celebration!
Michael Moore- Innovation Award
Yu-Ping Wang - Convergence Award
Donald Gaver- Special Presidential Award for Academic Leadership

Alumni business featured on WWL-TV
November 2022
Nicholas Pashos, Tulane Bioinnovation graduate and founder of BioAesthetics, along with Billy Heim, Tulane Biomedical Engineering graduate and BioAesthetics COO,  were featured on WWL-TV discussing their areola reconstruction technique for cancer survivors.

Read the full story here 

Spring/Summer 2022

Congratulations to Kimberly Ashman, PhD
August 2022
Congratulations to Kimber Ashman on successfully completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Expert-in-the-Loop Slide Image Acquisition and Analytics for Clinical Pathology”, on August 25, 2022. 
 
Congratulations to Kaylynn J. Genemaras, PhD
August 2022
Congratulations to Kaylynn Genemaras on successfully completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “The Application of Electrochemical Techniques for the Point-of-Care Quantification of HIV in Two Novel Microfluidic Devices”, on August 15, 2022.

Congratulations to Huimin (Joy) Zhuge, PhD
July  2022
Congratulations to Huimin (Joy) Zhuge on successfully completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Machine Learning Enhanced Optical Microscopy Image Acquisition”, on July 28, 2022.

Congratulations to Graduating Master's Students
May 2022
Congratulations to the following students, who received their masters' degrees this year:  Kyle Cleveland, Gabrielle Fortes, Caitlyn Gaddy, Steven Galic, Viraj Puri, Nikole Skaines, Bradley Sweeney, Madeline Tallman, Aline Tran.

Spring/Summer 2021

Congratulations to Asis Lopez, PhD.
December 2021
Congratulations to Asis Lopez on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Regulatory Tools for Ultrasound Activated Microbubble Products for Neurological Applications: Predicting Vessel Ruptures”, on December 3, 2021.

Congratulations to Biao Cai, PhD.
November 2021
Congratulations to Biao Cai on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, "Discover Dynamic and Unique Characteristics of Functional Connectivity Networks for Brain Development Study", on November 29, 2021.

Congratulations to Gabrielle Clark-Patterson, PhD.
October 2021
Congratulations to Gabrielle Clark-Patterson on completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Smooth Muscle Contribution to Murine Vaginal Mechanical Function and Potential Interactions with Elastic Fibers”, on October 26, 2021.

Congratulations to Graduating Master's Students
May 2021
Congratulations to the following students, who received their masters' degrees this year:  Mason Caplin, Logan Daigle, Gage Garrity, Stephen Hahn, Mark Jaunet, Michael L'Ecuyer, Dylan Lucia, Jeremy Orie, Lindsay Pristou, Brooke Santagato, Natalie Schwartz, Erin Shanley, and Ashley Stuart.

Congratulations to Junqi Wang, PhD.
April 2021
Congratulations to Junqi Wang on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Graph-based Approaches for Multimodal Imaging Data Study”, on April 29, 2021.

Congratulations to Aiying Zhang, PhD.
April 2021
Congratulations to Aiying Zhang on completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Understanding Brain Functional Connectivity using graphical models”, on April 27, 2021.

Congratulations to Cassandra Conway, PhD.
April 2021
Congratulations to Cassandra Conway on completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Biaxial Contractility, Passive Biomechanics, and Murine Cervical Remodeling”, on April 23, 2021.

Congratulations to Dylan J. Lawrence, PhD.
April 2021
Congratulations to Dylan Lawrence on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Longitudinal multimodal imaging of in vivo placental function in preeclampsia”, on April 21, 2021.

Congratulations to Owen Richfield, PhD.
April 2021
Congratulations to Owen Richfield on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, Development of a Computational Fluiddynamics Model of The Glomerulus For Use in Glomerulus-on-a-Chip Design”, on April 14, 2021.

BME Students Semi-finalist in Rice University Competition
February 2021
Team CerFix, including members Emma Chapel, Katherine Mattingly, Madeline Tallman and Sydney Siegmeister, has been selected as a semi-finalist in the 11th Annual Undergraduate Global Health Technologies Design Competition, hosted by the Rice 360° Institute for Global Health, which will be held in March 2021.

BME Student Wins Award
February 2021
Rachel Tabor, a junior in biomedical engineering, has won the 2021 WE Local Rising Star Award (Future Collegiate Leader). The award is for those that have made "outstanding contributions to SWE, the engineering community, their campus, and the community."

Dr. Kristin Miller Receives Award
December 2020
Professor Kristin Miller has been awarded the 2021 ASME YC Fung Young Early Career Award for outstanding contributions to the field of bioengineering through research. Dr. Miller has earned this award for ‘advancing the fundamental understanding of reproductive biomechanics through the pioneering development of methods to elucidate mechanobiological processes in the female reproductive system related to smooth muscle contractility.’  

Read the full story here

Fall 2020

Congratulations to Benjamin O'Donnell, PhD.
December 2020
Congratulations to Benjamin O'Donnell on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Osteoarthritic Synovial Knee Joint Microphysiological System: Modeling Adipose and Diabetic-Mediated Complications”, on November 19, 2020.

Congratulations to Mitchell L. Fullerton, PhD.
December 2020
Congratulations to Mitchell L. Fullerton on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Translating Ophthalmologic Drug Delivery Systems from the Bench to Clinical Trials”, on November 24, 2020.

Congratulations to Wenxing Hu, PhD.
December 2020
Congratulations to Wenxing Hu on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Discovering Complex Relationships Between Multimodal Imaging and Omics Data”, on November 10, 2020.

Congratulations to Pete Lawson, PhD.
December 2020
Congratulations to Pete Lawson on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Persistent Homology for the Quantification of Prostate Cancer Morphology in Two and Three-Dimensional Histology”, on August 28, 2020.

Congratulations to Heng "Vivien" Yu, PhD.
December 2020
Congratulations to Heng "Vivien" Yu on completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Endothelial Dysfunction and Circulating Cell Adhesion to Endothelium in Atherosclerosis, Diabetes, And Cancer”, on July 29, 2020.

Congratulations to Master’s Students
December 2020
Congratulations to Jessie Odom and Sarah Chiariello who will receive their master's degrees on December 15, 2020.

Alumni business funded by Benson Capital Partners
November 2020
Axosim, a business began in Dr. Moore’s laboratory, has received investment funds from Benson Capital Partners, a company founded by Gayle Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints.

Read the full story here
Read more here

Biomedical Engineering Team wins at national competition
November 2020
Trach Tech, a team comprised of BME graduates Morgan Bohrer, Stephen Hahn, Michael L'Ecuyer, and Alex Verne, won the Arrow Electronics People’s Choice Award at the annual Collegiate Inventors Competition.

Read the full story here

BME team named a 2020 Collegiate Inventors Competition® Finalist
October 2020
Trach Tech, a team comprised of BME graduates Morgan Bohrer, Stephen Hahn, Michael L'Ecuyer, and Alex Verne, has been selected as undergraduate finalists in the 2020 Collegiate Inventors Competition® (CIC). They will be competing later this month and presenting their invention for cleaning endotracheal tubes  to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Read the full story here

Paper published by Dr. Joseph Bull's lab
September 2020
Dr. Bull's lab published a paper in APL Bioengineering showing positive results for a liver cancer treatment.

Read the full story here

Spring/Summer 2020

Congratulations to Ben Vinson, PhD.
April 2020
Congratulations to Ben Vinson on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Cad/Cam Laser Processing as a Method for Integrated Fabrication of Microphysiological Systems”, on July 29, 2020.

Congratulations to Graduating Master's Students
May 2020
Congratulations to the following students, who are receiving their masters' degrees this year:  Ann Marie Barfield, Samuel Belden, Chloe Celingant-Copie, Michael Conrad Jr., Max Cooper, Katherine Hébert, Mckenzie Hutchinson, Isabella Johnson, Avery Kravitz, Guang Li, Allison Margulies, Andrew Markel, Genevieve Mattei, Mckenzie Melius, Sarah Nwia, Jessie Odom, Michael Rizzuto, Elizabeth Roney, Rachel Russell, Afsheen Sajjadi, Derek Spillane, Joshua Talbot, Richard Urbanowski Jr.

Congratulations to Scott Hymel, PhD.
April 2020
Congratulations to Scott Hymel on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, "Computational Models for Microfluidic Sorting and Mechanotype Analysis of Circulating Cells", on April 28, 2020.

Seniors Present at Online Engineering Capstone Design Expo
April 2020
Biomedical engineering students were among those presenting at the 2020 Tulane Engineering Capstone Design Expo held online on April 16. They presented the results of their yearlong team design projects. This course allows biomedical engineering students to incorporate everything learned in the classroom while addressing healthcare-related needs.

Team Trach Tech was the overall winner from biomedical engineering while team Breastly won Audience Favorite.

Link to view Biomedical Engineering project videos and abstracts: https://sse.tulane.edu/2020-engineering-capstone-design-expo/bme

Tulane Novel Tech Challenge
April 2020
Ann Marie Barfield, a graduate student in biomedical engineering, along with Katelynn Montgomery in the bioinnovation program and Sara Al-Ghadban of the Center For Stem Cell Research & Regenerative Medicine, were the winners at the 2020 Tulane Novel Tech Challenge. Their team, Naomi, created an oral supplement derived from amniotic tissue designed to prevent development of Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC), a devastating gastrointestinal disease in pre-term babies.

AccuTractor, a team composed of biomedical engineering students Joshua Talbot, Elizabeth Roney, Ann Marie Barfield, and Derek Spillane, won second place. The AccuTractor is a squeeze-to-open dissection tool specifically designed to address the recurring discomfort, fatigue, and frustration experienced by novice dissectors.

Congratulations to Bihe (Ellie) Hu, PhD.
April 2020
Congratulations to Bihe (Ellie) Hu on completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Dual-View Inverted Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (Dispim) Imaging For Accurate 3d Digital Pathology”, on April 17, 2020.

Congratulations to Jonah Harmon, PhD.
March 2020
Congratulations to Jonah Harmon on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Gas Embolization as a Minimally Invasive Therapy for the Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma”, on March 18, 2020.

Congratulations to Yuntong Bai
February 2020
Yuntong Bai, a PhD student in Dr. Yu-Ping Wang's laboratory won two awards at the 2020 SPIE medical imaging conference in Houston, TX.
Yuntong was a Robert F. Wagner Best Student Paper Award Finalists for a paper entitled "An Imaging epigenetics study of Schizophrenia with structure-enforced collaborative regression" and won a honorable mention award for a poster entitled "Integration of multi-task fMRI for cognitive study by structure-enforced collaborative regression".

Senior Research Conference
January 2020
Students and Faculty gathered on January 27, 2020 at the Lavin Bernick Center for the 18th Annual Research Conference. This event allows seniors to present the results of their yearlong independent research or design projects. It highlights their effort and contributions to the field of biomedical engineering and demonstrates biomedical engineering’s potential to the larger university.

Fall 2019

Congratulations to Master's Student
November 2019
Congratulations to Andrew Markel who received his master's degree on November 19, 2019.

Spring/Summer 2019

Congratulations to Master's Students
August 2019
Congratulations to the following students, who received their masters' degrees this year:  Chengxi Wu and Zhiyu Deng.

Congratulations to Devon A. Bowser, PhD.
August 2019
Congratulations to Devon Bowser on completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Engineering In Vitro Neural Microphysiological Systems”, on August 12, 2019.

Congratulations to Nicholas Hodges, PhD.
July 2019
Congratulations to Nicholas Hodges on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Development Of The Rat Mesentery Culture Model For The Multi-System Investigation Of Microvascular Network Growth”, on July 26, 2019.

Congratulations to Akinjide R. Akintunde, PhD.
July 2019
Congratulations to Akinjide Akintunde on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Mathematical Modeling to Elucidate Underlying Matrix Mechanisms in the Mechanical Response of Biological Soft Tissues”, on July 1, 2019.

Congratulations to Graduating Master's Students
May 2019
Congratulations to the following students, who are receiving their masters' degrees this year: Megan Escott, Clara Ives, Adam Kolkin, Guang Li, Dinika Singh, Joshua Yao and Junjie Zhong.

Congratulations to Daishen Luo, PhD.
April 2019
Congratulations to Daishen Luo on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, “Quasi-Static Acoustic Tweezing for Small Volume Blood Coagulation Analysis”, on April 26, 2019.

Congratulations to Samantha L. Kurtz, PhD.
April 2019
Congratulations to Samantha Kurtz on completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Development of the Rat Mesentery
Culture Model for Translation and Commercialization”, on April 24, 2019.

Congratulations to Jessica M. Hodges, PhD.
April 2019
Congratulations to Jessica Hodges on completing her doctoral studies. She presented her dissertation defense, “Diffusion Kinetics, Ductal Targeting, and Efficacy of Transpapillary Drug Delivery for Breast Cancer Prevention”, on April 23, 2019.

BME Team Wins Tulane Novel Tech Challenge
April 2019
Hannah Eherenfeldt and Benjamin Knapp, both seniors in biomedical engineering, were the winners at the 2019 Tulane Novel Tech Challenge. Their team, ReSuture, is a medical simulation venture focused on developing realistic vascular surgery simulations.

Don’t Sweat It, a team composed of biomedical engineering students Alex Kubosiak, Stephen Hahn, Mostafa Meselhe, Arjun Sree Manoj and Jackson Levine along with neuroscience major Ben Lichtfield, won the Audience Favorite Award.

Graduate elected AIMBE Fellow
April 2019
Maria Oden, who graduated with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Tulane in 1994, was recently elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

Seniors Present at Engineering Capstone Design Expo
April 2019
Biomedical engineering students were among those presenting at the 2019 Tulane Engineering Capstone Design Expo on April 10. They presented the results of their yearlong team design projects. This course allows biomedical engineering students to incorporate everything learned in the classroom while addressing-healthcare related needs.

Congratulations to Derek C. Dashti, PhD.
April 2019
Congratulations to Derek Dashti on completing his doctoral studies. He presented his dissertation defense, "Bioengineering an Anti-inflammatory Decellularized Electrospun Polycaprolactone/Chitosan Hollow Tube for Organ Repair: 1st Therapeutic Application for the Esophagus", on January 23, 2019.

Senior Research Conference
February 2019
Students and Faculty gathered on January 31, 2019 at the Lavin Bernick Center for the 17th Annual Research Conference. This event allows seniors to present the results of their yearlong independent research or design projects. It highlights their effort and contributions to the field of biomedical engineering and demonstrates biomedical engineering’s potential to the larger university.