This year’s BMEGG Outstanding Graduate Student Award goes to Beko Binder from Prof. Kent Leach’s laboratory. While a doctoral student in the BME Graduate Group, Beko has made significant advances in the development of pharmacological and materials-based approaches to promote cell survival and direct tissue repair, with particular emphasis on bone and angiogenesis. His research contributions are broad, utilizing a range of materials including hydrogels and implantable scaffolds derived from natural and synthetic polymers.

Allison Hoch and Beko Binder (both Ph.D. candidates in Biomedical Engineering) presented their research at the 4th International Society of Stem Cell Research (ISSCR)/Society of Biological Engineering meeting in San Diego in March 2014.

Our 3rd Annual Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group Student Research Conference is scheduled for May 16, 2014 at the UC Davis Conference Center. Abstracts are due to Christal on 4/25/14. We’re looking forward to another great conference.

This year’s Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group Outstanding Graduate Student Award goes to Dr. Rick Fasani from Prof. Michael Savageau’s laboratory. While a doctoral student in the BME Graduate Group, Rick has made significant advances in developing computational tools for characterizing the phenotypic repertoire of cellular systems. His efforts represent a major advance in dealing with the Genotype-to-Phenotype problem, which is considered one of the grand challenges in modern biology.

Molly Townsend, Ph.D. Student in Biomedical Engineering, was awarded the 2013 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.  Molly’s research, under the mentorship of Professor Sarigul-Klijn in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, will focus on the Effects of Space Flight on the Spine.  For more information, please see the following abstract for the project.

Keywords: gravitational physiology, lumbar spine, compression fracture, bone loss

Nicole De Jesus, Ph.D. Candidate in Biomedical Engineering, and Ripplinger Lab colleagues have a new publication in Circulation Research titled “Optical Mapping of Sarcoplasmic Reticulum Ca2+ in the Intact Heart: Ryanodine Receptor Refractoriness During Alternans and Fibrillation.”

Wendy Brown, PhD candidate in Biomedical Engineering at UC Davis, and the MERCCURI team will see their international space station project launched on March 30th.  Follow their project website: http://spacemicrobes.ucdavis.edu/ to see how microbes collected around the country perform in the microgravity environment of the international space station.

Rafael Shimkunas, 2nd-year PhD student in the BME Graduate Group, has published his first co-authored paper at UC Davis in the journal Science Signaling: http://stke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/7/317/ra27. In the paper, which is featured on the cover of the issue, Rafael and Chen-Izu Lab colleagues used a novel hydrogel system to investigate the mechano-chemotransduction mechanisms in cardiac myocytes.