Bioengineering News - Volume 2, Issue 2 October, 2006
Bioengineering
Student NSF Award Winners
Jessica Shih, Sanaz Saatchi, Michael Chen
Hedi Razavi, Craig Goergen
Sarah Moore, Julie Litzenberger
Caroline Jordan, Julia Chen
Stanford Bioengineering Faculty Awards
Boahen Makes Three Pioneers
for Bioengineering
For
the third year in a row, a Stanford Bioengineering faculty member has
been chosen for the NIH Director’s Pioneer award. The prize
provides each winner with $2.5 million over five years to pursue new
research directions. This year, the honors go to Dr. Kwabena Boahen.
Boahen, an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, was
selected as 1 of 13 scientists from across the country to receive this
prestigious award. Boahen will use his Pioneer Award to develop Neurogrid,
a specialized hardware platform that will enable the inner workings of
the brain’s cortex to be simulated in detail – something
outside the reach of even the fastest supercomputers. His “neuromorphic” chips
include a silicon retina that could be used to give sight to the blind.
Deisseroth Wins Presidential Award
Karl Deisseroth, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Psychiatry, recently won the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Established in 1996, this major award represents the highest honor that any young scientist or engineer can receive in the United States. Deisseroth, pictured here to President Bush's left, received this award for his work on engineering new treatments for neuropsychiatric diseases including drug addiction and depression.
LSS Computational Systems Bioinformatics Conference
In
May 2002, Elias Zerhouni, NIH Director, defined three major funding areas:
New Pathways to Discovery, Research Teams of the Future, and Reengineering
the Clinical Research Enterprise. Emerging disciplines, such as Bioinformatics
and Computational Biology, not traditionally affiliated with any one
of the National Institutes, were identified as high priority areas for
Roadmap funding. As a result, NIH funded seven National Centers for Biomedical
Computing. Two of these centers reside at Stanford University and in
August they joined together to host the LSS Computational Systems Bioinformatics
Conference on the Stanford Campus.
Covert
to Join Faculty
Markus Covert will join the Bioengineering
faculty in January of 2007. His research focuses on systems biology,
the interface between high-throughput molecular biology and large-scale
predictive computer simulations. It
is Covert’s contention that in the future, biological discovery
will be limited not only by the availability of biological data, but
also by the lack of available tools to analyze and interpret this data.
Consequently, his research goals are to develop methods that integrate
experimental and computational approaches to study biological systems,
and to apply these methods to drive biological discovery.
Linehan Elected to IAMBE
John H. Linehan, Ph.D., was elected to the International Academy of
Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE). He is one of eight new members
worldwide to be elected this year to IAMBE. The Academy’s membership
is made up of persons who have distinguished themselves by making identifiable
contributions to the theory or practice of medical and biological engineering
or by demonstrating unusual accomplishment in promoting the field of
medical and biological engineering. The Academy is part of International
Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Sanjiv
Gambhir Receives Prestigious Aebersold Award
The Society for Nuclear Medicine (SNM) has given their prestigious Aebersold
Award to Sanjiv Gambhir, Professor of Radiology and Bioengineering, for
outstanding achievement in basic nuclear medicine science during the
Society’s 53rd Annual Meeting in San Diego.
Research Collaboration 'Translates' into Potential Wound Therapy
In
order for a cut in the skin to begin healing, healthy skin cells must
gather in the affected area and multiply. When Jennifer Cochran joined
the Stanford Bioengineering faculty as an assistant professor in 2005,
she had engineered proteins to greatly enhance the wound-healing process.
Coming to Stanford gave her the opportunity to team up with doctors such
as Michael Longaker, shown here at the Medical Center. Now Drs. Cochran
and Longaker are working together to turn her engineered proteins into
therapies for patients, such as diabetics, who suffer from chronic skin
lesions. This work recently received funding from BioX, an intramural
program at Stanford that funded 24 new collaborative partnerships. Drs.
Scott Delp, Jennifer Cochran and Stephen Quake were among the Bioengineering
faculty to receive these grants.
Other News
Stem Cell Training Grants Funded
The School of Medicine has received $1.2 million from the California
Institute for Regenerative Medicine to train the next generation of stem
cell researchers. This is the first of a three-year, $3.7 million grant
that was awarded in September. The grant will support 16 scholars comprised
of six graduate students, five postdoctoral fellows and five MD research
fellows from departments across campus. Michael Longaker is the Principal
Investigator.
Student News
Amanda Malone, Bioengineering Ph.D. student in Dr. Jacobs' lab, received
the new investigator award at this year's American Society for Bone
and Mineral Research for her talk entitled "Primary Cilia: Mechanosensory
Organelles in Bone Cells". Her work was identified to be among
the top submissions by a young investigator out of more than 1700.
It was even more remarkable that this award has historically gone to
junior faculty and recent PhDs and MDs. The award includes a $1,000
cash prize.
Faculty of Bioengineering
Russ Altman, Professor
Kwabena Boahen, Associate Professor
Dennis Carter, Professor
Jennifer Cochran, Assistant Professor
Karl Deisseroth, Assistant Professor
Scott Delp, Professor
Gregory Kovacs, Professor
Norbert Pelc, Professor
Stephen Quake, Professor
Matthew Scott, Professor
James Swartz, Professor
Charles Taylor, Associate Professor
Paul Yock, Professor
Affiliated Faculty
Kim Butts, Associate Professor
Rebecca Fahrig, Assistant Professor
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, Professor
Christopher Jacobs,Associate Professor
John Linehan, Consulting Professor
Michael Longaker, Professor
Dan Spielman, Associate Professor
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