News

Congratulations to Sara Pedron Haba and her husband Jose for the arrival of Alonso. Looking forward to meeting him!

Congratulations to Steven Caliari for winning first prize for his talk in the Bionanotechnology Graduate Student Award Session at the Annual AIChE Meeting in Pittsburgh.

Our recent publication in Advanced Healthcare Materials on microfluidic approaches to modulate the hematopoietic stem cell environment has been featured in Materials Views! Congratulations to Bhushan and Luke as well as our collaborators in the Kenis Lab.

Many thanks and best wishes to our first graduate, Dr. Steven Caliari, on his last day with us. Steven joined our group back in 2008 and has been instrumental in our growth and success. He is starting a post-doc in Dr. Jason Burdick’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania, so we look forward to all his future successes!

Congratulations to Sunny Choi and Dr. Harley for acceptance of their article, “Photonic crystal enhanced microscopy for imaging of live cell adhesion,” in the journal Analyst. Working with Dr. Brian Cunningham and his research group, this project demonstrated the use of photonic crystal enhanced microscopy to non-invasively image the behavior of live stem cells.

Congratulations to Jackie Pence and her husband Brandt for the arrival of Mara. Looking forward to meeting her!

Congratulations to Bhushan Mahadik for acceptance of his first article, ‘Microfluidic generation of gradient hydrogels to modulate hematopoietic stem cell culture environment,’ in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials. Working with Dr. Paul Kenis’ lab, Bhushan has developed a really unique approach to generate gradients within three-dimensional hydrogels. While this paper describes using this tool for hematopoietic cell culture, look out for some upcoming work using his method to study glioma as well. Very well done!

Congratulations to Dan Weisgerber for the acceptance of his first first-authored article, “The impact of discrete compartments of a multi-compartment collagen-GAG scaffold on overall construct biophysical properties,” in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials. This paper describes the biophysical features of a layered biomaterial for orthopedic insertion repair. Very detailed work!

Dr. Harley has receive a R21 grant from NIH’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) entitled ‘Patterning instructive biomolecular cues into collagen scaffolds for tendon insertion regeneration.’ The goal of this effort is to explore ways to used gradients in biomaterial structural properties to repair the osteotendinous interface.

Congratulations to Rebecca Hortensius for the acceptance of ‘The use of bioinspired alterations in the glycosaminoglycan content of collagen-GAG scaffolds to regulate cell activity,’ in Biomaterials. This paper described incorporation of different glysocaminoglycans into a collagen-GAG scaffold to alter the bioactivity of exogenously added growth factor. Very excellent work!