"Magnetic nanoparticles: biomedical applications and challenges" Among Most Read Articles in Journal of Materials Chemistry

An article written by graduate student Nhiem Tran and Associate Professor Thomas J. Webster, ‘Magnetic nanoparticles: biomedical applications and challenges’ was one of the top ten most-read articles from the online version of Journal of Materials Chemistry for October 2010.


Here is an abstract of the article:
The progress in the development of magnetic nanoparticle based therapies for various biomedical applications is reviewed here. Most significantly, magnetic nanoparticles have been widely used in drug delivery and hyperthermia treatment for cancer. However, recent applications of magnetic nanoparticles demonstrate their promise towards decreasing implant infection and increasing tissue growth. To build the most effective magnetic nanoparticle systems for various biomedical applications, particle characteristics including size, surface chemistry, magnetic properties and toxicity have to be fully investigated. In this review, several new applications of magnetic nanoparticles in the medical arena as well as remaining challenges for such clinical use are discussed.

Full link:
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2010/JM/C0JM00994F

Researchers report data on head impacts in college football

Credit: Maggie Rowland/The Dartmouth

Joseph Crisco, Brown professor of orthopaedics and director of the bioengineering laboratory, and Russell Fiore, Brown’s head athletic trainer, have measured the frequency and location of head impacts in college football, position-by-position. Defensive linemen take the most hits; quarterbacks are the only players to be hit mostly from behind. Crisco, Fiore, and their collaborators report their findings in the Journal of Athletic Training.

Using special helmets equipped with accelerometers, researchers at Brown, Dartmouth and Virginia Tech tallied up significant blows to the head among players on their football teams during the 2007 season. The most battered player sustained 1,444 hits during practice and games. The study also reported on the direction of the hits and the number of hits by player position, leading to insights including that quarterbacks are hit from behind more than from any other direction.

Full report online: healthland.time.com/2010/11/19/1444/
See news release: news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2010/11/helmets

The Physics Behind Coffee Rings

Shreyas MandreAssistant Professor of Engineering
Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University

Understanding the formation of ring-shaped stains under a coffee mug could lead to advances in printing, making industrial coatings, fabricating electronics, and designing new medicines. Shreyas Mandre, assistant professor of engineering, and collaborators have devised a predictive model that combines laboratory studies of microscopic glass particles in solution with mathematical theories to predict the existence, thickness and length of the banded ring patterns that formed. “Controlling the ring deposition process would be useful for creating such things as new microphysics tools operating at a scale where pliers or other traditional tools for moving particles cannot operate,” Mandre said.

Full report online: news.oneindia.in/2010/11/24/thephysics-behind-coffeerings.html
See news release: today.brown.edu/faculty/2010/mandre

Fourth Annual SWE Extreme Gingerbread House Competition

The Brown University Society for Women Engineers in collaboration with the University's Engineers Without Borders student organization will be sponsoring its fourth annual "Extreme Gingerbread House Competition" on Friday, December 3, from 4:30 - 6:30 in the lobby of the Barus and Holley building on 184 Hope Street.

Event Description:
Twenty-two teams of 3-5 students and professors will be allowed to pre-register for the competition. Any additional teams that express interest will be placed on a waitlist in the event that a team does not arrive. If the team has not arrived within five minutes of the beginning of the event, their spot will be given to a team on the waitlist or a team that has shown up at the event without registering.

Each team will be supplied with two boxes of graham crackers, two Ziploc bags of royal icing, and a tray on which to construct their house. Additionally, all teams will be provided with an empty sandwich size Ziploc bag for taking the communal supplies. Foods such as candy canes, m&ms, teddy grahams, shredded coconut, etc., will be kept on a central table. At the start of the one hour time slot of building, one member of each team will be allowed to take the empty Ziploc bag to the communal table and fill the bag with whatever supplies they feel are most valuable for their team’s house. All food items will be provided by SWE at the event; teams are NOT allowed to bring any of their own food.

The teams will have one hour to construct their houses out of the provided food. Houses should be designed to follow the criteria listed below:
- The house must fit on the provided tray.
- House dimensions must exceed 6”x6”x6”.
- The house must be hollow.
- The maximum wall thickness is 1”.
- The house should be designed to withstand earthquakes.

Teams are allowed to bring any tools that they think will be helpful such as knives, drills, etc. Teams are responsible for bringing the necessary power connections/extension cords. If you plan on using tools, please ensure you know how to use them safely and plan on bring the necessary personal protective equipment, such as safety glasses. No chemicals can be used during the manufacturing of the house; the house and all its contents must remain edible at all times.

After exactly one hour, the teams will be forced to stop construction on their houses. The houses will initially be judged before a panel of three faculty judges (TBD) on (1) Attractiveness of the House [1-10 points] (2) Novel use of Building Materials [1-5 points] (3) Use of Available Space (ie decorations other than the house) [1-5 points]. Additionally, judges will have the option to select one “wildcard” house after viewing all the completed houses. Judges will award a bonus of three points to the house if they feel that one house was exceptional in a way that was not represented in the other scores; this is optional and at the judges discretion. The sum of these components will be used as the team’s aesthetic score.

The second portion of judging will be on the ability of the house to withstand a simulated earthquake. The tray will be attached to a shake table and cycled through a regimen moving from a low frequency to a high frequency. Time will start when the shake table is turned on, and will be stopped when part of the house falls off the main structure; this includes decorations attached to the house, but not “environmental decorations” that are simply on the tray.

After all the houses have been tested, the maximum amount of time on the shake table to make a gingerbread house break will be used to calculate the scores.

Total group scores will be calculated by combining the aesthetic score (out of 25 points) and the stability score (out of 50 points) for a total score out of 75 points. The team with the most points will be considered the winner. The team with the second highest number of points will be given second place and so forth. The top three teams will be awarded a prize.

EWB Collaboration
This year Engineers Without Borders is focusing on helping a Haitian orphanage that was damaged during the earthquake in January, 2010. There are three main projects that the team hopes to implement in Haiti during trips over winter, spring and summer breaks. The first of these projects is designing a more fuel efficient smoke-less stove to reduce wood use at the orphanage and also to protect the children and staff from upper respiratory disease. Secondly, Brown EWB is helping to install a sanitation system to prevent the spread of disease. Thirdly, they are planning on building a structure that can serve both as a school and as housing for the orphans, who are currently living in tents.

When registering, each team will be asked to pay a registration fee of $6.00 to enter the event. Additionally, they will be supplied with an information packet about the current situation in Haiti and how Brown EWB is helping and what everyone can do to help. Teams are of course able to donate more money to the organization if they feel compelled, but it will have no influence on their supplies etc.

At the event, EWB will also have a table with information on the current situation in Haiti, what their project entails and what they need to implement these designs. This will also be an area where other visitors will be able to learn more about the program and donate if they wish.

All proceeds from the event will go to Brown University Engineers Without Borders.

Brown Engineers Finish First and Second at AIChE Competition

Students in the Brown chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah to compete in a student poster competition. For the second consecutive year, a Brown engineer has returned to College Hill with a first place trophy.

Brown's biomedical engineering student, Melissa Tsang '11 brought home the first place trophy. Tsang competed in the materials engineering and sciences category among 46 participants divided into three groups. She conducted her project, entitled "Novel Polyurethane-Carbon Nanofiber Composite for Bladder Cancer Applications," in collaboration with Associate Professor Thomas Webster and Dr. YoungWook Chun, a Ph.D. candidate in Professor Webster's lab.

In the environmental category, Nattie Cooper '12 took home a second place award.

Melissa Tsang '11 at the center, BME 

Brown's other AIChE student poster competitors included: James Saraidaridis '11 (supervisor Professor Tayhas Palmore), Theresa Raimondo '11 (supervisors Associate Professor Anubhav Tripathi and graduate student Stephanie McCalla), Lakshmi Madhavan '11 (supervisor Professor J. M. Calo), David Sonshine '11 (supervisor Professor Robert Hurt), and Daniel Prendergast '11 (supervisors Professor Eric Suuberg and graduate student James Rice).

"Every year the competition gets more and more competitive than I have seen in previous years," said Indrek Kulaots, lecturer in Engineering.

Prof. Shenoy and Rassin Grantab study the strength of graphene

Science Magazine reports in the November 12, 2010 edition that graphene’s strength lies in its defects. Researchers, including Vivek Shenoy, professor of engineering, and graduate student Rassin Grantab, find that the juncture at which graphene sheets meet does not compromise the material’s strength. These so-called grain boundaries are so strong, in fact, that the sheets are nearly as strong as pure graphene. The trick lies in the angles at which the individual sheets are stitched together.


Full report online: www.sciencemagnews.com/graphenes-strength-lies-in-its-defects.html
See news release: news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2010/11/graphene
(Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University)

BrainGate2 featured in article by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) is one of the Institutes that comprise the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH is the Federal government's focal point for the support of biomedical research.

"BrainGate2 is the brainchild of a group of neuroscientists and neuroengineers based at Brown University in Providence, R. I. NIDCD grantee Leigh Hochberg, M.D., Ph.D., affiliated with Brown and the VA Medical Center in Providence, and Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, leads the effort to make this investigational technology a communication tool for the locked-in. Without even moving an eyelid, someone with locked-in syndrome only has to imagine moving his or her hand on a computer mouse to make the cursor move on the computer screen."

Full feature story located here:
http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/inside/fall10/pg1.html

Webster edits new book: Nanotechnology Enabled In Situ Sensors for Monitoring Health

Until recently, there has been little research into how to use nanotechnology and sensors in health monitoring. Nanotechnology Enabled In Situ Sensors for Monitoring Health is written to coalesce research efforts to design sensors based on nanotechnology that can be placed into the body to monitor health. Nanotechnology is being used at an unprecedented pace to both diagnose and treat diseases, rather than conventional approaches which diagnose and treat diseases in a different manner.

Nanotechnology Enabled In Situ Sensors for Monitoring Health is a must-have for medical researchers, biomedical engineers and surgeons seeking a comprehensive overview of this important subject and examples of how In Situ sensors are being used in the diagnosis and monitoring diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and orthopedic problems.

Drawing upon the collective knowledge of renowned experts, Thomas Webster has assembled a wide-ranging treatise that includes:

• Nanotechnology for cancer sensing and treatment
• Monitoring tissue healing through nano sensors
• Monitoring inflammation and infection via implanted nano sensors
• DNA based nanotechnology biosensors for surgical diagnosis
• Carbon nanotube based orthopedic implant sensors

Update - Another book edited by Professor Webster and former Professor Lysaght:

The worldwide demand for organ transplants far exceeds the number of available donor organs. Consequently some patients die while waiting for a transplant. Synthetic alternatives are therefore imperative to improve the quality of, and in some cases save, people’s lives. Advances in biomaterials have generated a range of materials and devices for use either outside the body or as implants to replace or assist functions that may have been lost through disease or injury. Biomaterials for artificial organs reviews the latest developments in biomaterials and investigates how they can be used to improve the quality and efficiency of artificial organs.

With its distinguished editors and international team of contributors Biomaterials for artificial organs will prove an invaluable resource to researchers, scientists and academics concerned with the advancement of artificial organs.

Dr Michael Lysaght was the Founder and Director Emeritus of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at Brown University, USA and a retired member of the Brown Faculty. He sadly passed away before he could see this finished book and remains a widely recognised and well-respected figure in the field of biomedical engineering for his contributions to organ replacement technology.

Dr Thomas Webster is an Associate Professor for the School of Engineering and Department of Orthopedics at Brown University. He directs the Nanomedicine Laboratory which designs, synthesises and evaluates nanomaterials for various implant applications and is noted for his work in this area.

New Nanotechnology Patent Issued: Metallic Nanoparticles as Orthopaedic Biomaterials

Prof. Thomas Webster (Engineering and Orthopaedics) and post-doctoral researcher, Dr. Jeremiah Ejiofor, were just issued patent no. 7824462 "Metallic Nanoparticles As Orthopaedic Biomaterials" which claims the use of metallic nanoparticles as improved orthopedic implants due to their unique surface energy which promotes bone cells. The patent is currently liscensed to Nanovis, Inc. (http://www.nanovisinc.com/).

Below: A picture of nanoparticulate CoCrMo, a popular orthopedic implant material.

Tsang selected for Biomedical Engineering Society Undergraduate Student Award

Biomedical Engineering (BME) Undergraduate student Melissa Tsang has been selected for the Biomedical Engineering Society Undergraduate Student Award to be presented October 6th, 2010 in Austin, TX at the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting. Undergraduate student winners will be selected on the basis of originality, significance, thoroughness of design analysis, and performance evaluation. This award is based on research conducted in Prof. Tom Webster's lab entitled "Novel Polyurethane/Carbon Nanofiber Composites for Bladder Cancer Applications." She has developed materials that can inhibit bladder cancer cell functions by using nanomaterials alone (specifically, carbon nanofibers, no pharmaceutical drugs are used.)

When Melissa first arrived at Brown, she chose to study BME because previous volunteering experiences had exposed her to the imbalance between current biotechnology and unmet medical needs. She wanted to develop the necessary analytical skills and foundation in biology to design innovative, improved technologies to expand upon our current diagnostics and treatments. As a senior approaching the end of her studies at Brown, she now feels better equipped to tackle this endeavor. In particular, working in Dr. Webster's lab has taught her how to construct and to conduct a research project independently. The opportunity to present her research at conferences, where she can meet many other BMEs in the field, is a rewarding experience for her. She feels that Brown engineering has provided her with not only the necessary skill sets, but also the hands-on experience and exposure to the forefront of current biomedical research to advance her career and, more importantly, to create solutions to better serve our global community.

Prof. Breuer elected a fellow of the American Physical Society

Professor Kenny Breuer was recently elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. This is important recognition, and illustrates how Brown engineers make  significant contributions to the physical sciences.

The American Physical Society highlights that fellows are elected based on their contributions "to the advancement of physics by independent, original research or who have rendered some other special service to the cause of the sciences."

Learn more about Professor Breuer's Fluid Mechanics Laboratory.

Rainwater for Humanity establishes project in Kerala, India

Rainwater for Humanity, a student group that started out as an Engineers Without Borders project in 2009, is excited to announce a new direction in the new school year. The project's mission is to use rainwater harvesting to provide more affordable and clean water during the dry season to people living in a contaminated watershed in southwestern India. The design for a ferrocement community rainwater storage tank has been implemented in the village of Achinakom in Kerala, India. Community surveys taken over the past couple of years show that this system will most benefit users who buy water from private vendors during the dry season because it offers a water supply that will be cleaner and less expensive in the long run. The project now seeks to develop and implement a sustainable economic model in order to support the spread of these rainwater harvesting systems across the region. An especially interesting takeaway from Rainwater for Humanity's recent developments is the importance of the intersection of engineering and the community. In the coming school year, the project seeks to find a happy medium between the two using appropriate technology and a sound business plan. To learn more, check out the R4H blog at rainwaterforhumanity.org!

Brown Engineering committed to Social Entrepreneurship

Barrett Hazeltine's recent interview with the local Providence news highlights his long standing commitment to Brown and social entrepreneurship.

Josef Mittlemann was also recently recognized for his exemplary leadership in the field of social entrepreneurship education by Ashoka University. His syllabus for "Engineers of the Future" was selected from over 50 syllabi as a "best practice" for the field. Ashoka U organized a panel of reviewers (including funders, practitioners, thought leaders, professors and students) who highlight trends in social entrepreneurship teaching.  We are proud of Josef Mittlemann's commitment to social entrepreneurship in a disciplinary context within engineering.

International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design awards Reda's group with best paper

Professor Sherief Reda's research group's paper titled Post-Silicon Power Characterization Using Thermal Infrared Emissions received the best paper award at the International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED). The paper is authored by Professor Reda, and Ph.D. students A. Nowroz and R. Cochran. This year ISLPED received 203 papers for evaluation. After the double-blind review process, 46 papers were accepted for full presentation. From the 46 papers, only 5 were nominated as best paper candidates, and finally only 2 papers were selected for the best paper awards. The competition was narrowed down between papers from Brown, Cornell, and RPI. The article is available at http://scale.engin.brown.edu/pubs/islped10.pdf.  The conference web page is http://www.islped.org

CIMIT awards BrainGate research team member, W. Malik

Wasim Malik, PhD, a member of the BrainGate research team (led by Professors Leigh Hochberg and John Donoghue - see www.braingate2.org for details) has been awarded the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) Miles and Eleanor Shore Fellowship for 2011. This is considered a career development award to enable interdisciplinary contributions by an individual who represents the CIMIT values of academic excellence. Career development awards recognize individuals who seek careers focused on near term impact on patient care, and whose philosophy embraces innovation and multidisciplinary collaboration.

Dr. Malik will receive up to $50,000 to undertake research in the highly interdisciplinary field of neural prosthetics which encompasses neuroscience, clinical research, electrical engineering, mathematics, and statistics. He will focus on designing a new generation of brain-machine interfaces to restore function in patients with limb loss or paralysis. He intends to develop robust neural prosthetics with considerably simpler signal processing which will have a high potential for transition from the laboratory to the clinic. Dr. Malik’s mentor, Emery Brown, will supervise his training and research activities in neuromotor disability.  To learn more about Dr. Malik's background, visit his website.

A. Richard Newton Graduate Scholarship awarded to Cochran and Nowroz

The Design Automation Conference (DAC) Executive Committee awards this scholarship named after the late Professor A. Richard Newton. DAC feels that supporting young faculty and graduate research is an appropriate way to honor Newton's vision and carry out some of his goals. This year the Design Automation Conference chose only Brown amongst the 20 submitted proposals for the $24,000 scholarships to support graduate research and study in Design Automation (DA), with emphasis in “design and test automation of electronic and computer systems”.

Pictured left to right: Cochran, DAC Official, Reda, and Nowroz

2010 Recipients
Students: Ryan J. Cochran, Abdullah N. Nowroz - Brown Univ., Providence, RI
Project: Adaptive Hot Spot Cooling for Many-Core Processors
Advisor: Sherief Reda – Brown Univ., Providence, RI

Biography information:

Ryan J. Cochran first came to Brown University from West Chester, PA as an undergraduate student in engineering, and graduated with Honors in the spring of 2008 in Electrical Engineering. He returned to Brown as a M.Sc. student in the fall of 2008, but has since decided to continue his studies as a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at Brown. Ryan's principal research areas include thermal modeling, management, and tool development for current and future nano-scale integrated circuit technologies. Since 2009, Ryan has 4 refereed conference papers in his research area, including a best paper nomination in ISLPED 2010.

Abdullah Nazma Nowroz was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom and grew up in Bangladesh. She graduated Summa Cum Laude in Electrical Engineering from Boston University in 2006. In 2007, she decided to come back to academia after working in Bangladesh for one year and completed her Masters in Electrical Engineering VLSI from University of Southern California. At present, she is working in the SCALE lab, where she works on designing many innovative techniques towards effective management of temperature, power, and performance of many-core processors. Projects include devising thermal sensor allocation techniques and signal reconstruction techniques that fully characterize the thermal status of the processor using limited number of measurements from the thermal sensors. Her research also includes techniques that provide detailed post-silicon power characterization using thermal emissions from the backside of silicon die using state-of-the-art infrared camera.

Taylor selected for Veterans Affairs Pre-doctoral Fellowship

Erik Taylor (Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student) was select for the 2010-2011 Veterans Affairs Pre-doctoral Fellowship based on his research to develop anti-bacterial implants for injured soldiers. His clinical mentor is Roy Aaron, Director of the VA Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine, and Professor Thomas Webster is his research/academic advisor.

A profile of Erik Taylor:

Growing up roaming the Texan prairies instilled in Erik an ambition to study humanity’s ability to not only co-exist with nature, but to flourish in accordance with Earth’s natural attributes. While one would be hard-pressed to find cattle navigating the roads of a contemporary American metropolis, micro-biotic life flourishes on subways, in apartment complexes, and even in the most allegedly sterile of environments - the modern hospital. Erik's research is geared towards designing treatments for antibiotic resistant biofilms on medical devices. He uses nanotechnology to create novel interfaces promoting the natural elimination of biofilm.

Erik received his Bachelor of Science from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. His senior design project was “An arthroscopic tool for the delivery of a thermo-sensitive hydrogel into damaged knee cartilage.” Erik’s research excellence wrought him an Office of the Vice President Undergraduate Research Fellowship for his work with Reese Endowed Professor Miguel Jose Yacaman in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Erik is currently a graduate student working towards his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Brown University. He is advised by the Graduate Director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering, Associate Professor Thomas J. Webster. Through Prof. Webster’s guidance and expertise, Erik is working on his thesis entitled “Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles (SPION) for the Treatment of Implant Infection.” The Society for Biomaterials recently bestowed upon Erik the Student Travel Achievement Recognition (STAR) graduate student award one of its most prestigious graduate student honors for his exemplary work in nanotechnology. He was also a National Science Foundation Graduate K-12 teaching fellow for two years (the maximum duration allowed for the fellowship program) where he taught science to grades 3-6 at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Providence, Rhode Island.

Yang earns First Place Award from Sigma Xi Northeast Regional Conference

Lei Yang (Ph.D. candidate co-supervised by Professors Brian Sheldon and Thomas Webster) received the First Place Undergraduate and Graduate Student Poster Award at the Sigma Xi Northeast Regional Conference in New Haven, CT for his contribution: "The Role of Substrate Topography in Mediating Osteoblast Functions: Experiments and Modeling."

Here is a short interview with Lei Yang:

How does participating in conferences such as Sigma Xi impact your Brown Engineering experience?
(Lei) Sigma Xi is one of the oldest and most famed scientific societies, attending this conference is not only a honor but also a great opportunity to meet the top students and researchers in the New England region. It's also a good opportunity to showcase the cutting-edge research led by Brown Engineering faculty and students.

What is the impact of your research?
(Lei) It was the best poster presentation during a conference that I have ever attended so far, because I obtained so many new ideas and comments related to my project. The conference was very well organized, and each participant had many chances to talk to most of the professors and students. I received a lot useful comments on the methodology and techniques I used for my study, and surprisingly, many of them were from the people outside of my research field. So I think I also benefited from the multi-disciplinary atmosphere of the conference.

What degree are you seeking and when will you graduate? What do you hope to do with your degree?
(Lei) I am seeking PhD in Engineering and will graduate in May 2011. I want to become faculty in Materials Science after my PhD.

Video: Dr. Thomas Webster - Orthopedic Biofilms

Professor Thomas Webster appeared in a documentary film on implant infection called "Getting Back on Their Feet II" by Richard Longland which was just released.

The film was produced by the Arthroplasty Patient Foundation (Richard Longland, the founder) and explores biofilms and their contribution to medical device failures and related chronic health issues.

Prof. Sheldon and Webster appear in cover story

Brian Sheldon, Thomas Webster, and Lei Yang appeared as the cover story for the American Ceramic Society Bulletin. It is entitled " Nanophase Ceramics for Improved Drug Delivery: Current Opportunities and Challenges."

After more than a decade of research and development, nanotechnology has reshaped the traditional thinking (or lack thereof) of using ceramics for drug delivery. Although drug delivery has been a polymer- dominated field, the blossoming of nanotechnology means that ceramic materials are now showing much promise for numerous drug delivery applications.

Typically, nanotechnology is defined as the use of materials and systems whose structures and components exhibit novel and significantly changed properties when control is gained at the nanoscale (specifically, <100 nm or <10–7 m).1 For ceramics, this means fabricating ceramics whose grain or particle
sizes are within the range of 1 nm to 100 nm).

Nanophase ceramics already have been widely used in a broad spectrum of biomedical applications, and now drug delivery is one of the fastest emerging and developing arenas for nanoceramics, drawing increasing attention over the past few years.

Read more of the story at this link:
http://ceramics.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/03_10_cover-story.pdf