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Welcome to the 2011 newsletter from Tulane’s Depart-ment of Biomedical Engineering. I’m very proud to bring you up to date on the status of our department. We’ve completely rebounded from the interruption that Katrina caused us, thanks in large part to the eight new faculty members who have come on board in the past five years.

Our newsletter, edited by Cedric Walker and the Exter-nal Constituency Committee , focuses on three themes: People, Research and Outreach. Our website bmen.tulane.edu has more information, and we’d love to hear from you. If come to New Or-leans, please feel free to come by, otherwise drop me a note at dpg@tulane.edu. With best wishes,

Donald Gaver Alden J. “Doc” Laborde Professor

and Department Chair

Dr. Sergey Shevkoplyas, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a $74,900 grant by the Na-tional Blood Foundation. The Foundation awarded only 8 new grants this year. Shevkoplyas is one of 3 engineers among the 8 recipients. Priority is given to new investigators and innovative projects with the potential to have a practical im-pact on transfusion recipients and blood donors.

The quality of red blood cells (RBCs) during storage deterio-rates as the cells lose certain functional abilities and accumu-late oxidative damage over time. This “storage lesion” de-creases the ability of RBCs to deliver oxygen effectively in the transfusion patient. With the NBF grant “The Relationship between the Ability of Stored Red Blood Cells to Perfuse Mi-crovascular Networks and their 24-hr Post-Transfusion Re-covery in vivo”, Shevkoplyas and colleagues will assess the ability of artificial microvascular networks, or AMVNs, to detect the deterioration in red blood cells that takes place over time.

The researchers are taking advantage of an ongoing clinical study in which RBCs will be collected from volunteers, stored and re-infused back into partici-pants at two-week intervals to determine their 24-hour in vivo recovery. They will measure the AMVN perfusion parameters for these same samples and see whether those parameters cor-relate with the clinical findings of the study. Shevkoplyas hopes eventually AMVNs such as the ones produced in his lab can be used to screen every RBC unit before transfusion to test the cells’ viability. He said this work brings together his two main research interests – blood banking/transfusion and the use of microfabrication technology to study the properties of RBCs at microscale – which he has studied since he was a doctoral student at Boston Univer-sity.

Shevkoplyas Receives Prestigious Grant to Study Red Blood Cell Deterioration

2011 Events

January 29th - Senior Research Day

February 26th - Team Design Show (see page 2)

March 17th - Suhren Lecture, Dr. George Truskey, Engineering Endothelial Progenitor Cells for Vascular Repair

April 20th - Annual BME Awards Ceremony

May 11th - Annual Order of the Engineer Induction

May 12th - 2011 Com-mencement BME will be awarding 15 BS degrees to our senior class, 4 MS degrees and 2 Ph.D. de-grees.

October 9 - 11th - Come visit our Tulane BME booth at the BMES Conference in Har-ford, CT.

Research

Department of Biomedical Engineering 2011 Newsletter

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Gary is a 2nd year PhD candidate in Dr. Michael Moore’s lab, studying the diffusive properties of hydrogels and creating controllable gradients of soluble biomolecules. Gary comes to Tulane from NYU, where he received his Master’s in Bioma-terials Science and Johns Hopkins University where he received his Bachelor’s in Materials Science and Engineering.

Gary and his labmates work on the study of diffusive properties of hy-drogels and creating controllable gradients of soluble biomolecules within the hydrogels because cells respond more towards gradients of biomolecules rather than their mere presence. By introducing controlla-ble gradients within hydrogel tissue scaffolds, he hopes to influence axon growth for guided neural re-generation. Why is this important? The lab is creating a “lab on a chip” which is a construct that acts like real tissues on which other re-searchers can test drugs or devices before using up valuable (and hard to get) real tissues. This saves all of us from being poked, prodded, drugged and just generally bothered unnecessarily by medical research. When he’s not saving people from being human test dummies, Gary likes dancing, listening to music, and watching sports. He’s originally from Valencia, California but is growing to like New Orleans and Mardi Gras!

Current Students

Department of Biomedical Engineering

On February 26, 2011 four teams of BME Seniors presented their design projects to their clients, the public, and a panel of judges. The judges were drawn from a pool of health-care professionals, faculty, alumni, and former clients. The team earn-ing the highest judge scores was SoundByte. Their objective was to develop a system that would enable a below-the-elbow amputee to play a violin. Team members John Pitre ‘11, Joan Lien ‘11, and Hudson Chien ’11 will receive the Kenneth H. Kuhn, Sr. Memorial Award at a ceremony on April 20th. Donald Gaver announced that “this was the best show ever,” a fact con-firmed by Dave Rice, course leader, who noted that the projects had the highest average judge scores so far. Each team began working with its client last fall and plans to deliver their finished product this coming April. A list of teams and their pro-jects, along with photographs from the show, are shown by http://www.tulane.edu/~rice/tdp/2011/team11.htm . A historical note: Senior team de-sign shows began in 1980, three years after the founding of the de-partment in 1977. They have been held annually since. Beginning in the 1988-1989 academic year, all teams focused on developing assis-tive technology for clients who have disabilities.

Brad is a senior PhD candidate in Dr. Donald Gaver’s lab, whose project will lead to saving premature babies from the ravages of respiratory distress syndrome. Brad received both his BSE and MS degrees at Tulane work-ing on a benchtop model of pulmonary airway reopening, and a computational model of damaging mechanical stress during pulsatile airway reopening, re-spectively.

He has helped to computationally model airway reopening to explore the stresses at the airway wall which are responsible for cell death (published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics). To further explore this phenomenon, the Gaver Lab uses micro particle image velocimetry to experimentally measure fluid velocity (with a laser) and bubble shape in a model of airway reopening (published in Measurement Science and Technology, Experiments in Flu-ids). The computer-controlled translat-ing microscope stage that Brad de-signed and milled on the CNC for this portion of the project was critical to obtaining experimental results.

When he’s not saving babies, Brad likes traveling by motorcycle, rock and ice climbing, camping, hunting and fishing. Brad is planning to marry a fellow graduate student, Kate Ham-lington, this May. After graduation this summer, Brad will start a post-doctoral position in the Vermont Lung Center at the University of Vermont working with Prof. Jason Bates.

People

Gary Catig Brad Smith Team Design

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Take a big shot of New Orleans flavor, simmer in some engineer-ing classes for 4 years, and then

temper it all with the theatri-cal stage and you get Nancy Freeman. Nancy graduated in the class of 1979 and was one of only three members of her class who chose not to pursue an MD. Instead, Nancy began her career in Medical Instrumentation working for DuPont in the Medical Products Division. Her engineering skills were used to provide technical service on hospital instru-mentation. From there, how-ever, Nancy found a niche in technical training and she began a Masters in Educa-tion program while living in Chicago. She was trans-ferred to Delaware and be-gan dividing her time be-tween technical training and

working on new system develop-ment teams. Her work with Du-Pont was recognized with many corporate awards and recogni-tion.

From DuPont Nancy moved to Pennsylvania and began working for Lutron Electronics. She began revitalizing the customer training programs that for their lighting control customers. The electron-ics courses she took at Tulane came in handy there! Then Nancy moved into college recruit-ing as Director of Education, working with a professional asso-ciation for nine years while creat-ing and delivering their education programming and running an annual conference.

Today, Nancy is exploring her entrepreneurial dreams by work-

Justin Cooper (BSE ’07, MS ’09) reports that he’s working in Honduras and Ghana right now to train biomedical equipment technicians for Engineering World Health (ewh.org/bmet).

Jonathan Stroud (BSE ’04) reports that he’s in law school at U. of American Washington College of Law, and was awarded a Gillett-Mussey Fellowship for the '10 school year. He is also working full time at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in prosthet-ics.

Jon also reports that Jess Tyra (BSE ’04) married Rob Lunsford (also ‘04).

Josh Weisman (BSE ’05, MS ‘06) reports that he started a biotech company

Most of these updates are pub-lished on the Tulane Biomedical Engineering Students and Alumni group on LinkedIn http://linkd.in/fVhDZp

Join LinkedIn and sign up to be a part of this community today! www. l i n ked in . com/ secu re /register

David Bourn (Ph.D. ’06) reports that he has left Medtronic to join Cardiac Concepts, a small startup developing a device to treat central sleep apnea.

R o c h e l l e W e i c h m a n (Engineering ’75 and MS ‘78) reports that she has been promoted to Associate Dean for Executive Education at MIT Sloan School of Management responsib le for degreed (masters) and non-degreed (certificates) Executive Educa-tion.

that produces medical and com-mercial devices for pediatrics / children. They have 3 global li-cense deals on 7 patents (2 that are issued) and their next prod-uct line will hit stores internation-ally in March 2011. In the US it will at Babies’R’Us. Additionally, full time, he is the Director of Engineering at Portaero, a ven-ture backed emphysema therapy company. www.twinnovationsllc.com

Alumni

Alumni news

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Our profiled alumna is Nancy Freeman Mikkelsen (BME’ 79).

Please support the Depart-ment of Biomedical Engineer-ing. Donations are a great way to show supports for the depart-ment, and are tax-deductible. All donations will be directed to the BMEN Endowment fund and will be used to provide opportunities to our students that would not otherwise be available. Kindly visit the SSE's Alumni S u p p o r t p a g e h t t p : / /t u l a n e . e d u / s s e / a l u m n i /donations-support.cfm.

People

People

Opportunities to use what was learned at Tulane. When asked – as she frequently is - what her engineering degree did for her, she responds, “While I have never perhaps been a biomedical engineer in the traditional sense, my engineering education at Tu-lane is used every day. Engi-neering education creates think-ers who learn how to creatively solve problems. I firmly believe what Dan Pink espouses on how right brain thinking is what the world needs and my engineering education gave those skills to me. I would not trade it for any-thing!”

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In the Cellular Biomechanics and Bio-transport Laboratory, Professor Damir Khismatullin is currently leading a team consisting of one post-doc, three PhD students and one MS student. The labo-ratory focuses on understanding the mechanical behavior of biological sys-tems at cellular and tissue levels. Using both computational and experimental approaches, they investigate the inter-actions of blood cells (leukocytes, plate-lets) and tumor cells with vascular endo-thelium under pathophysiological condi-tions such as inflammation, atheroscle-rosis, and cancer metastasis. Another aspect of their research is liver tumor ablation with high-intensity focused ul-trasound (HIFU) where they study the mechanical destruction of tumor tissue by ultrasound-produced cavitation bub-bles. They also develop novel rheologi-cal methods for the characterization of living cells and tissues and use state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics models to predict the growth and rupture of intracranial aneurysms. The ultimate goal is to develop novel, optimized ap-proaches for the treatment of cardiovas-cular disease and cancer.

Prof. Khismatullin’s career path took him to three American universities before he came to Tulane two years ago. He earned his M.S. degree in Physics and the Ph.D. (in Russia, it’s called “Candidate of Science”) in Physics & Mathematics from Bashkir State Univer-sity, in Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan. Damir’s research inter-ests were shifted to the field of Biomedi-cal Engineering in 2000 when he came to Boston University as a NSF-NATO

Postdoctoral Fellow to develop mathematical models for bubble dynamics in living tissue. His next stop (from 2001 to 2003) was in the Department of Mathematics at Virginia Tech, where his work lead to a collaboration with Profs. Robert Hochmuth and George Truskey at Duke University. His third stop was in Dr. Truskey’s laboratory, where he spent almost three years in the laboratory conducting nu-merical studies of leukocyte-endothelial cell adhesion and corresponding in vitro experi-ments. Before coming to Tulane, his last stop (2006-2008) was again at Boston University, where he was a Research Assistant Professor and an Associate Director of Biomedical Engi-neering Computational Simulation Facility.

Damir is very proud of his team members at Tulane for having several interesting findings and some of them have been already pre-sented at the meetings of the Biomedical Engi-neering Society (BMES) and the Society of Rheology. Biomedical engineering research is interdisciplinary; one cannot imagine modern science without collaborative work. Damir’s lab has active collaborations with scientists, engi-

neers, and clinicians from leading re-search institutes and hospitals. Damir has collaborated with many Tulane faculty members including Lee Murfee, Michael Moore, and Sergey Shevkoplyas in BME; Daniel De Kee, Kyriakos Papadopoulos, Kim O’Connor, and Vijay John in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; Ricardo Cortez and Lisa Fauci in Math, and Wayne Reed in the Physics Depart-ment. His outside collaborators span the country.

Damir thinks that it would be difficult to describe what exactly each collaborator brings to the lab. He believes that if you have something on the table, it should not be a problem to establish collaboration. For example, a lot of researchers in Bio-medical Engineering know his studies in 3-D computational modeling of leukocyte-endothelial cell interactions. He has a unique model that can test the predictions of experimental work to be done in the collaborating laboratory. When asked how to have effective collaboration, Damir advises “Be realistic about your research. You cannot do everything, and you need to remember that there are researchers who know something better than you. If you find such a person, explain your re-search project (with your achievements, of course) and how his/her complemen-tary expertise would benefit the project.” To learn more about the laboratory, please visit the lab’s website at http://www.tulane.edu/~damir/

Cellular Biomechanics and Biotransport Laboratory

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Mission Statement

Our mission is to inspire and work with students as we develop and apply engineering methods to con-front health science challenges.

Vision

The Department of Biomedical Engineering is committed to being a global leader in biomedical engineering scholarship. Our faculty, staff, and students are all important parts of the team that provide distinctive

and creative interdisciplinary solutions to biomedical engi-neering research and design problems. We aim for: excel-lence in undergraduate and graduate education, meaning-ful and innovative research, and service dedicated to ad-vancing the field of Biomedical Engineering.

Research

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medical image processing and biological data integration. Included within his goals are improvements in chromosomal imaging to make that technol-ogy more readily available, by improving quality while de-creasing time and cost. In support of his research, Dr. Wang has both NIH and NSF funding, focused on multiscale genomic imaging informatics.

As an experienced academic, Dr. Wang has quickly settled into Tulane University. His laboratory, which is on the Downtown campus, is up and running with three postdoctoral fellows and two graduate stu-dents. “The collaboration of his laboratory with medical center has already begun to bear fruit. Recently, his labora-tory was awarded a $35k grant by the Ladies Leukemia League (LLL) with additional $15k matching fund provided by Tulane Cancer Center (TCC) to develop bioinformatic

techniques for accurate subtyp-ing of myelodysplastic syn-drome (MDS)”.

However, Dr. Wang spends at least half the week on the Up-town campus. He is currently teaching BMEN3820 Mathe-matical Modeling of Biological Systems, and in coming se-mesters he plans to offer a course in Biological Imaging and Image Analysis.

We are excited to have Dr. Wang and his area of research in the department. His direct connection to the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and School of Medi-cine is one of the many steps that the BME department is taking to increase our focus on translating basic biomedical engineering research into the clinic.

Research collaborations

one in Lindy Boggs and one in the Tidewater building on Canal Street, 3½ miles apart. Dr. Wang came to Tulane in 2010 from Univer-sity of Missouri - Kansas City, as part of an 8 faculty / 30 person consortium to create the Center for Bioin-formatics and Genomics, directed by Dr. Hong-Wen Deng, who is also an adjunct faculty member of Biomedi-cal Engineering. The Center focuses on such complex diseases as osteoporosis, sarcopenia and obesity and it utilizes an approach that investigates multiple factors, such as the environment, genetics, and epigenetics. As a result, exciting science is done at both the molecular level and with patients.

In addition to his participation in the Center, Dr. Wang adds a new area of science to the BME department.

His research focus is on

Engaging in interactive demonstrations varying from regenerative medicine to as-sistive technology that helps disabled per-sons, 86 students from 16 New Orleans-area middle schools discovered the world of biomedical engineering with a visit to Tulane University.

The middle school students are members of FIRST Lego League robotics teams. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) embraces a grand challenge for its annual competition. In the 2010 Body Forward challenge, 9 - 14-year-old students from more than 17,000 teams in 50 countries selected a body part, system or function; identified a problem and an expert in the field; proposed a solution; and shared it with their community.

To provide these young students with a jump-start on their research, Tulane faculty and students from the biomedical engineer-ing and chemical and biomolecular engi-neering departments recently gave 20-

minute interactive demonstrations to the young students, sharing their re-search and passion for their fields.

Tulane students participate in FIRST Lego League through two service-learning courses offered in conjunction with the Tulane Center for Public Ser-vice by Annette Oertling, Professor of the Practice and Assistant Dean for K-12 Outreach in the School of Science and Engineering. The middle school program involves mentoring a team at one of the eight schools partnering with Tulane in this project. This upper-tier course fosters leadership, with Tulane stu-dents serving as team leaders or technical experts for multiple schools.

After their Tulane visit, “my students unani-mously agreed that science really is cool,” writes Theresa Saacks, a teacher at St. Dominic School. “FIRST Lego League pro-motes that discovery is more important than winning. My students learned this impor-

tant lesson, and they believe they are win-ners because of this experience [at Tu-lane].”

Kids Get 'Behind the Scenes' Tour of Biomedical Engineering

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Collaborations between BME faculty and their counterparts in the School of Medicien are again on the upswing, with more students and faculty going between Uptown and Downtown. One the newest BME faculty members, Asso-ciate Professor Dr. Yu-Ping Wang, is getting very familiar with Claiborne Avenue as he frequently goes between the two campuses. Dr. Wang is unique in the BME depart-ment in that he has two fac-ulty offices:

Outreach

Outreach

Donald Gaver, right, professor and chair of biomedical engineering, explains lung function to Emma Benson and Kaitlyn Calabresi of St. Paul’s Episcopal School. (Photo by Cindy Stewart)

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Do you want your next copy of the Newsletter delivered by e-mail instead of snail-mail? Send your e-mail address to bmen-info@tulane.edu. Tulane alumni can get a free permanent “e-mail for life” address at http://tulane.edu/alumni/emailforlife.cfm

Department of Biomedical Engineering Lindy Boggs Center Suite 500 New Orleans, LA 70118 Phone: 504-865-5897 Fax: 504-862-8779 bmen.tulane.edu

www.bmen.tulane.edu

Appendix 2010 Annual Report

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Faculty

Nicholas J. Altiero, Professor and Dean of the School of Science and Engineering Taby Ahsan, Assistant Professor Ronald C. Anderson, Associate Professor Ravi K. Birla, Paul and Donna Flower Assistant Professor (as of July 1, 2010) Michael Dancisak, Senior Professor of the Practice and Director of the Center for Anatomical and

Movement Science (as of October 1, 2010) Donald P. Gaver, Alden J. ‘Doc’ Laborde Professor and Department Chair Damir Khismatullin, Associate Professor Michael J. Moore, Assistant Professor. Walter Lee Murfee III, Assistant Professor David A. Rice P.E., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Sergey S. Shevkoplyas, Assistant Professor Cedric F. Walker P.E., Professor Yu-Ping Wang, Associate Professor (as of July 1, 2010)

Emeritus Faculty Paul L. Nunez, Professor Emeritus William C. Van Buskirk P.E., Professor and Chair Emeritus of Biomedical Engineering, Dean Emeritus of

Engineering

Affiliated Faculty San Aung, Professor of the Practice Annette Oertling P.E., Professor of the Practice and Assistant Dean

Archival Publications in 2010

Taby Ahsan, Assistant Professor Ahsan T, Nerem RM: Fluid shear stress promotes an endothelial phenotype during the early

differentiation of embryonic stem cells Tissue Eng Part A. Tissue Eng Part A. Nov 2010;16(11):3547-53.

Duffy GP, D’Arcy S, Ahsan T, Nerem RM, O’Brien T, Barry F. Mesenchymal Stem Cells Overexpressing Ephrin-B2 Rapidly Adopt an Early Endothelial Phenotype with Simultaneous Reduction of Osteogenic Potential. Tissue Eng Part A. Sep 2010;16(9):2755-68.

Gauvin R, Ahsan T, Larouche D, Levesque P, Dube J, Auger FA, Nerem RM, Germain L. A Novel Single-Step Self-Assembly Approach for the Fabrication of Tissue-Engineered Vascular Constructs. Tissue Eng Part A. May 2010;16(5):1737-47.

Duffy GP, Ahsan T*, O'Brien T, Barry F, Nerem RM. Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells promote angiogenic processes in a time- and dose-dependent manner in vitro. Tissue Eng Part A. Sep 2009;15(9):2459-2470. *co-first author

Ronald C. Anderson, Associate Professor Anderson, R. C. In Enderle, Hallowell (Ed.), Chapter 12: Tulane University NSF: Engineering Senior

Design Projects To Aid Persons With Disabilities. Mansfield Center, Connecticut: Creative Learning Press.

Archival Publications in 2010

Ravi K. Birla, Paul and Donna Flower Assistant Professor Sondergaard CS, Hodonsky CJ, Khait L, Shaw J, Sarkar B, Birla RK, Bove E, Nolta J, Si MS, “Human

Thymus Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Augment Force Production in Self-Organized Cardiac Tissue”. Ann Thorac Surg, 90(3):796-804, 2010.

Donald P. Gaver, Alden J. ‘Doc’ Laborde Professor and Department Chair Smith, B.J., E. Yamaguchi and D.P. Gaver. A translating stage system for micro-PIV measurements

surrounding the tip of a migrating semi-infinite bubble. Measurement Science and Technology, 21(1): 015401 (13pp), January 2010.

Smith, B.J., and D.P. Gaver. Agent-based computational simulations of droplet dynamics in a two-branch microfluidic network. Lab on Chip, DOI: 10.1039/b916380h, 2010

Zamir, M., J. E. Moore Jr., H. Fujioka, and D. P. Gaver, Biofluid mechanics of special organs and the issue of system control. Annals of Biomedical Engineering, 38(3): 1204-1215, March 2010.

Damir Khismatullin, Associate Professor Wang, W., Zhu, H., De Kee, D. C., Khismatullin, D. B. Numerical Investigation of the reduction of wall slip

effects for yield stress fluids in a double concentric cylinder rheometer with slotted rotor Journal of Rheology. 54, 1267-1283.

Walter Lee Murfee III, Assistant Professor Robichaux JL, Tanno E, Rappleye JW, Ceballos M, Stallcup WB, Schmid-Schönbein GW, Murfee WL.

(2010) Lymphatic/Blood Endothelial Cell Connections at the Capillary Level in Adult Rat Mesentery. Anatomical Record. 293: 1629-1638. (Cover Illustration)

Sergey S. Shevkoplyas, Assistant Professor Glodek, A., Mircev, R., Golan, D. E., Khoory, J. A., Burns, J. M., Shevkoplyas, S. S., Nicholson-Weller, A.,

Ghiran, I. C. (2010). Ligation of complement receptor 1 increases erythrocyte membrane deformability. Blood, 116(26), 6063-71.

Yoshida, T., Shevkoplyas, S. S. (2010). Anaerobic storage of red blood cells. Blood Transfusion, 8(4), 220-36.

Hulme, S. E., Shevkoplyas, S. S., McGuigan, A. P., Apfeld, J., Fontana, W., Whitesides, G. M. (2010). Lifespan-on-a-chip: microfluidic chambers for performing lifelong observation of C. elegans. Lab on a Chip, 10(5), 589-97.

Yu-Ping Wang, Associate Professor J. Chen, Ayten Yiğiter,Y.-P. Wang, and H.-W. Deng, A Bayesian Analysis for Identifying DNA Copy

Number Variations Using a Compound Poisson Process, J. Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Vol. 2010 (2010).

Active Funding in 2010

Co-PIs: Donald Gaver and Ronald Anderson Title: Innovating Biomedical Design in Undergraduate Engineering Education Source: 2009 HP Innovations in Education Total direct cost $260,000.00 Period: May 1, 2010 - April 30, 2012 PI: Ravi Birla Title: Fabrication of 3D Cardiac Patches for Myocardial Regeneration Source: National Institute of Health, R01-EB011516 Total direct cost $1.0M Period: 04/01/10- 03/31/14 P.I.s: Donald P. Gaver and Lisa Fauci Title: Biocomputing: Integrating Molecular/Organ-Level Function Source: National Institutes of Health Pre- National Program of Excellence in Biomedical

Computing (1 P20 EB001432-01) Direct Costs: $851,944+$162,886 (sup)=$1,014,830 Duration: 5/1/03-4/30/08 P.I.s: Donald P. Gaver Title: Engineering Ventilation Waveforms to Reduce Atelectrauma Source National Institutes of Health Individual Investigator Award (R01-HL81266) Direct Costs: $1,100,000 Duration: 6/1/06-5/30/10 P.I. Seidel, E. Co-P.I. Perdew, J. P., Levy, L. S., Gaver, D. P., Cortez, R. Title: LONI Institute: Advancing Biology, Materials, and Computational Sciences Source: Louisiana Board of Regents Period: July 1, 2007 - June 30, 2012 Amount: $1,371,609.00 P.I. Cortez, R. Co-P.I. Gaver, D. P. Title Research Infrastructure Improvement Source: NSF EPSCoR Period: October 1, 2007 - September 30, 2010 Amount: $1,913,373.00 P.I. Khismatullin, D. B. Title: Mathematical modeling of bubble cluster dynamics in a spherical resonator Source: Department of Defense /Impulse Devices, Inc/ Boston University Period: January 1, 2010 - June 30, 2010 Amount: $50,000.00 P.I. Moore, M. J. Title: Engineered Tissue Culture Microenvironments for Studies in Axon Regeneration Source: Louisiana Board of Regents Period: June 1, 2009 - June 30, 2011 Amount: $159,676.00 P.I. Moore, M. J. Title: Localized Immobilization of Ephrin-B2 for Neurite Guidance in 3D Culture Source: National Institutes of Health Period: June 1, 2009 - May 31, 2011

Active Funding in 2010

Amount: $327,900.00 Investigator: Murfee, W. L. PI: L. Gabriel Navar Title: Tulane COBRE in Hypertension and Renal Biology Source: NIH Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence COBRE Amount: $55,607 (direct costs for subproject) Duration: 07/10 - 06/11 (for subproject) PI: Murfee WL Title: Identification of Lymphatic Vessel Structure and Function in Adult Microvascular

Networks Source: Louisiana Board of Regents Amount: $163,254 Duration: 06/09 - 06/12 PIs: Gaver DP, Han Y, Moore MJ, Murfee WL, Overby DO Co-PIs: Phinney D, Chiu E, Scandurro A Title: The Development of a Functional Imaging Resource Source: Tulane REF Duration: 01/08 - 01/10 Amount: $87,500 PI: Rice, D. A. Title: Senior Projects: Designs for People With Disabilities Source: NSF Duration: July 2005 - June 2010 Amount: $75,000.00 PI: Rice, D. A. Title: Diabetic Foot Ulcer Transdermal Oxygen Delivery System Source: NCIIA Duration: October 1, 2010 - April 30, 2011 Amount: $500.00 Co-PI Shevkoplyas, S. S. PI: George M. Whitesides Title: Zero-Cost Diagnostics Source: Subcontract under award #51308 from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to

Harvard University Period: November 1, 2008 - October 31, 2013 Amount: $482,251.00 PI Shevkoplyas, S. S. Title: The relationship between the ability of stored red blood cells to perfuse

microvascular networks and their 24-hr post-transfusion recovery in vivo Source: National Blood Foundation Period: July 1, 2010 - June 30, 2011 Amount: $74,990.00 PI Shevkoplyas, S. S. Title: Automated blood component separator Source: Subcontract from Antek Inc., DoD STTR Phase I, U.S. Army -- USAMRAA Period: November 1, 2010 - April 24, 2011 Amount: $32,000.00

Active Funding in 2010

PI: Wang, Yu-Ping Title: Accurate detection of chromosomal abnormalities with multi-color image

processing, Source: NIH 1R15GM088802-01 Period: 09/21/2009-8/20/2012 Amount: $241,341. PI: Wang, Yu-Ping Title: A New Paradigm for Integrated Analysis of Multiscale Genomic Imaging Datasets Source: NIH 1R21LM010042-01 Period: 07/01/2009-06/30/2011 Amount: $404,459 PI: Wang, Yu-Ping Title: Multiscale Genomic Imaging Informatics Source: NSF, DBI 0849932 Period: 12/01/2009-11/30/2012 Amount: $536,175.

Theses and Dissertations completed in 2010

Student Degree Advisor Dissertation / Thesis title

Yang, Hongli PhD Don Gaver, co-chair with Claude Burgoyne

Optic Nerve Head Biomechanics of Normal and Glaucomatous Monkeys: An Experimental and Computational study

Cigan, Alexander D. MS Ron Anderson, co-chair The role of doublecortin in mobility of articular chondrocytes

Smith, Bradford J. MS Donald Gaver, chair The pulsatile propagation of a finger of air through a fluid-occluded cylindrical tube.

Wiesman, Joshua P. MS Donald Gaver, chair Energy-depleting fluid-flow disturbances associated with small pressure change: relevance to obstructed total cavopulmonary connections

Winter, William R. MS Paul Nunez, Chair Spatial Effects in EEG and MEG Coherence

Zwolak, Nicholas R. MS Kirk Bundy, Chair Investigation into the optimization and mechanisms of action of urease-based biosensors.

One student (Robbie Whitman) completed the requirements for the non-thesis MS in 2010.