Nov. 14, 2016

Dear members of the Hajim School community:

Congratulations to four Hajim School faculty members who recently received PumpPrimer II awards from Arts, Sciences & Engineering to pursue promising research ideas.

Amy Lerner, associate professor of biomedical engineering, will work on validating an advanced three-dimensional corneal biomechanical model with her project, “Corneal Biomechanics and Optics: Model Refinement and Validation for Translational Applications.”

Qiang Lin, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is exploring and developing lithium niobate nanophotonic circuits with his project “Undefined Lithium Niobate Nanophotonics for Ultra-high-speed Beam Ranging, Wavefront Engineering, and Photonic Signal Processing.”

James McGrath, professor of biomedical engineering, is testing a prediction that “Desalinization with Ultrathin Nafion Membranes” offers orders-of-magnitude greater efficiency than conventional reverse osmosis.

James Zavislan, associate professor of optics, is developing an ocular surface imaging system to measure factors related to dry eye disease and to assess treatments with his project, “Second-Generation Multimodal Ocular Surface Metrology.”

PumpPrimer II awards provide the “seed money” researchers need to develop preliminary data and proof of concept in order to successfully leverage larger federal and foundation grants in an increasingly competitive environment.

Click here for a closer look at a collaboration involving the labs of Danielle Benoit, associate professor of biomedical engineering; Rudi Fasan, associate professor of chemistry; and Benjamin Frisch, research assistant professor of medicine. They are pursuing a novel way to target acute myeloid leukemia stem cells in bone marrow with support from a University Research Award, another category of “seed grant.”

These projects are a nice sampling of the exciting research being done by Hajim School researchers.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman