BME Students Awarded First Place Showings in 18th Denman Undergraduate Research Forum

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Undergraduate BME students Nicholas Black and Michael Vignos were awarded first place showings in the Biological Sciences and Engineering categories, respectively, from the 18th Denman Undergraduate Research Forum.  

Nicholas is from Brookfield, Ohio and a fifth year senior, graduating in May of 2013 with a B.S in Biomedical Engineering with Honors and Honors Research Distinction, and a minor in Chemistry. After graduation, Nicholas will be attending Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in pursuit of an M.D. The research Nicholas presented for the Denman, as well as his honors research thesis, focuses on spinal cord injury and secondary pathology that results from early rehabilitation strategies, titled "Effects of Early Weight-Bearing Exercise on Blood-Spinal Cord Barrier Function in Mice". His research looks at whether early treadmill training after injury would result in increased permeability of blood vessels within the spinal cord near the epicenter of injury. "We hypothesized that increased permeability would result. However, we found that permeability was markedly decreased in the exercised animals, but that functional recovery was less complete. Further study is necessary to elucidate these counterintuitive results (as permeability has generally been seen as detrimental to neurons and recovery)," says Nicholas. Nicholas' research advisors are Dr. D. Michele Basso, Associate Director and Associate, Professor School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and Dr. Jun Liu, Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering.

Michael Vignos is from Canton, Ohio and a fourth year senior.  Michael is currently in the College of Engineering's BS/MS program.  He will receive his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering upon graduating in May 2013 and his MS is focused in Mechanical Engineering. After graduation he plans to remain at Ohio State to finish his MS under his current research advisor, Dr. Robert Siston, Assistant Professor Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Orthopaedics, and School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.  Michael’s research was performed through the Neuromuscular Biomechanics Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His project, titled “Development of Surgical Navigation Device for Arthroscopic Cartilage Repair,” focuses on developing and improving a new surgical device that will allow surgeons to quickly and accurately calculate the area of a femoral articular cartilage defect during an arthroscopic procedure. Defect area is currently accepted to be the most important defect attribute to consider when determining the technique to treat a patient’s cartilage defect. This device will help improve surgeons’ ability to properly diagnose a defect, which will hopefully lead to improved patient surgical outcomes. 

BME undergraduate student Jennifer Malik also received Honorable Mention in the Engineering category from the 18th Denman Undergraduate Research Forum for her poster presentation titled "Numerical Simulation of Ocular Biomechanics to Predict Corneal Responses to Air Puff Tonometry". Jennifer's research advisor is Dr. Cynthia Roberts, Professor of Ophthalmology and Biomedical Engineering.

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Congratulations to Nicholas, Michael, and Jennifer!

Nicholas Black (left) and Michael Vignos (right)

 

To read about all of the winners from the Denman, click here.