BME Students Place in the 2017 Ophthalmology Research Day Competition

On Friday, June 9th, the Department of Ophthalmology hosted its Annual Research Day event, Biomedical Engineering had six graduate student participants in the competition. The judges’ decision was based on a submitted paper and a presentation at the meeting. There was a separate Graduate Student category and a Resident/Fellow category for the awards. Winners were  announced at a formal dinner the evening following the competition. The dinner was held at the Blackwell Hotel. 

First place in the graduate student catagory was awarded to Eli Pavlatos, PhD student, Biomedical Engineering (BME), advised by Jun Liu, associate professor, BME. Pavlatos's presentation titled, 'Depth-Dependent Deformation of the Optic Nerve Head Measured by High Frequency 3D Ultrasound Speckle Tracking' focused on measuring and mapping the 3D displacements and strains experienced by the optic nerve head and surrounding sclera after a mild increase in intraocular pressure. Measuring the eye's responses could be important in understanding the disease process of glaucoma. This project was co-authored by Keyton Clayson, graduate student, BME, advised by Jun Liu.

Bharat Kumar, graduate student, BME, received the second place award under the mentorship of Matthew Reilly, assistant professor, BME. Kumar’s presentation titled, 'Maintaining Epithelial Cell Viability and Proliferative Capacity in Whole Lens Cultures ex vivo', aimed to develop a platform with which to culture whole lens tissues for an extended period of time outside of the body in order to enable future studies relating to the onset of age related vision disorders.

Additional BME graduate student participants were; Tyler Heisler-Taylor, Audrey Nguyen, Keyton Clayson and Ryan Somogye.

Congratulations Eli Pavlatos and Bharat Kumar!