Grants will accelerate engineering-medicine innovations with BME Faculty

Two Biomedical Engineering faculty members have earned pilot grants from The Ohio State University Center for Medical and Engineering Innovation (CMEI) for interdisciplinary research projects.

These $25,000 pilot grants support collaborations between Ohio State researchers that initiate promising ventures at the medicine-engineering interface, involving at least one faculty member from the College of Engineering and one faculty member from a health sciences college.

“Funds will be used to assist the awardees in obtaining preliminary data that will result in a collaborative grant application for the NIH, or another agency or foundation, or lead to an entrepreneurial endpoint such as a patent,” said Dr. David Eckmann, CMEI director and a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology.

Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Katelyn Swindle-Reilly and Optometry Associate Professor Timothy Plageman will use ocular hydrogels, cell culture and tissue engineering methods to generate novel eye lens-like organoids. This work will provide a new pathway to develop an alternative and animal-free model system for ocular lens research and a platform for studying lens-directed therapeutics. Swindle also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Derek Hansford teams up with Dr. Emanuele Cocucci, College of Pharmacy, and Dr. Francesca Cottini, Department of Internal Medicine, to develop a sample holder for the delivery of drugs or other particles to cells during lattice light sheet fluorescent microscopy (LLSFM) imaging. This will transform LLSFM capabilities by permitting time-controlled cell stimulation and investigation of cellular events triggered or blocked by exogenous substance administration. Hansford holds a joint appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Adapted from the Original College of Communications Article