Mrudang Mathur, 4th year doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering, passed his Oral Qualifying Exam with a research proposal, titled: “Towards Understanding and Optimizing Clip-Based Transcatheter Tricuspid Valve Repair”.
Congratulations Mrudang!
The Office of Naval Research has funded our proposal on “Casualty Safe Ride Standards: A Study of Ride-induced Blood Clot Dislodgement“
The project, in collaboration with Dr. Tal Cohen (Nonlinear Solid Mechanics Lab, MIT), will focus on understanding the contributory role of transport-induced forces to blood clot dislodgement should critically determine safe ride standards. Thrombus – or blood clot – dislodgement is a significant source of morbidity and mortality in young adults following injury or surgery. That is, after blood vessels are severed during combat or surgery, exposure of blood to vascular wall proteins initiates the coagulation cascade and leads to the formation of clots. Those clots may subsequently dislodge from their site of formation and occlude vital downstream blood vessels such as those of the lung, the heart, or the brain. The objective of this work is to determine safety measures for the transport of casualties. Specifically, this work will determine the primary mechanism of blood clot dislodgement during casualty transport and the conditions at which this dislodgement occurs.
Sotirios Kakaletsis, 4th year doctoral student in Engineering Mechanics, passed his Oral Qualifying Exam.
Congratulations Sotirios!
Mrudang Mathur, 4th year doctoral student in ME, was awarded a Predoctoral Fellowship by the American Heart Association for his project titled “Toward Understanding and Optimizing Clip-Based Transcatheter Tricuspid Valve Repair”.
Congratulations Mrudang!
Gabriella (Ella) Sugerman, 4th year doctoral candidate in BME, was awarded the Fall 2021 Scholarship in Scientific Excellence by the International Alliance for Ability in Science.
Congratulations Ella!
The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health has funded our proposal on “Human-Specific Prediction, Training, and Visualization Tools for the Tricuspid Valve from Existing Data”.
Approximately 1.6 million Americans suffer from severe leakage on the tricuspid valve. Standard treatments fail to substantially address this leakage in almost a third of all patients. We posit that these poor outcomes are due to our very limited basic understanding of the normal and diseased valve. Computer models have been valuable in many other areas of surgery and could be critical tools toward overcoming our current knowledge gaps about the tricuspid valve. Through this project, we aim to establish human-specific computational models of the tricuspid valve for predictive simulation, surgical training, and anatomic vizualization. Upon conclusion of this project, we will make these models openly available.
Further details about the grant can be found here.
The National Science Foundation has funded our proposal on ‘Inferring The In Situ Micro-Mechanics of Embedded Fiber Networks by Leveraging Limited Imaging Data’.
The project, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Emma Lejeune (Lejeune Lab, Boston University), will focus on gaining a fundamental understanding of embedded fiber networks and creating the tools necessary to characterize their behavior from limited available measurements. Embedded fiber networks are ubiquitous in nature, from the extracellular matrix surrounding biological cells, to branching blood vessels embedded in organs, to moth’s cocoons. Understanding these systems is important because these systems are the fundamental mechanical building blocks of many types of natural and engineered biological tissue, and bio-inspired advanced materials.
Further details about the grant can be found here.
Chien-Yu (Christina) Lin, 2nd year PhD student in Biomedical Engineering, passed her oral qualifying exam.
Congratulations Christina!
William Meador successfully defended his dissertation titled ‘Toward Understanding Tricuspid Valve Leaflet (mal)-adaptation in Heart Disease’.
Congratulations Dr. Meador!
Will Meador, 6th year Ph.D. candidate, received the Acta Student Award for his primary contribution to the manuscript, “A detailed mechanical and microstructural analysis of ovine tricuspid valve leaflets”.
Will’s manuscript was deemed to “demonstrate exceptional value to the biomaterials community” and was one of sixteen manuscripts recognized globally by the selection committee.
Further information on the Acta Student Awards can be found here.
Congratulations Will!
Gabriella (Ella) Sugerman, 3rd year doctoral candidate in BME, successfully completed her dissertation proposal, titled “Understanding the role of thrombus composition and organization in embolization”.
Congratulations Ella!
Mrudang was awarded the Warren A. and Alice L. Meyer Endowed Scholarship in Engineering
Sotirios was awarded the George J. Heuer, Jr. Ph.D. Endowed Graduate Fellowship
Congratulations to them both!
Dr. Rausch was awarded the ‘Dean's Award for Outstanding Engineering Teaching by an Assistant Professor’ by the Cockrell School of Engineering.
The Cockrell School annually awards the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Engineering Teaching by an Assistant Professor to recognize teaching excellence. This award recognizes outstanding classroom teaching by an assistant professor to promote and encourage exceptional teaching in a faculty member's early career.
Further information on the award can be found here.
The National Science Foundation has funded our proposal on ‘Understanding Mechano-Fibrinolysis: Fiber-Scale Multiphysics Experiments and Models’.
The project, led by Dr. Manuel K. Rausch and Dr. Sapun Parekh (Parekh Lab, BME, UT-Austin), will investigate how fibrin’s state of mechanical deformation affects its rate of enzymatic digestion, i.e., its mechano-lysis. This question is a critical one to answer as enzymatic digestion is important in the regulation of many vital tissue functions such as tissue growth and remodeling as well as in tissue dysfunction such as in cancer.
Further details about the grant can be found here.
Mrudang Mathur, 3rd year doctoral student in ME, received a departmental research award for his poster presentation on ‘True Subject-Specific Computational Models of the Human Tricuspid Valve‘ at this years UT GAIN event.
Congratulations Mrudang!
Gabriella (Ella) Sugerman, 3rd year doctoral student in BME, was awarded the University Graduate Continuing Fellowship for 2021-2022.
Congratulations Ella!
Dr Rausch has received the NSF CAREER award for his proposal titled “Toward a Fundamental Understanding of Why Thrombus Dissolves, Persists, or Breaks Off”.
This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award will use experimental and computational strategies to quantify fundamental biophysical properties of blood clot. The research work will study why blood clot sometimes dissolves, sometimes persists, and sometimes embolizes (breaks off.)
Further details about the grant can be found here.
Ella was awarded the Harry and Rubye Gaston Graduate Scholarship.
Will was awarded the Engineering Foundation Endowed Graduate Presidential Scholarship.
Congratulations to them both!
Dr Manuel Rausch has received an Oden Institute 2020 W. A. "Tex" Moncrief Grand Challenge Award for his proposal titled ‘A Machine-Learning Based Training Tool for Tricuspid Valve Repair: A Prototype’.
The objective of this proposal is to develop a prototype learning tool that incorporates all complexities of a human tricuspid valve and provides in-depth didactic insight into the effects of repair and device implantation on valve function. The outcome of this project will be a machine-learning based surrogate model that has been trained via high-fidelity finite element simulations. The finite element model itself will be built around a detailed cadaver study that includes all valvular and sub-valvular complexities. The surrogate educational model will be able to visualize the kinematics (i.e., competence) of the valve at minimal computational cost in comparison to a full simulation. Thus, the user will be able to change key valve parameters and learn their effect on valve function near instantaneously. This prototype will be a showcase for the potential of machine-learning based virtual training tools. It thereby holds the promise of aiding clinical training and reducing training-related morbidity and mortality.
Further information on the Moncrief Grand Challange Award program can be found here.
Sotirios Kakaletsis, 2nd year doctoral student in EM, was awarded the University Graduate Continuing Fellowship for 2020-2021.
Congratulations Sotirios!