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BME Seminar Series
Past Seminar Speakers

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Fall Quarter 2017

10/05: Matthew O'Donnell, PhD, Frank and Julie Jungers Dean Emeritus, College of Engineering; Professor of Bioengineering
University of Washington
"Light and Sound -- Combining Ultrasonics with Photonics for Biomedical Applications"

10/26: Milica Radisic, PhD, Professor and Canada Research Chair
Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto
"Engineering Microenvironments for Cardiovascular Regeneration"

11/9: Michael Cho, PhD, Chair and Alfred R and Janet H Potvin Endowed Professor of Bioengineering
The University of Texas at Arlington
"Elucidation of blast-inducted Traumatic Brain Injury using in vitro Biosystems"

11/16: Ange-Therese Akono, PhD, Assistant Professor and Louis Berger Junior Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Northwestern University
"Fragility of Cortical Bone via Microscopic Scratch Testing"

11/30: Tania Douglas, PhD, Visiting Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Northwestern University
"Health Technology Innovation in Africa"

Winter Quarter 2018

1/11: Vitaliy Rayz, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Purdue University
"Flow quantification in intracranial aneurysms: numerical models based on 4D Flow MRI"

1/18: Andrew Smith, PhD, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"Counting Molecules in Cells and Tissues using Next-Generation Quantum Dots and Quantitative Flourescene Imaging"

1/25: Milan Yager, MPA, Executive Director
American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
"The Science of Failed Public Policy -- Why Congress Doesn't Fund Medical Research"

2/1: Maria Aristova
Northwestern University
"4D Flow MRI for Characterization of Intracranial Arteriovenous Malformations"

2/8: Daniel Anderson, PhD, Samuel A. Goldblith Professor of Applied Biology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Delivery systems for In vitro genome editing and cell therapy"
*please note: this seminar will take place on the Chicago campus.

2/15: Tejal Desai, PhD, Professor and Chair, Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences
The University of California, San Francisco
"Two Genes Lecture"

3/8: Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert, PhD, Professor and Department Chair in Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin
"Biomaterials for Drug Delivery and Cell Transplantation to Treat Nerve Injury"

3/15: Alexandra Kolberg
Northwestern University
"BDNF Mimetic Peptide Amphiphiles for Neural Regeneration"

Spring Quarter 2018

4/5: Yoshua Bengio, PhD, Professor of Computer Science and Operations Research
The University of Montréal
"Bridging the Gap Between Deep Learning and Neuroscience"
*please note: this presentation will take place at the Daniel Hale Williams Auditorium, McGaw Pavilion, Chicago.

4/12: Francisco Valero-Cuevas, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy
The University of Southern California
"Feasability Theory: An Integrative Approach to Neuromuscular Control"

4/19: Craig Duvall, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Vanderbilt University
"Precision Polymer Architectures and Conjugates to Enable Molecularly-Targeted and Cell-based Therapies"

4/26: Juan de Pablo, PhD, Professor of Molecular Engineering
The University of Chicago
"Directed Assembly: Taking Examples from Nature to Design Synthetic Process"

5/3: Rebecca Carrier, PhD, Professor and Associate Chair of Research of Chemical Engineering
Northeastern University
"Structurally Biomimetic Biomaterials for Intestinal and Retinal Tissue Engineering"

5/24: Moriel Vandsburger, PhD, Associate Professor of Bioengineering
University of California, Berkeley
"Magnetic resonance imaging as a molecular tool for the study of heart failure and regeneration"

5/31: Erin Lavik, PhD, Professor of Chemical, Biomedical, and Environmental Engineering
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County
"Engineering Nanoparticles to Stop Internal Bleeding"

6/7: Matthew McCullough, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemical, Biological, and Bioengineering
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
"Improving Degradable Orthopaedic Devices Using Finite Element Analysis"

Fall Quarter 2018

10/25: Kristen Naegle, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Washington University in St. Louis
"Unsupervised learning to unravel differential cell fate outcomes"

11/8: Melody Swartz, PhD, William B. Ogden Professor of Biomedical Sciences
The University of Chicago
Title TBA

11/15: Peter Ma, PhD, Richard H Kingery Endowed Collegiate Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Biological Sciences; Materials Science; Macromolecular Science and Engineering
University of Michigan
"Biomaterials to Engineer Regeneration"

11/29: Cheng Sun, PhD, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Northwestern University
"Development of High-throughput Precision 3D Printing Technologies Towards Patients-Specific Biomedical Devices"

12/06: Lena H Ting, PhD, Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology
"Neuromechanics of balance: from flamingos to dancers"

Winter Quarter 2019

1/10: Jacqueline Linnes, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Purdue University
"Bringing the Lab to the Patients: Point-of-Care Molecular Diagnostics"

1/17: Hasan Otu, PhD, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
"Probabalistic Graph Models for Biological Data Analysis using External Knowledge"

1/24: Peng Yin, PhD, Professor of Systems Biology
Harvard University
"Biomolecular analysis with DNA probes"

1/31: Michael King, PhD, J. Lawrence Wilson Professor of Engineering
Vanderbilt University
"Drivers Wanted: Cellular Delivery of Anti-Cancer Therapeutics in the Circulation"
[this Seminar was cancelled due to weather]

2/21: Krishanu Saha, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Precise Gene Editing of Mutant Alleles Using CRISPR-Cas9 Ribonucleoprotein Complexes"

2/26: Two Genes Lecture
Joanna Aizenberg, PhD, Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science
Harvard University 
"Non-Fouling Medical Devices: Slippery Coatings That Resist Adhesion of Biological Matter"
[this Seminar was cancelled due to weather]

2/28: BMEGS Midwest Speaker Exchange
Sevde Etoz Niemeier, PhD Candidate
University of Wisconsin-Madison
"One Step Forward: Increasing the Predictability of Microwave Ablation"

3/7: Kevin Tracey, PhD, President and CEO of Feinstein Institute for Medical Research
"Molecular Mechanisms in Bioelectronic Medicine"

3/13: Inaugural Michael Jaharis Distinguished Lectureship:
Heejin Lee, PhD, Principal Engineering Innovation Lead
Amgen, Inc.
"Value Creation Through Innovative Combination Products: Challenges and Opportunities"

Spring Quarter 2019

4/4: Surya Ganguli, PhD, Assistant Professor of Applied Physics, Neurobiology, and Electrical Engineering
Stanford University
"Unsupervised Discovery of Structure in Neural Data Across Multiple Time-Scales: Theory and Application"
*This Seminar will take place in Arkes 6-035 on the Chicago campus

4/11: Michael McShane, PhD, Department Chair of Biomedical Engineering
Texas A&M University
"Biomaterials-Based Optical Metabolite Sensing"

4/18: Ngan Huang, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery
Stanford University
"Engineering the Microvasculature for Regenerative Medicine"
*This Seminar will take place in Hughes Auditorium on the Chicago campus

4/25: Chuan He, PhD, John T. Wilson Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Director at Institute of Biophysical Dynamics
The University of Chicago
"Studies of RNA Methylation and Chromatin Organizations"

5/2: Matthew Tirrell, PhD, Dean and Founding Pritzker Director at the Institute for Molecular Engineering
The University of Chicago
"Protein Analogous Micelles: Versatile, Modular Nanoparticles"

5/9: Sarah Heilshorn, PhD, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Stanford University
"Protein Engineering of Multi-Functional Biomaterials for Regenerative Medicine"

5/16: No Session (Research Day, featuring speaker Silvia Salinas Blemker)

5/23: Ed Nardell, PhD, Professor of Environmental Health and Immunology and Infectious Diseases
Harvard University
"Climate change is increasing TB transmission - and what can be done about it"

5/30: No session

Fall Quarter 2019

 10/10: Mark Mimee, PhD, Assistant Professor of Microbiology
University of Chicago
"Genetic Technologies to Engineer and Unverstand the Microbiome"

10/31: Arthur Prindle, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics
Northwestern University
"Emergent Metabolic Dynamics in Microbial Communities"

11/7: Karen Christman, PhD, Associate Dean of Engineering and Professor of Bioengineering
UC San Diego
"Injectable Biomaterials for Treating Cardiovascular Disease"

11/14: Michael King, PhD, Chair of Biomedical Engineering, J. Lawrence Wilson Professor of Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology & Radiological Sciences
Vanderbilt University
"Drivers Wanted: Cellular Delivery of Anti-Cancer Therapeutics in the Circulation"

Spring Quarter 2020

04/08: Epidemics that Changed Human History Vadim Backman, Walter Dill Scott Professor of Biomedical Engineering

04/28: Virology 101 Primer with a Focus on SARS CoV Pathogenesis Patrick Kiser, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology

04/16: COVID-19 Historical Context and Current Knowledge: Structure Biology for Drug Discovery Karla Satchell, Professor of Microbiology-Immunology, Feinberg School of Medicine

04/17: COVID-19 Historical Context and Current Knowledge: An Allergist-Immunologist's Perspective Paul Greenberger, Professor of Medicine, Division of Allergy and Immunology, Feinberg School of Medicine

05/06: COVID-19 Historical Context and Current Knowledge: Coronavirus-19 Local, Global, and Technical Content Rob Murphy, Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases, and Biomedical Engineering/. Executive Director: Institute for Global Health.

05/13: COVID-19 Historical Context and Current Knowledge: Modeling COVID 19 Transmission and Containment in Illinois  Jaline Gerardin, Assistant Profess or of Preventive Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine

05/20: COVID-19 Historical Context and Current Knowledge: Innovations in COVID 19 Diagnostic Testing, Dave Kelso, Clinical Professor of biomedical Engineering; Kara Palamountain, Research Associate Professor at the Kellogg School of Management; Professor of Anthropology

05/27: COVID-19 Historical Context and Current Knowledge: Vaccine Immunology and Design, Evan Scott, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering

06/03: COVID-19 Historical Context and Current Knowledge: Antiviral Drugs and Biologics to Treat and Prevent SARS COV-2 Infection, Patrick Kiser, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology

 Fall Quarter 2020

09/24: Yang Zhang, PhD, Research Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University
"New Imaging Method and Fluorescent Probes for Multiplexed Super-Resolution Microscopy"

10/01: Susan Daniel, PhD, Associate Professor, Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University
“Leveraging our Fundamental Understanding of the Coronavirus Host Cell Entry Machinery to Stop Virus Infection”

10/08: Robert Barry, PhD, Assistant Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School
“From fMRI of the Brain to Spinal Cord at 7 Tesla”

10/15: BMES- No Session

10/22: Monica Moya, PhD, Research Engineer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
“Seed, Soil and Spread: 3D Bioprinted Microenvironment for studying cancer metastasis”

10/29: Mentor Matching

11/12: Jacob T. Robinson, PhD, Associate Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Bioengineering, Rice University
“Magneto-bioelectronics: Miniature, magnetically powered technologies for the brain and body”

11/19: Anna Lappala, PhD, Research Associate, Genetics, Harvard University
“4D Chromosome Organization: Combining Polymer Physics, Knot Theory and High Performance Computing”

11/26: Thanksgiving- No Session

Winter Quarter 2020

Winter 2021 marked the first-ever Open BME Seminar Series. This virtual series was coordinated by seven of the leading BME departments across the country. Over the course of three months, we were able to expose our graduate students to cutting-edge ideas in the field of biomedical engineering, attracting a group of high-quality speakers that would be difficult for any single department to host on their own.  

01/21: Ilya Levental & Valeria Vasquez (Univ. of Virginia & Univ. of Tennessee) 
"Diving into the Cell Membrane"
Northwestern BME Seminar  

01/28: Matthew Perich, PhD (Ichan School of Medicine)
"Interactions Between Distinct Brain Regions Shape Cortical Population Dynamics"
Northwestern BME Seminar 

02/04: Bruce Tromberg, PhD (NIH/NIBIB)
"Bioengineering for COVID-19: Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) at Unprecedented Speed and Scale"
Open BME Seminar

02/11: Brandon Tefft, PhD (Marquette University)
"Endothelialization of Implantable Cardiovascular Devices"
Northwestern BME Seminar 

02/18: Matthew Porteus, PhD (Stanford)
"Gene Targeting of Stem Cells to Create Effective and Safe Medicines"
Open BME Seminar

02/25: Adriana Velazquez (WHO)
"As the World Gets Smaller, How Can We Expand the Biomedical Engineering Impact to Global Health?"
Open BME Seminar

03/04: Danielle Bassett, PhD (University of Pennsylvania)
"What Does it Mean To Be a Good Scientist?"
Open BME Seminar

03/11: DEI Open Dialogue- No Session

03/18: Daniel Rueckert, PhD (Imperial College London)
"Learning Clinically Useful Information from Medical Images"
Open BME Seminar

03/25: Warren Grayson, PhD (Johns Hopkins)
"Advances in Regenerating Musculoskeletal Tissues"
Open BME Seminar

Fall Quarter 2023


9/21: Lab Overviews - Drs. Evan Scott, Zhe Ji, Mitra Hartmann, Cody Dunton (Backman Lab), & Michael Evangelopoulos (Mirkin Lab)

9/28: Dr. Peter Yingxiao Wang, University of Southern California (USC)

10/5: Lab Overviews - Drs. Jonathan Rivnay, Laleh Rad, Neha Kamat, Guillermo Ameer, & Igor Efimov

10/12: NO SESSION - BMES

10/19: Dr. Zhongping Chen, University of California, Irvine (UCI)

10/26: NO SESSION - MENTOR MATCHING

11/2: Lab Overviews - Drs. Bin Jiang, Nathan Gianneschi, Lisa Volpatti, & David O'Neill

11/9: Dr. Nicola Neretti, Brown University  

11/16: Dr. Laleh Rad, Northwestern University 

11/23: NO SESSION - THANKSGIVING

11/30: Dr. Wei Gao, CalTech  

 

Winter Quarter 2024

1/4: Dr. Yaping Liu, Northwestern University

1/11: Dr. Yarui Diao, Duke University

1/18: Dr. Jia Liu, Harvard University

1/25: Dr. Daniil Aksenov, Northshore University HealthSystem

2/1: Dr. Mahla Poudineh, University of Waterloo

2/8: NO SESSION - PhD RECRUITMENT 

2/15: Dr. Sava Sakadzic, Harvard University

2/22: NO SESSION - PhD RECRUITMENT 

2/29: Dr. Hee-Sun Han, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

3/7: Dr. Erika Moore, University of Maryland (UMD)

 

Spring Quarter 2024

3/28: Dr. Sheng Xu, University of California San Diego (UCSD)

4/4: Dr. Thomas Gaj, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

4/11: NO SESSION

4/18: Dr. Renata Ramos, Rice University 

4/25: Dr. Bowen Wang, Northwestern University

5/2: Dr. Xuanhe Zhao, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

5/9: Dr. Nako Nakatsuka, ETH Zürich

5/16: Dr. Riccardo Gottardi, CHOP Research Institute

5/23: Dr. Lu Wei, California Institute of Technology (CalTech)

5/29: JAHARIS SYMPOSIUM

5/30: NO SESSION