Northwestern Engineering’s Ange-Therese Akono, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, has received Johnson & Johnson’s 2022 WiSTEM²D Scholars Award in Design. 

Launched in 2017, the Johnson & Johnson Scholars Award Program aims to fuel the development of female STEM²D leaders by awarding and sponsoring women at critical points in their careers. The annual awards are given across the categories of science, technology, engineering, math, manufacturing, and design.

The project aims to discover nanostructured bone scaffolds to restore the quality of life of patients who require maxillofacial bone repairs. Some examples of maxillofacial defects include critical-size congenital defects, large bone defects following bone cancer resection, and bone trauma. The current clinical gold standard to treat critical-size maxillofacial defects is to harvest autologous grafts from the tibia or femur and implant the reconstructed graft. However, the supply for autologous grafts is limited, and the reconstruction often results in post-surgery morbidities. A clinical alternative to repair critical size maxillofacial defects is by using synthetic bone scaffolds. Although several clinical synthetic biomaterials have been suggested, synthetic bone transplants currently yield limited healing and poor function recovery due to a mismatch between the implant and the surrounding host bone. Specifically, Akono and her team will design advanced hierarchical scaffolds to repair critical-size maxillofacial defects, using a new class of materials with a focus on architecture and hierarchical pore structure.

In her Sustainability and Nanomechanics Lab, Akono investigates fracture events in complex materials using fundamentals of nanotechnology, materials science, and theoretical and applied mechanics, with focus areas in geological materials, high-performance structural materials, and biomaterials. She also received an NCATS Diversity Supplement Award to discover innovative clinical solutions for bone tissue regenerative engineering.

The WiSTEM2D Scholars Award recognized Akono’s work in biomaterials, where she is creating novel scaffolds for bone tissue regenerative engineering.