The May 23, 2005 research symposium, held by the UM-NASA Bioscience and Engineering Institute (UMNBEI) in cooperation with the UM Biomedical Engineering Department, was a great success.  The symposium was held in the Chrysler Center’s Chesebrough Auditorium and featured twelve faculty and graduate student presentations covering research themes such as Molecular Biophysics and Bioengineering, Transport Phenomena in Physiology and Devices, Tissue Bioscience and Engineering, and BioMEMS and Biomaterials.

 

The symposium also featured two outstanding keynote speakers, Professors Don Chaffin and David Anderson. Dr. Chaffin, the G. Lawton and Louise G. Johnson Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering and professor of biomedical engineering and environmental health sciences, discussed his research on the prevention of occupational low back pain. Dr. Anderson, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, biomedical engineering, and otolaryngology, addressed his time experimenting on astronauts in the NASA Spacelab.

 

In addition to the presentations, sixty-nine posters filled the space outside the auditorium and lined the Pierpont-Duderstadt connector. Put together by faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students, they featured research on topics from ergonomics to tissue regeneration to exciting new methods for diagnosing disease. The posters were evaluated by three BME faculty members and four winners were chosen: “Nano-tubular Structured Conducting Polymers for Surface Modification of Neural Microelectrode Arrays” by Mohammad Reza Abidian, “Gas-Liquid Two-Phas Flow Patterns in Polymeric Microfluidic Channels With Different Surface Chemistries” by Dongeun “Dan” Huh, “Pulsatile Flow Across Cylinders: An Experimental Model of Flow in a Total Artificial Lung” by Yu-Chun Lin, and “Electrophysiological Characterization of a Previously Unknown Pore-Forming Protein in Triponema Denticola” by Jason J. Rose.