Professor Syam Nukavarapu will be assuming the role of the Biomedical Engineering department head, effective August 23, 2024. He is currently serving as an Interim Head of Biomedical Engineering. He is a Professor in Biomedical Engineering and holds joint appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UConn, and the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, UConn Health.

 Professor Nukavarapu brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the BME Department Head position. Throughout his career, he has made significant contributions to the field of biomaterials science and engineering. His research interests span biomaterials, bioprinting, and tissue engineering with an emphasis of tissue-tissue interface engineering. He made seminal contributions to the development of engineered grafts and understanding biomaterial/graft interactions with cells and tissues. Professor Nukavarapu’s research has been funded by federal, state as well as private foundations. His contributions, including over ninety peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, numerous proceedings, and invited presentations, as well as three patents, have been invaluable to the advancement of the field.

Professor Nukavarapu currently serves on the editorial boards of major journals, including Biomaterials, Bioactive Materials, and Tissue Engineering. His active involvement in national/international professional societies, such as BMES, SFB, and MRS, reflects his dedication to scholarly pursuits and national leadership. He has received numerous research and education awards, including the Distinguished Engineering Educator Award, Castleman Professorship in Engineering Innovation, AAUP Teaching Excellence Award, and member-elect of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.

Highlighting New Faculty

Associate Professor Martin Han, a joint appointment in the Institute of Materials Science, researches implantable microelectrode arrays to treat neurological disorders using semiconductor fabrication technologies.  He is also interested in the interface of the brain and microelectrode devices.  Dr. Han’s research is supported by the NIH.

Assistant Professor Insoo Kim’s research narrows the gaps between larger clinical grade devices and newly developed mobile and wearable health sensors in terms of hardware, algorithms, and signal processing techniques.  Dr. Kim’s research develops wearable biosensors, bio-circuit systems and therapeutic devices for use in diagnostics and monitoring of chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and sleep disorder.

Assistant Professor Kristin Morgan received an NIH Program for Excellence & Equity in Research Fellowship and the Lyman T. Johnson Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Kentucky.  Dr. Morgan’s research will work with the Department of Kinesiology to study how changes in muscle function alter gait patterns and joint stability.

Assistant Professor Syam Nukavarapu was awarded a patent on July 18, 2017 for gradient porous scaffolds for bone regeneration and osteochondral defect repair, methods to make the gradient porous scaffolds, and methods to use the gradient porous scaffolds.

BME Senior Design Team #2: Sarah McGee, Katelyn Houlihan, Courtney Mulry, Cailah Carroll, Celine Agnes, Rosalie Bordett, Dr. Bin Feng

Because of the my OUR Travel Award, the entire senior design team was able to travel to Houston to attend the conference. The money helped us to represent UConn and for us to gain valuable feedback regarding our prototype. We got the opportunity to interact with amazing researchers and hear from Tore Laerdal who was the keynote speaker at the global health technology conference. His organization is huge increasing products that promote KMC in third world and developing countries. We got to hear his thoughts on our project. Overall this conference really helped to shape me into a more confident individual and helped us immensely with designing the future of our project.

Project Summary

This project was our biomedical engineering senior design project. Through this project we hoped to create a device that would accurately determine and measure the amount of skin contact and time that a mother has with their newborn baby. The client wanted the device to begin measuring time when contact was initiated and stopped recording when the contact is broken. The goal was for him to bring the device to India to test and determine the amount of skin contact and time that is required for improvements in the baby’s health. The researchers currently know that kangaroo mother care is effective but they don’t know how much time is actually effective. In order to combat this problem the team used a raspberry pi and arduino along with a lily pad temperature sensor and capacitive touch hat in order to create a device that would do this. The team applied to and got selected as one of the top 20 teams internationally in the Global Health Technologies Competition and got invited to come down to Houston to present. The team is now in the process of creating a new prototype that will do the same and measure the contact but the results will be transmitted wirelessly to an app on the phone. The team is extremely proud of all the work they have accomplished this year and is very thankful to the OUR grant for helping them to begin designing the new prototype by allowing us to go to Houston and speak to clinicians and nurses.

Nehal Kapadia, an MS student in the Clinical Engineering Internship Program, was recently awarded an AAMI Foundation Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded “to students aspiring to become HTM professionals who demonstrate a record of academic excellence, technical aptitude, and a commitment to the field.”1 Nehal is from Fiji and is interning at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. More information about the award can be found here.

[1] http://www.aami.org/productspublications/pressreleasedetail.aspx?ItemNumber=4619

BME Core faculty Dr. Lakshmi Nair has recently served as editor of a new book “Injectable Hydrogels for Regenerative Engineering”.

Regenerative engineering, with its ability to foster novel therapeutic techniques and strategies, has emerged as the most versatile and innovative technology of the 21st century. The past few years have seen a significant interest in the development of injectable hydrogels as cell/bioactive molecule delivery system to realize the dream of regenerative engineering. Injectable Hydrogels for Regenerative Engineering is the first book to bring together the fields of injectable hydrogels and regenerative engineering to give a perspective of the emerging therapeutic strategies for a wide audience. The book explains synthetic approaches towards developing injectable hydrogels, and the clinical applications of injectable hydrogels for engineering various tissues.