OSU 2009 Research Week Award Winners

Two ChE graduate students tied for second place in the Biomedical Sciences category and won awards at the 20th Annual OSU Research Symposium presentations this February. Both students are working for Dr. Sundar Madihally to earn their ChE Masters degree in biomedical engineering applications.

A committee of Graduate & Professional Student Government Association (GPSGA) members, the OSU Vice-President of Research and Technology Transfer, and the Graduate College chose winners based on rank, scores, and feedback from the judges.

The title of Pooja Iyer’s work is Effect of Structural Variations in Scaffolds on Cell Growth. She says, “My research is based on the hypothesis that artificial biomaterial implants could be modified chemically to include a binding domain. This is done primarily to achieve the full extent of functionality, when integrated with biospecimens. We have also hypothesized that it is essential to use structures with particular mechanical and physical properties. For this purpose, we have investigated structures ranging in mechanical stiffness values from 2Pa to 2MPa.”

The photo shows Pooja at the confocal microscope in her lab where she characterizes the structures within biomaterials.

Rahul Mirani’s research title is: Viscoelastic characteristics of scaffolds used in tissue engineering.

The photo shows Rahul operating a testing device to obtain stress and strain data from films.

He describes his work as: “We are exploring the use of synthetic film structures to encourage tissue regeneration from burned skin or damaged organs. Strength aspects of the structures are among the many important characteristics. In the past, most of the strength requirements assumed that materials exhibit elastic nature, similar to a rubber band, which regains its original shape when stretched multiple times and relaxed. New developments, however, reveal that body tissues also have what is called a viscous nature (similar to a flow of a tooth paste) which together becomes the viscoelastic nature. This work generates stress-strain-relaxing data from experiments with a variety of biomaterials, and uses the data to determine model parameter values that describe the behavior. Modeling confirms the right viscoelastic description, which provides the knowledge to design bio-materials with the desired properties as a replacement for injured tissue.”