For more information regarding attending a specific event, contact BME Education Coordinator Denise Perea.
Upcoming Speakers | Seminar Archive
Every semester, the Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering brings together biomedical engineers from across the United States for a series of speaking engagements describing ongoing research and novel contributions to this dynamic and engaging field.
Seminars will be held at alternating Marquette and MCW campus locations and are open to all students, faculty, and staff from both institutions.
Don Anderson, PhD September 15, 2023
Don Anderson is the Richard and Jan Johnson Chair in Orthopedic Biomechanics, Professor, and Vice-Chair of Research in the Department of Orthopedics & Rehabilitation at the University of Iowa. He holds a BSE in Biomedical Engineering, as well as an MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering, all earned at the University of Iowa. Dr. Anderson has 30+ years of experience with image analysis, computer modeling, and computational stress analysis in musculoskeletal applications. Dr. Anderson's primary research focus throughout his career has been on articular joint biomechanics, specifically studying the mechanical relationship between joint injury and the subsequent development of post-traumatic osteoarthritis. All of his post-graduate career has been spent working in a clinical orthopedic setting, which has guided his work toward informing and influencing patient care.
Post-Traumatic Osteoarthritis Risk from Pathomechanics: Supporting Studies and New Intervention Strategies
The long-term goal of our research is to forestall post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA), the disabling condition that often develops after joint injuries like an intra-articular fracture (IAF) of the tibial plafond. PTOA is one of the leading causes of mobility-related disability, affecting approximately 5.6 million individuals in the U.S. alone. PTOA leads to permanent disability in nearly 30% of individuals having sustained an IAF, with those of the foot and ankle being the most disabling. The impairment associated with ankle OA is comparable to that caused by end-stage kidney disease or congestive heart failure. The vast majority of ankle OA is post-traumatic, with tibial plafond IAFs often leading to disabling PTOA within two to five years. As a result, patients with ankle injuries provide an ideal population in which to study this degenerative pathway so that we can optimize treatment. We have developed patient-specific precision medicine approaches to predict PTOA risk in the ankle using CT-based measures of pathomechanical factors associated with IAFs (fracture severity and elevated contact stress post-treatment) of the tibial plafond. A primary objective of the group’s present work is to enable the use of these innovative methods for assessing IAFs to better inform patient care and to guide future clinical trials of new therapies directed at mitigating or arresting the environment that triggers progressive joint degeneration.
Christian Kastrup, PhD September 29, 2023
Dr. Christian Kastrup is a Professor in the Department of Surgery at MCW, a Senior Investigator with Versiti Blood Research Institute, and a Secondary Faculty member in the MU-MCW Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering.
RNA and Lipid Nanomedicines to Control Bleeding and Thrombosis
Bleeding and thrombotic disorders are common, affecting hundreds of thousands of North Americans, often due to an imbalance between the formation (coagulation) and destruction (fibrinolysis) of blood clots. Modulating fibrinolysis instead of coagulation is an alternate clinical approach for patients with bleeding and thrombotic disorders. However, only a small number of medications can influence pro- and anti-fibrinolytic proteins and enzymes, and they are short-acting. We developed a library of RNA and lipid nanoparticle (LNP) agents targeting the synthesis of pro- and anti-fibrinolytic proteins in vivo to modulate fibrinolysis long-term. Encapsulating mRNA and siRNA agents in LNP enabled delivery to the liver and bone marrow, where many pro- and anti-fibrinolytic proteins are synthesized. siRNA mediates gene silencing by degrading the target mRNA, resulting in long-term depletion of the corresponding protein in blood plasma for weeks to months. These mRNA-LNP can also be delivered to platelets, which allows further control of blood proteins. Administering pro- and anti-fibrinolytic RNA-LNP modulated fibrinolysis in vivo for weeks to months in small and large animal models of bleeding and thrombosis, the appropriate siRNA-LNPs corrected bleeding or thrombosis, showing promising therapeutic potential for humans.
Amy Lenz, PhD October 13, 2023
Dr. Amy Lenz is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
Learn more about Lenz Research Group
Foot and Ankle Biomechanics: Empowering Clinical Interventions with Advanced Technology to Study 3D Morphology and Kinematics
The foot and ankle is a complex structure of numerous articular relationships which operate to provide a stable base of support through active and passive tissue interactions. Altered morphology can lead to injury, instability, pathological deformity, and osteoarthritis. My lab’s goal is to characterize healthy, diseased, and post-surgical foot and ankle morphology and in-vivo function to improve clinical treatment of ankle pathologies leading to end-stage ankle osteoarthritis. Our recent studies have investigated the relationship between morphology and in-vivo function of the subtalar joint in patients that received a tibiotalar arthrodesis or total ankle replacement (TAR) surgery. Dynamic joint articulation measurements, such as joint space distance, coverage, and congruence can be investigated in combination with morphology analyses using statistical shape modeling and biplane fluoroscopy kinematics to investigate the form and function relationship occurring at the subtalar joint following surgical intervention. Our ongoing studies highlight the complexity of the foot and ankle, the value of a robust 3D analyses, the utility of in-vitro robotic experiments, and the necessity to further investigate interactions of function and morphology to clinically evaluate flatfoot deformity, osteoarthritis, and injury mechanisms.
Joseph T. Barbieri, PhD October 27, 2023
Dr. Joseph T. Barbieri is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and is the Associate Director of the Medical Scientist Training Program at MCW.
Bo Wang, PhD November 3, 2023
Dr. Bo Wang is an Assistant Professor in the MU-MCW Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Director of the Tissue Regenerative Engineering (TRE) Lab.
Monica Rosenberg, PhD November 17, 2023
Dr. Monica Rosenberg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago.
Learn more about Dr. Rosenberg
Characterizing attention dynamics with functional brain dynamics
Although maintaining attention to a task at hand is crucial to navigating daily life, our attentional state waxes and wanes. Despite our best efforts, fluctuations in focus are ubiquitous during psychological tasks and everyday activities, such as watching movies and listening to lectures. What brain systems predict these attentional state changes? Do similar neural dynamics underlie attentional dynamics regardless of what we attend to, or do associations between neural and attentional dynamics vary by context? To address these questions, I will first provide evidence that a common functional brain network predicts changes in attention task performance on time scales from minutes to months in independent datasets. I will then show evidence from a deep imaging study measuring attention fluctuations in controlled and naturalistic tasks. Latent state analysis revealed that a common brain state consistently predicted periods of inattention, but different brain states occurred when participants were attentive to the tasks and movies. Thus, associations between brain-state dynamics and attention dynamics are both context-general and context-specific: whereas a brain state associated with suboptimal attention is shared across contexts, the brain state optimal for focus varies with cognitive and attentional demands.
Ken Tichauer, PhD December 1, 2023
Dr. Kenneth Tichauer is an Associate Professor and the Associate Chair of Graduate Affairs in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology.
For your convenience, the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering provides a complete seminar archive, dating back to 2016, when the Joint Department was formed between Marquette University and the Medical College of Wisconsin.
