Graduate Seminar Series

Ethan Whitman is a clinical psychology PhD student in the Moffitt/Caspi Laboratory and Laboratory of NeuroGenetics at Duke University. His research uses neuroimaging and machine learning approaches to identify the earliest stages of aging that are apparent in the brain. He completed his B.S. at Tufts University and a postbaccalaureate fellowship with Dr. Armin Raznahan at the NIMH, researching the effects of sex chromosome aneuploidy on brain development. He began his graduate training at Duke in 2021.

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Brain-based predictive modeling to measure aging, predict disease, and identify targets for intervention

To understand how aging affects disease risk, it is first necessary to develop valid and reliable measures of aging. In response to limitations of existing neuroimaging approaches, I will introduce a next-generation neuroimaging measure for the rate of longitudinal aging. This measure, called the Dunedin Pace of Aging Calculated from NeuroImaging (DunedinPACNI), is trained using brain magnetic resonance imaging data from the multi-decade Dunedin Study. Exporting this measure to external datasets reveals that faster DunedinPACNI predicts cognitive impairment, physical frailty, poor health, accelerated brain atrophy, conversion to dementia, future chronic diseases, and mortality. When compared to brain age gap, DunedinPACNI is similarly or more strongly related to clinical outcomes. Finally, I will present ongoing work on how DunedinPACNI can be used to identify how poor mental and behavioral health may affect faster aging.

Dr. Jim Hokanson is an Assistant Professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at MU-MCW. He is the director of the Pelvic Diagnostics & Therapeutic Laboratory (PDAT), whose research focuses on advancing diagnostics and electrical stimulation therapies for pelvic floor diseases, especially urinary incontinence, using physiological testing, signal processing, and machine learning to improve diagnosis and treatment.

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Diagnostics and Therapeutics to Treat Urinary Dysfunction

Abstract: Urinary dysfunction negatively impacts quality of life for tens of millions of Americans. In certain cases where urinary dysfunction leads to improper bladder emptying it can even lead to kidney failure and death. In this talk I'll discuss our lab's efforts to improve one therapy for urinary dysfunction, tibial neuromodulation. Additionally I'll discuss our efforts to better characterize the pathophysiology of urinary dysfunction in women with urgency urinary incontinence.

Elizabeth Asma is a Senior Research Engineer at Rice University's Institute for Global Health Technologies, whose mission is to innovate affordable healthcare solutions and train future leaders to improve global health through problem-based learning and research.

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Medical Device Innovation for Global Health - Scaling a package of affordable, effective technologies for newborn care in Africa

In Africa, over 1 million babies die every year from preventable causes. Appropriate NICU technology is often too expensive and cannot withstand conditions in low-resource hospitals including high humidity, dust, frequent user turnover, complex maintenance, lack of stable power, or difficulty sourcing expensive consumables. Engineers at Rice360 design affordable and robust medical devices for newborn and maternal health in low-resource settings, including a low-cost bubble CPAP, point of care bilirubinometer for diagnosis of jaundice, continuous temperature monitor for identification of newborn hypothermia, thermal warming mattress with baby-controlled feedback loop and low-cost respiratory rate monitor for apnea of prematurity. This presentation will cover how our team of engineers and clinicians bring prototypes to design for manufacture, supporting clinical studies and regulatory submission towards device commercialization as well as how our partnerships through NEST360 support sustainable care for small and sick newborns in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Zahra Bassiri is Lead Engineer at Motion Analysis & Human Performance Program at Texas Children’s Hospital, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. She holds dual doctorates in Mechanical Engineering and Sport Biomechanics, with expertise in motion capture, clinical gait analysis, rehabilitation technologies, and neuromuscular control. Her research focuses on enhancing movement assessment and rehabilitation outcomes through advanced biomechanical modeling and sensor-based technologies.

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Silent Signals for Steady Steps: New Approach to Reactive Balance Enhancement

Subsensory electrical stimulation (SES) has emerged as a novel method to enhance sensorimotor performance by boosting the nervous system’s sensitivity to subtle signals. In this talk, we present findings on how SES—delivered through non-invasive transcutaneous electrodes—modulates balance control and gait. Using experimental paradigms with perturbations and motion analysis, we show that SES improves reactive balance control and stabilizes trunk control without conscious awareness of stimulation. These “silent signals” demonstrate the potential of stochastic resonance to augment natural sensory feedback, offering new clinical strategies for populations at risk of falls and mobility impairment.

Josephine Allen, Ph.D. received her bachelor’s degree in biology from California State University Northridge, and her Ph.D. in 2009 from Northwestern University in Biological Sciences, and in 2010 she joined the Materials Science and Engineering Department at The University of Florida as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2017, and Full Professor in 2023. In 2024 Dr. Allen took on a leadership role as the Associate chair for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. Most recently, in August 2025, Dr. Allen moved her research program to the Medical College of Wisconsin within the Department of Pediatrics and Division of Cardiology. Dr. Allen currently serves as Director for Pediatric Cell and Tissue Engineering at MCW, while maintaining an affiliate appointment within the Biomedical Engineering Department at Marquette University. Dr. Allen’s research is in the areas of vascular tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, with specific interest in controlling vascular cellular processes including progenitor cell differentiation. Her lab is also interested in understanding the effects of dynamic environmental conditions, including space, on cellular processes associated with cardiovascular deconditioning. Lastly, Dr. Allen’s research program also focusses on addressing sex based vascular health disparities through the engineering of personalized biomaterials. Dr. Allen has received numerous awards for her work including the prestigious National Science Foundation, Career Award in 2015 and in 2016 she received the University of Florida Office of the Provost Excellence Award for Assistant Professors.  In 2018 Dr. Allen was named the Genzyme Professor of Materials and Engineering, and in 2020 she was inducted as an AIMBE fellow, and in 2021 a fellow of BMES.  Allen’s research has been supported by the American Heart Association (AHA), National Science Foundation (NSF), The National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the US. Army Department of Defense (DoD).

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A versatile bioactive DNA based hydrogel material system for broad applications in tissue engineering

The Allen lab has three main research thrusts in cellular engineering, biomaterials, and the study of dynamic environmental conditions.  The focus of this seminar will be recent work in these three areas as it relates to tissue engineering. Our work in cellular engineering is motivated by the continued challenge to control cellular processes, including processes involved in angiogenesis, which are critical for successful tissue regeneration.  Our approach is the development of receptor agonist in the form of DNA aptamers. We have fabricated a novel divalent aptamer assembly that shows agonist function towards vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2, leading to downstream pathway activation. Our biomaterials work focuses on our goal to create an extracellular matrix mimic composed of ssDNA in complex with collagen. These novel DNA based materials are versatile, bioactive, support cellular remodeling and processes involved in angiogenesis as well as having tunable mechanical properties. Our work to study dynamic environmental conditions focused on cell-material interactions and sex-specific mechanoresponsive behavior. Our labs’ overarching goal is the generation of personalized biomaterials, and advancement from a one-size fits all model.

Dr. Shue Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at University of New Haven. She received her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona in 2015.  After graduation, she worked at the University of Michigan as a postdoctoral researcher focus on synthetic biology.  Her research focuses on biosensing, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, single cell analysis, mechanobiology, lab-on-a-chip, synthetic biology, and applying micro-engineered tools to understand the complex biological systems at both the molecular and cellular levels. Dr. Wang received the NSF CAREER award in 2022.  She was recognized as ASME Mechanical Engineering Rising Star in 2024. 

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Mechanoregulation of Tissue Regeneration and Osteogenic Differentiation 

The fascinating capability of cellular self-organization during tissue development and repair is a central question in developmental biology and regenerative medicine.  Understanding the dynamic morphogenic and regenerative processes of biological tissues will have important implications in biology and medicine.  Nevertheless, the elucidation of the cellular self-organization and regulatory mechanisms are often hindered by the lack of effective tools for monitoring the spatiotemporal gene expression distribution and perturbing the cellular processes in living cells and tissues.  To understand the dynamic regenerative process and uncover the regulatory mechanisms, I developed a nanobiosensor for dynamic single cell gene expression analysis in live cells and complex tissue microenvironment.  In this talk, I will discuss the application of this nanobiosensor together with several other biomechanical techniques for the investigation of complex dynamic biological processes, such as tip cell formation during angiogenic sprouting, collective migration during wound healing, and mesenchymal stem cells osteogenic differentiation. 

Dr. Bo Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at MU-MCW. She is the director of the Tissue Regenerative Engineering Lab (TRE Lab), whose research focuses on the study of biomaterials like placenta and bone matrices to develop therapies for bone and tissue damage.

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Abstract: Coming soon.