News & Events

Current News

Past News & Events

Explore past news and events within the department.


 

Branches –  McGill’s Community Outreach Program –  along with representatives from several STEM faculties, spent a week delivering workshops in Chisasibi, Quebec, including a DNA extraction session led by Prof. Adam Hendricks. Read more here. (May 2024)

The Department of Bioengineering would like to congratulate this year's recipient of the 2023 Leslie A. Geddes Award, Dr. Mahsa Jalali (Supervisor: Prof. Sara Mahshid). Dr. Jalali received this award for her PhD thesis entitled, "On-Chip Plasmonic Nanosurface for Molecular Profiling of Single Extracellular Vesicles in Cancer Liquid Biopsy." (Feb 2024)

A huge congratulations goes out to the 2022-2023 McGill iGEM team, who won first place worldwide at the Grand Jamboree iGEM competition in Paris, France - with over 400 teams competing! In the 20 years of the iGEM competition, this is the first Canadian team to ever win the grand prize at the iGEM Grand Jamboree. (November 2023)

We are pleased to announce that Professor Amine Kamen is among nine experts who were recently appointed by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to its Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). Read more here (November 2023)

We are pleased to announce that Prof Caroline Wagner and Prof Sara Mahshid are both winners of the final round of the MI4 Pfizer Early Career Investigator Award. The overarching goal of MI4 is to bring together investigators from across the McGill community and its partners to foster interdisciplinary research. Please join us in congratulating our professors on their successful submissions! Read more here. (September 2023)

A job well done to Professor Dan V. Nicolau, Professor Ayyappasamy Sudalaiyadum Perumal, Serban, Dobroiu, and Shantoshini Dash, for their contribution in an article that reached a cover of the reputed journal ACS Sensors. To read their article, Spatially Addressable Multiplex Biodetection by Calibrated Micro/Nanostructured Surfaces, please click here.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year's BBME Symposium! To view some highlights from the event, please click here. (May 2023)

The Panel of Editors for all IEEE journals, held in Chicago last week, occasioned a gathering of all Canadian Editors in Chief - and McGill is behind and center of all. (May 2023)

Check out this video by Prof Natalie Reznikov and Prof Marc D. McKee on their studies in the field of Biomineralization, using the Zeiss Xradia Versa 3D X-ray microscope. Watch it here. (January 2023)

The Department of BioEng is accepting submissions of original digital artwork for the proceedings of course BIEN 200, also known as The Hyperbook: Nature’s Design Toolbox. The submission period is open from January 1st until April 30th, 2023. This opportunity is open to all McGill students, so please feel free to share. Read more about this opportunity here. (January 2023)

Congrats to our award recipients at this year’s Celebration of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, hosted by McGill Engine. Prof. Sara Mahshid, Prof. Allen Ehrlicher, and Dr. Roozbeh Siavash Moakhar were awarded the William and Rhea Seath Awards in Engineering Innovation, and Prof. Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu was awarded the TechAccelR Grant. Job well done to all for these great achievements! For photos of the event, click here. (December 2022)

Congratulations to Professor Sara Mahshid and Postdoctoral Researcher Roozbeh Siavash on their innovation in COVID and RSV testing, without nasal swabs. Their NFluidEX device offers 100 per cent accuracy in as little as 10 minutes, and can be configured to detect a range of ailments. You can read this article here. (November 2022)

The schedule for the BIEN 200 Symposium for Fall 2022 is now available! Check it out here. (November 2022)

Congratulations to our Teaching Lab Manager, Yulemi Gonzalez Quesada, who recently published two articles in the IJMS journal. They are available to read in PubMed Central here and here (November 2022).

Check out our new Hyperbook, Nature’s Design Toolbox. The curated proceedings illustrate, analyze and systematize the nontrivial and parsimonious biological adaptations in the context of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. Besides being a source of inspiration and creativity, the Hyperbook is intended to help bioengineering applicants and undergraduate students choose their preferred bioengineering stream. Read more here. (November 2022)

Congratulations to Professor Natalie Reznikov who is among the 15 McGill researchers who received a total of $3.9 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (CFI JELF), for her project on Cryo-SEM/Cryo-FIB/SEM Preparation System. Read this here. (September 2022)

A big congratulations to Professor Natalie Reznikov who is the 2023 Winner of the Award for Innovation in Applied Microscopy for Engineering and Physical Sciences from the Royal Microscopical Society (RMS), for outstanding scientific achievements in applying microscopy in the fields of engineering and physical sciences. Read this here. (September 2022)

Congratulations to McGill iGEM, which features 3 students from our Bioengineering department, on being one of the Top 10 teams at the 2022 Grand Jamboree in Paris! Read this here. (October 2022)

A Research Article titled "A Versatile Biomimic Nano-Templating Fluidic Assay for Multiplex Quantitative Monitoring of Viral Respiratory Infections and Immune Responses in Saliva and Blood" by Roozbeh Siavash Moakhar; Carolina del Real Mata; Mahsa Jalali and supervised by Prof Sara Mahshid was recently published in Advanced Science. This is a collaborative effort supported by CIHR and MI4 in the context of COVID-19 in collaboration with the Department of Medicine at McGill University, Jewish General Hospital (Dr. Chen Liang) and Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Read this here. (October 2022)

Professor Allen Ehrlicher and his lab recently published an article titled "Cell monolayer deformation microscopy reveals mechanical fragility of cell monolayers following EMT" in Biophysical Journal. Read this here. (February 2022)

Congratulations to our professors, Dr. Allen Ehrlicher and Dr. Sara Mahshid on being the 1st recipients of McGill Innovation Fund!
Pattern-based Contractile Screening (PaCS), led by Professor Allen Ehrlicher, is a proposed new drug screening technology.
Salivera led by Professor Sara Mahshid, is a rapid portable nucleic acid test for diagnosis of respiratory infections.
(January 2022)

Dr. Sara Mahshid

Congratulations to Professor Sara Mahshid on being awarded Canada Research Chair for her work in Nano-Biosensing Devices! (January 2022)

The Department of Bioengineering will be offering two new courses, BIEN 414 and BIEN 585, in Winter 2022. (December 2021)

Dr. Allen Ehrlicher, postdoc Ali Amini and his research team, in a study published in Science, have developed the toughest transparent glass ever made, inspired by the inner layer of mollusk shells. (September 2021)

Our alumna, Angela Wong and her team, were awarded the first-place in the Marika Zelenka Roy Innovation Prize and LFAnt Medical, made up of four BioEng alumni, were awarded the first place in the MI4 Innovation Prize at The McGill Clinical Innovation Competition. (May 2021)

Dr. Dan V. Nicolau published a paper in PNAS titled ‘Patterns of bacterial motility in microfluidics-confining environments’, also showcased in McGill News. (May 2021)

A recent study by Dr. Caroline Wagner and Princeton University published in Science found that one-dose strategies may reduce case numbers in the short term by more rapidly immunizing a greater number of individuals but if immune responses after one dose are less robust, subsequent epidemic peaks may be larger. (March 2021)

Figure from Dr. Wagner's publication. Schematic of the SIR(S) model with a flowchart depicting flows between immune classes.

Dr. Caroline Wagner's research article "Immune life history, vaccination, and the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 over the next 5 years" has recently been published in Science (Sept 2020)

Poster congratulating the graduating class of 2020

It goes without saying that the Department of Bioengineering is immensely proud of its first undergraduate cohort and their graduating students. We hope that you take your perseverance, ambition, and enthusiasm wherever life carries you. Félicitations, parabéns, congratulazioni, felicitari, selamat bertuang, CONGRATULATIONS to you all!! (June 2020)

Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board logo

One June 26th, 2020, the Department of Bioengineering at McGill University received news that its Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng) program had become accredited by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB). (June 2020)

Dr. Amine Kamen with media

We are proud to announce that Prof. Amine Kamen’s group will be one of 47 research teams across Canada to receive government funding towards COVID-19 research. On March 6th, we welcomed Honorable Jean-Yves Duclos, President of the Treasury Board, for a tour of Prof. Kamen’s lab.
Read more here. (March 2020)

Picture of Dr. Dan Nicolau

Our very own Dr. Dan V. Nicolau was recently appointed as the Editor in Chief (EiC) of Transactions on NanoBioscience (TNB). Read more about IEEE's EiC and the transactions in Nanobioscience here (December 2019).

Dr. Xia and his lab published an article on Nature Communications titled "Estimating dispensable content in the human interactome". Read the article here.

(October 2019)

Photo showing a cover of PNAS

Dr. Nicolau published an article on PNAS titled Intracellular mechanisms of fungal space searching in microenvironments. 
His team's research involved using time-lapse live-cell imaging of Neurospora crassa in microfluidic environments to show how constraining geometries determine the intracellular processes responsible for fungal growth.
Read more about his paper here (September 2019).

Dr. Matt Kinsella recently published a new article on IOP Science titled "Engineering bioprintable alginate/gelatin composite hydrogels with tunable mechanical and cell adhesive properties to modulate tumor spheroid growth kinetics". 

(August 2019)

From left to right: Dr. Mitsis, Antonella Fratino, Xavier Elisseeff and Dr. Nicolau

The Bioengineering team went international! Professors Georgios Mitsis and Dan Nicolau took off to Berlin with Departmental Manager Antonella Fratino and Lab Manager Xavier Elisseff to attend the 41st International Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference.
(July 2019)

Photo of a student working at the lab

Dr. Sara Mahshid  was recognized by the New Frontiers in Research Fund's Exploration Grants: " [...} with this substantial inaugural investment, thirteen of McGill’s outstanding early career researchers have the opportunity to build unique partnerships across scientific disciplines, open new areas of inquiry and undertake potentially field-defining work.” Martha Crago, Vice-Principal, Research and Innovation

(June 2019) 

Photo of graduate student Jaqueline Kort Mascourt

Graduate student Jaqueline Kort Mascourt was awarded a second place prize for her recent poster presentation at the annual Canadian Biomaterials Society meeting in Quebec City (May 2019). 

Dr. Sara Mahshid's research, titled "Apta-Nanosurface Fluidic Assay for Specific and Rapid Detection of Parasites via a Labelfree Electrical Readout", was one of the sixteen recipients of the new seed fund grant offered by the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity (MI4). (April 2019)

Tao Jiang, a doctoral graduate of the Kinsella lab, and fellow labmates have recently published a review article in Applied Physics Reviews covering the physical mechanisms controlling extrusion bioprinting and development of bioprinted tissue models. The article has been selected by the editor as a featured article and will be showcased in an upcoming special issue of APR focused on the physical and chemical mechanisms of bioprinting.
(March 2019)

Jacqueline Kort-Mascort, a doctoral student in the Kinsella lab, has co-authored a paper with colleagues and collaborators from the Faculty of Dentistry including lead author Alaa Mansour and Prof. Simon Tran and Prof. Faleh Tamimi in the journal Acta Biomaterialia. The team extracted extracellular matrix components from bone as an extract that was shown to modulate the immune response of bioceramics and enhance bone regeneration in vivo. Jackie helped develop a gel that would enable sustained localized release of the extracts at the site of insult.
(March 2019)

Dr. Sara Mahshid

Dr. Sara Mahshid was one of fifteen McGill researchers to receive grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Quebec Government.

Picture from the publication with (a) and(b).  (b) Resulting image from (a) after image background correction and trajectory tracing using the Simple Neurite Tracer plug-in in Fiji (ImageJ) software, where the trajectories are highlighted in green. Here we show 50 trajectories.

Dr. Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu recently published an article with his lab members Sara Kheireddine, Ayyappasamy Sudalaiyadum Perumal, and Zachary J. Smith, along with chair and professor Dr. Dan V. Nicolau. Their article, "Dual-phone illumination-imaging system for high resolution and large field of view multi-modal microscopy"was published in the journal Lab on a Chip, and presents the first time a system comprised of two mobile phones, one for illumination and the other for microscopy, as a portable, user-friendly, and cost-effective microscopy platform for a wide range of applications. (February 2019)

Dr. Sebastian Wachsman-Hogiu and Dr. Dan Nicolau with a student

Professors Dan Nicolau and Sebastian Wacshmann-Hogiu attended the SPIE Photonics West 2019 conference in San Francisco from February 3rd - February 6th. Dr. Nicolau - who also chaired the event - presented the Prizmatix Young Investigator Award to the best paper at the conference. (February 2019). 

Figure 4B from first article. Fluorescence micrographs of entire substrates after hybridization. From top to bottom, these substrates are plain glass, Nexterion E, Nexterion HiSens E, micro-pillars/ on Si, micro-wells/on Si, micro-pillars/on Pt and micro-wells/on Pt

Professor Dan Nicolau and his lab have recently had 2 papers published online. The first, Fluorescence Interference Contrast-enabled structures improve the microarrays performance, was published in Elsevier’s Biosensors and Bioelectronics journal. The second, Something has to give: scaling combinatorial computing by biological agents exploring physical networks encoding NP-complete problems, can be found in Interface Focus through The Royal Society’s publishing. (October 2018)

Cover page of the Biomedical Engineering Society's program. It includes information about the conference with peaches as the background.

The Department of Bioengineering will be exhibiting at the Biomedical Engineering Society’s 50th Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia from October 17 – 21, 2018. Swing by booth #319 to meet McGill University’s Bioengineering crew! (October 2018)

Cover of the journal Small (Volume 14, Number 25)

Professor Sara Mahshid’s Paper, Pathogenic Bacteria Detection: A Hierarchal 3D Nanostructured Microfluidic Device for Sensitive Detection of Pathogenic Bacteria, is on the frontispiece of the journal Small (Small 35/2018). The paper was first published on August 29th, 2018 (DOI: 10.1002/smll.201870159). (August 2018)

Head shot of Professor Adam Hendricks

Professor Adam Hendricks is one of 53 research groups at McGill who have been awarded CIHR Project Grants over 5 years. Prof. Hendricks’ project is titled Regulation of microtubule motors in organelle transport. (August 2018)

(L to R) Picture of Aimee, Andy and Antonella by a tree on campus

The Department of Bioengineering is proud to be the first department at McGill to gain silver certification by the Office of Sustainability’s Sustainable Workplace Certification. The program is part of McGill’s Vision 2020 Climate & Sustainability Action Plan, which aims to improve the university’s environmental and socio-economic impact. If you’d like to get involved and make a difference on campus, check out the Office of Sustainability’s website. (July 2018)

Schematic illustration of an integrated fluidic device for selective capture and analysis of bacteria.

McGill’s Newsroom recently interviewed Prof. Sara Mahshid on her new device which can rapidly detect bacterial infections. Read more on the recent work by Prof. Mahshid and graduate students, Mahsa Jalali and Tamer AbdelFatah, in their paper, A Hierarchical 3D Nanostructured Microfluidic Device for Sensitive Detection of Pathogenic Bacteria, which was published in the journal Small. (July 2018)

Prof. J. Matt Kinsella and members of his lab have been featured in a video article in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). Their article, Bioprintable Alginate/Gelatin Hydrogel 3D In Vitro Model Systems Induce Cell Spheroid Formation, can also be read on their website. (July 2018)

Picture of the McGill Flag on the Arts Building

We are pleased to announce that three of our professors have been promoted by McGill’s Board of Governors this summer. Professor Allen Ehrlicher and Professor J. Matt Kinsella have been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, and Professor Yu (Brandon) Xia to the rank of Full Professor. Congratulations! (July 2018)

Engineering conferences international logo

Professor Amine A. Kamen will be co-chairning the upcoming Vaccine Technology VII conference presented by Engineering Conferences International (ECI). This year, the conference will take place at Mont-Tremblant from June 17 - 22. (June 2018)

Canada Research Chair insignia

We are proud to announce that Prof. Allen Ehrlicher is one of nine McGill scholars who has been named a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Active Biological Mechanics. (May 2018)

McGill Aluma, Marika Roy, and Department Chair, Professor Dan Nicolau

On April 23, 2018, the Department celebrated the grand opening of their new office space located in MC 350. A special thank you to our distinguished guest, McGill alumna Marika Roy, whose contribution established the Department of Bioengineering. (April 2018)

Schematic diagram showing the model geometry with electrodes, inlet/outlet, insulator and channel  wall; ( b ) surface map showing the normalized electrical field strength for the applied voltage of 2  V; ( c )  simulation showing the accumulation of molecules due to the negative DEP field. The surface map of electric  field gradient (grey) is superimposed with particle (yellow) accumulation and ( d ) fluorescent image showing  DNA concentration of  λ -Phage DNA with application of DEP force

Professor Sara Mahshid’s paper, Transverse dielectrophoretic-based DNA nanoscale confinement, was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports. (April 2018)

Program cover page for the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for Biomaterials

Tao Jiang, a third year Ph.D. student in Prof. Matt Kinsella’s lab, presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for Biomaterials in Atlanta, Georgia. Check out the program for details on his talk: “lginate/Gelatin as a Bioprinting Ink to Tailor Tumor Spheroid Formation.” (April 2018)

Aimee Jabour, Andy Catalano and Antonella Fratino from the Department of Bioengineering holding plants for our bronze certification poster

The Department of Bioengineering is proud to announce it has been awarded bronze by The Sustainable Workplace Certification Program. It is the first unit in the Faculty of Engineering and one of the first units at McGill to be participating in the program, as part of Vision 2020 Climate & Sustainability Action Plan. If you want to learn more about how you can get involved, visit the Office of Sustainability’s website. (April 2018)  

Professor Matt Kinsella presented “Bioprinting Tumor Models with Mechanically and Biochemically Tunable Bioinks that Mimic the Native Tumor Microenvironment” at Select Biosciences fourth annual BioEngineering 2018 conference in Boston, Massachusetts. (March 2018)

Computation by Natural Systems event - The Royal Society

Professor Dan Nicolau was invited to speak at The Royal Society’s Computation by Natural Systems scientific meeting in Buckinghamshire, England. You can listen to Prof. Nicolau’s talk, “Computing with Motile Biological Agents Exploring Networks,” here. (March 2018)

Super-resolution images (color corresponds to position in z) demonstrating differences between organization, distribution, and morphology of actin filaments/bundles in the cytoplasm of amniotic mesenchymal stem cells extracted from the male versus female fetuses.

Congratulations to Pooja Pushparaj, Master’s student in Prof. Kinsella’s lab, on being a co-first author on the article entitled “Effect of Cell Sex on Uptake of Nanoparticles: The Overlooked Factor at the Nanobio Interface” published in ACS NANO Publications. This is a collaborative project between McGill’s BBME program, Stanford University, and Harvard Medical School, investigating how cells from male or female patients interact with nanoparticles differently. (March 2018)

Dan Nicolau presenting the Prizmatix Young Investigator Award to one of the two students

Professors Dan Nicolau and Sebastian Wacshmann-Hogiu attended the SPIE Photonics West 2018 conference in San Francisco from January 27 - February 1. Nicolau - who also chaired the event - presented the Prizmatix Young Investigator Award to two young scientists for the work they presented at SPIE Nanoscale Imaging, Sensing, and Actuation for Biomedical Applications XIV. (February 2018)

In this figure, the MT cytoskeleton is shown in a living cell (pre-extraction) and after the extraction treatment (post-extraction), using SiR-tubulin (Spirochrome).

Two papers from Prof. Adam Hendricks' group have recently been published online: Acetylated Microtubules Are Preferentially Bundled Leading to Enhanced Kinesin-1 Motility, and Tau directs intracellular trafficking by regulating the forces exerted by kinesin and dynein teams. Linda Balabanian, co-author of the first paper, has kindly written a summary which can be read here. (February 2018)

Dr. Kyriaki Kostoglou, first Ph.D. student to graduate under the Department of Bioengineering’s supervision

Congratulations to Dr. Kyriaki Kostoglou, first Ph.D. student to graduate under the Department of Bioengineering’s supervision! Learn about her experiences at McGill and her advice to potential graduate students below. (January 2018)

Jaqueline Kort Mascort and Salvador Flores Torres in front of the BMES conference center

What's it like to present at a conference?  We caught up with two of our students to find out. (October 2017)

The Faculty of Engineering was granted the McGill’s 2017 Team Award for Equity and Community Building for its initiatives in creating a more equitable and inclusive environment. Equity Ambassadors Andy Catalano and Antonella Fratino proudly joined Dean Jim Nicell, Associate Dean Fabrice Labeau, and fellow Engineering Equity Ambassadors in receiving the award. (May 2017)

Tao Jiang and Abdullah Chaudhary

And the winter 2017 GREAT Award recipients are... Tao Jiang and Abdullah Chaudhary. Congratulations! We caught up with Tao and Abdullah to ask them about their research interests in the field of bioengineering. (February 2017)

LAPRESSE LOGO

Department Chair, Prof. Dan Nicolau, discusses the growing industry demands for bioengineers in La Presse. (November 2016)

Cover page of the BMES 2016 program

The Department was proud to exhibit again this year at the Biomedical Engineering Society's Annual Meeting (BMES) (October 5-8) in Minneapolis, MN. (October 2016)

It was our pleasure to meet our first cohort of undergraduate students at our orientation session on August 31st! (August 2016)

We are thrilled to announce that the proposed undergraduate program in Bioengineering (B.Eng.) has been approved by the Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur du Québec. The Department would like to extend thanks and gratitude to everyone who helped make this possible, and to the interested students who have been following our progress. Our first cohort will enroll in Fall 2016. For more information, please visit our Undergraduate Studies page. (July 2016)

Prof. Matt Kinsella is featured in Medicine Focus for his research involving non-invasive cancer detection. You can read more about his use of nanoparticles to track tumors in "The Future of Medicine is Very Small." (June 2016)

The Department of Bioengineering proudly participated in the 10th World Biomaterials Congress (May 17-22) and the Canada-Wide Science Fair (May 18-20). (May 2016)

Prof. Matt Kinsella and his student research group

We are please to announce that three abstracts from Prof. Matt Kinsella's research group have been published online: Bioprinting heterogeneous 3D tumor models, Multimodal theranostic polymersomes composed of hybrid inorganic nanoparticles and Mechanochemical synthesis of bismuth sulfide nanoparticles for their use as contrast probes in computed tomography imaging. These topics will be presented by the group at the upcoming World Biomaterials Congress (WBC) in Montreal (May 17-22). (April 2016)

Strands of proteins of different lengths move around the chip in the bio computer in directed patterns, a bit like cars and trucks navigating the streets of a city. Photo by Till Korten

Prof. Dan Nicolau is featured on CBC News for the development of an energy-efficient biological supercomputer. This biocomputer, which has the ability so solve multiple, complex mathematical problems simultaneously, is only the size of a book. Read more about his findings in his article, Parallel computation with molecular-motor-propelled agents in nanofabricated networks, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). (February 2016)

Figure from article showing comparative functional profiling of alternative isoforms

Prof. Yu (Brandon) Xia's co-authored article, Widespread Expansion of Protein Interaction Capabilities by Alternative Splicing, was showcased in McGill News. (February 2016)

Canada Research Chair Insignia

We are proud to announce that Prof. Yu (Brandon) Xia was awarded a Canada Research Chair Tier I in Computational and Systems Biology. Read more about the 25 McGill researchers awarded the CRC in The McGill Reporter. (February 2016)

Canada Research Chair Insignia

We proudly announce Prof. Amine Kamen as Canada Research Chair Tier I in Bioprocessing of Viral Vaccines. (November 2015)

On October 1st, the Department of Bioengineering welcomed colleagues from McGill, neighboring universities, and industry to its first annual Lab Open House. Guests were given personal tours of state-of-the-art facilities and were offered a glimpse at the kind of research conducted on site. (October 2015)

Rosalie Nardelli and Prof. Matt Kinsella standing at the McGill Bioengineering booth at the Biomedical Engineering Society conference

The Department of Bioengineering exhibited at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Tampa, Florida from October 7-10. (October 2015)

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) logo

We are proud to announce that Prof. Allen Ehrlicher is the recipient of a new foundation grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for his project, "Cellular mechanotransduction in the actin cytoskeleton." The funding is awarded to high-impact, long-term programs. (July 2015)

Illustration of the binding interaction between WT (Upper) and K255E (Lower) ACTN4 with actin filaments. Principle actin binding domains are depicted in blue, with the third putative site in yellow. The K255E mutation removes the bridge (green top) allowing the third putative actin binding domain (yellow) to be exposed, which increases the cross-linker affinity for actin.

Professor Allen Ehrlicher's article, Alpha-actinin binding kinetics modulate cellular dynamics and force generation, was published in the in the Journal PNAS. 
Commentary on above article by W.Ahmed and T.Betz: Dynamic cross-links tune the solid-fluid behavior of living cells. (May 2015)

Figure from article: Representative random network under increasing stretch.

Professor Allen Ehrlicher's article, Structurally Governed Cell Mechanotransduction through Multiscale Modeling, was published in the in the Journal Scientific Reports. (February 2015)

Figure from article: Released proplatelets can elongate, pause, and retract. Representative time-lapse differential interference contrast microscopy: released proplatelets in static tissue culture elongate, pause, and retract over time. Scale bar is 10 µm. Red arrows indicate proplatelet tips.

Professor Allen Ehrlicher's article, Microtubule sliding drives proplatelet elongation and is dependent on cytoplasmic dynein, was published in the in the Journal Blood. (January 2015)

Cover page of the BMES program

The Department of Bioengineering will be exhibiting at the Biomedical Engineering Society's Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas from October 22-25. (October 2014)

Cover of 2015 program

Department Chair, Dan Nicolau, will be chairing the upcoming BiOS 2015 Symposium. (August 2014)

Professor Allen Ehrlicher's article, Platelet Bioreactor on a Chip, was published in the Journal Blood. (July 2014)

Figure showing fungi going through a maze

Professor Dan Nicolau was an invited speaker at the International Workshop on Micro-and Nanomachines in Hannover, Germany where he presented his talk: From Molecular Motors to Fungal Intelligence. (July 2014)

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