Dr. Nikki Farnsworth, a Research Instructor working in the lab of Dr. Richard Benninger, was recently awarded a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Advanced-Postdoctoral Fellowship to study novel mechanisms of pancreatic β-cell death and to exploit these mechanisms to protect against the onset and progression of type 1 diabetes (T1D).

The goals of Dr. Farnsworth’s project are to determine the role of protein kinase C delta in regulating inflammation-mediated β-cell death and to determine the contributions of altered islet interactions with the extracellular matrix to β-cell death in T1D. This study will identify novel mechanisms of β-cell death during the onset of T1D using quantitative live cell imaging and a biomimetic 3D scaffold and will determine if modulation of these novel signaling mechanisms can protect against the onset of T1D.

Dr. Vira Kravets, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Richard Benninger’s lab was recently awarded the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship: an award for promising scientists entering their professional career in the type 1 diabetes research field. The fellowship will support understanding heterogeneity of insulin-producing beta cells and their calcium response to glucose. In collaboration with the University of Miami Dr. Kravets will study alternations in beta cell subpopulations of the encapsulated islets for transplantation therapy. One of the potential outcomes of this collaboration is improvement of transplantation of stem-cell-derived islets.

Niki Clark is a PhD student in Dr. Bodine’s Socially Assistive Robotics lab. She received her undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Biology, and she now works on developing a clinical augmentation tool for young children with complex cerebral palsy. Her current focus is on applying machine learning techniques to allow the robot to recognize each child’s movements, with an emphasis on behavior-based control to ensure the robot mimics movements that clinicians would make during therapeutic interaction. This work has been a collaboration across multiple disciplines that include Bioengineering, Computer Science, Early Childhood Education, and Industrial Design.

Dr. Mitchell VeDepo, a Postdoctoral Fellow of Bioengineering at the University of Colorado Denver, was recently awarded a postdoctoral grant by the American Heart Association (AHA). This award will help propel Dr. VeDepo’s project on the recellularization mechanisms for heart valve tissue engineering.

Valvular heart disease remains a significant cause of morbidity world wide and there is currently no ideal valve replacement. Dr. VeDepo’s project will help ‘build’ an ideal heart valve replacement through heart valve tissue engineering. This study will investigate the recruitment of autologous circulating cells for repopulating decellularized heart valve scaffolds using signaling chemokines and a novel bioreactor system. The results of this study will elucidate the recruitment of circulating cells and may lead to enhanced in situ recellularization of tissue engineered heart valves.