Dean Martin Dunn presented the college’s new strategic vision and name at a faculty/staff celebration on February 28, setting the trajectory for the exciting things to come for the newly renamed College of Engineering, Design and Computing.
On March 6, the college and Office of Advancement kicked off the fundraising campaign for the new building at an intimate event held at CU Denver CityCenter.
All in all, it’s a very exciting time for the college, and these advancements were covered in the Denver Post and CU Denver Today. Both pieces paint an accurate picture of the exciting things to come.
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).
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.