The NIH has announced that it will fund SCBioMat, the South Carolina Center of Biomaterials for Tissue Regeneration, directed by PI Naren Vyavahare.

World-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon and scientist Dr. Peter Zilla from the University of Cape Town will present “Prosthetic Heart Valves: The Illusion of Progress and the Plight of the Developing World” at the Page Morton Hunter Bioengineering Distinguished Seminar Series on November 23 at 11:00 a.m. in 111 Rhodes Annex.

This summer, ground was broken in Charleston on the MUSC campus for a 100,000 sq ft building that will house researchers within the South Carolina Bioengineering Alliance.

Dr. Alexey Vertegel’s project, Novel Antibacterial Peptide coatings of Hernia Repair Implants, has been awarded funding by the Carolina Medical Center.

Opened this fall, a 29,000-sq-ft addition to Rhodes Research Center provides laboratories, classrooms, and offices for bioengineering students, faculty, and staff. Designed to advance basic and translational biomedical research, Rhodes Annex is a dynamic setting for the formal and informal meetings essential to research.

Carmen Gacchina, a student in Dr. Anand Ramamurthi’s lab, has been invited to present her research at the National Graduate Student Research Festival at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Van Tran, a student in Dr. Xuejun Wen’s lab, has been awarded a fellowship from the Vietnam Education Foundation to study laser sintering for bone tissue regeneration.

The NSF awarded MRI grants to Drs. Bruce Gao and Jiro Nagatomi for development of a laser microbioparticle separator and acquisition of a nano-to-microscale 3D live-cell imaging system, respectively.

The U.S. Army has awarded Dr. Xuejun Wen a grant for medical research on the use of human albumin plastic to inhibit bacteria and biofilm on orthopaedic implants.