Ms. Claire Witherel of Drexel University, School of Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Kara Spiller will not be able to attend the IEEE Section Night. Dr. Spiller has arranged for her graduate student, Ms. Claire Witherel, to give the talk in her place.

The inflammatory response plays a major role in the body’s response to injury, disease, or implantation of a biomaterial. When the inflammatory response functions normally, it can be a powerful force that promotes tissue repair and regeneration, but when it goes awry, disease takes hold and healing is impaired. The goal of the Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory at Drexel University is to understand the mechanisms by which the inflammatory response orchestrates successful tissue regeneration and to develop novel biomaterial strategies that apply these principles to situations in which tissue regeneration is impaired. In particular, we focus on the behavior of the macrophage, which can rapidly change behavior in response to environmental stimuli to promote inflammation, vascularization, tissue deposition, or remodeling. Through their dynamic phenotypic changes, macrophages function as major regulators of healing. In this talk, we will focus on our work to investigate the role of macrophages in tissue repair, especially angiogenesis, and how this information can be used to 1) design biomaterials that promote healing through the body’s natural healing mechanisms, and 2) develop novel diagnostics in regenerative medicine that allow a personalized medicine approach to wound care.

Biography:

Claire E. Witherel is a fifth-year PhD Candidate at Drexel University’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems working under Dr. Kara Spiller in the Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory. Claire completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University in 2012. During her undergraduate career, she held positions at Integra LifeSciences, a global medical technology company, including research and development, product development, and international regulatory affairs. Additionally, she conducted academic research supporting an international collaboration between Drexel’s Biomaterials and Drug Delivery Laboratory (PI: Anthony M. Lowman) and the Key Tissue Engineering Laboratory of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (PI: Yillin Cao & Wei Liu) developing and testing a semi-degradable hydrogel for cartilage repair. For Claire’s doctoral research, she received a Whitaker International Fellowship to collaborate with Dr. Paul Martin from University of Bristol, UK to explore immune cell-biomaterial interactions, aka, the foreign body response, live, using optically transparent transgenic zebrafish. Currently, Claire is focused on non traditional industry-academic collaborations exploring how immune cells, called macrophages, change their behavior in response to commercially-available biomaterials. With this knowledge, her goal is to design novel biomaterials that harness the immune response to promote tissue repair and regeneration.

Dr. Dennis Silage of Temple University, Electrical and Computer Engineering

The software defined radio (SDR) is a STEM outreach tool that is a great introduction to "wireless technology". Simple SDRs can be obtained inexpensively and can be used to engage students and engineers in this important aspect of EE other than the more expensive robots and quadcopters. The SDR can be used for interesting projects such as aircraft ACARS decoding, receiving NOAA and Meteor-M2 weather satellite images, decoding weather balloon telemetry, receiving DAB radio, decoding broadcast RDS, decoding APRS, and Inmarsat, Outernet and Iridium L-Band satellite data. In this IEEE Section Night presentation, the range of simple SDR hardware (RTL, less than $25) and freeware software for reception will be introduced as a gateway to Amateur Radio transmission using the next level of SDR/T (Analog Devices ADALM-PLUTO, about $150).

Biography:

Dennis Silage received the PhD in EE from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Temple University, teaches digital communication, digital signal and image processing and embedded processing systems. He is the faculty adviser for the Temple University Amateur Radio Club K3TU which is integrated into the EE curriculum and a Senior Member of IEEE.

Ms. Claire Witherel of Drexel University, School of Biomedical Engineering

Biography:

Dr. Dennis Silage of Temple University, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Biography: