2022.02.25 - Resuming Announcements

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The MRTD Lab annoucements will resume after a 2-year hiatus. Here is a short list of key research highlights past two years.

— Graduate Students Jacob Goes and Vivian Nguyen have multiple research presentations this spring (ISMRM in London UK, CSCTR in Chicago, BME Dept Seminar on-campus).

— Rising Senior (‘23) Griffin Young commits to Master of Science Thesis research in the MRTD Lab.

— Senior (‘22) Oluwateniola (Teni) Akinwale is again selected as recipient of prestigious Armour College of Engineering PURE fellowship for her final semester research!

— Hyperfine Swoop is now deployed in the MRTD Lab at IIT (Jan 20 2022). Jacob Goes and Vivian Nguyen are vendor-trained on this system (Feb 2, 2022)

— Graduate student Fei Mo has graduated from IIT with her MS degree in BME! (Dec 21 2021)

— Graduate Student Fei Mo presents an oral talk on her research at the BMES conference (Virtual, Oct 2021)

— Undergraduate Junior (‘23) Cassandra (Cassie) Carlson is selected as a recipient of the Pritzker Institute’s RES-Match fellowship for Fall 2021 research!

— Senior (‘22) Mohammad Haque secures a one-semester co-op position in Cleveland, OH!

— Graduate student Fei Mo successfuly defended her MS thesis (July 15 2021)

— Rising Senior (‘22) Oluwateniola (Teni) Akinwale is selected as recipient of prestigious Armour College of Engineering PURE fellowship for summer research!

— Graduate students Emily Tao (Math), Mark Dhom (BME-ECE), Kimberly Reglos (BME-ECE), and Kian Madani (ECE-BME) have graduated from IIT with Masters degrees (May 14 2021)!

— Undergraduate students Marissa Redington (BME ‘23), Khiem Nguyen (CS ‘23), and Stephanie Brink (BME ‘22) are selected as the recipients of the Pritzker Institute’s RES-Match fellowship for spring 2021 research!

— Graduate student Blessing Obioma has graduated from IIT with her MS degree in BME! (August 20 2020)

— Seniors Yung-Chuan (William) Yang, Madison Davis, and Fei Mo graduate with their BS degrees in BME (May 6 2020)!!!

— Graduate student Blessing Obioma successfuly defended her MS thesis (May 6 2020)

— Graduate students Tsubasa Maeda (Gifu U), Jacob Goes and Blessing Obioma are co-authors for their research in Deep Learning at the 2020 CSCTR Conference in Chicago, IL (April 2020)

— Undergraduate Junior (‘21) Rosie Kwan (BME) is selected as the recipient of the Pritzker Institute’s RES-Match fellowship for Spring 2020 research!

— Graduate student Jacob Goes presents his research at the 2020 SCMR Conference in Orlando, FL

2019.02.08 - Yudai Suzuki presents at Society of Cardiovascular MR (SCMR) his research as SCMR Scholarship winner

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Yudai Suzuki BS, an exchange student (IIT-BME summer 2018) from Gifu University, presented his work on a creative application of deep neural network algorithms in absence of high-quality training datasets.

Yudai was selected as a recipient of a $500 scholarship award. His work was presented at the Quick Fire Session (Basic Sciences).

2019.02.01 - MRTD receives a 5-year $830,000 NIH Award

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Professor Kawaji has received the NIH K25 award, a five-year $830,000 quantitative mentored research grant in the technical development and clinical translation of a potentially important biomarker to measure the amount of oxygen utility in the heart. The NIH K25 is a mechanism that allows faculties such as Dr. Kawaji to develop specific expertise while working with senior faculty colleagues. For the NIH K25, Drs. Tim Carroll PhD (UofC Radiology), Amit Patel MD (UofC Medicine - Cardiology), and Konstantinos Arfanakis (IIT BME) will serve as senior mentors.

Dr. Kawaji’s K25 committee additionally consists of: Drs. John Georgiadis PhD (IIT BME Chair), Roberto Lang MD (UofC Medicine - Cardiology), Takeyoshi Ota MD PhD (UofC Surgery - Cardiothoracic Surgery), John Blair MD (UofC Medicine - Cardiology), and Ajit Devaraj PhD (Philips, Senior Scientist).

2018.12.01 MRTD Lab team awarded $154,000 AHA AIREA Grant

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Professors Marcella Vaicik and Keigo Kawaji have received a two-year, $154,000 award from the American Heart Association (AIREA) for running a research and education program to develop future biomedical engineers in the discovery and validation of novel tissue biomarkers for diseases in the heart and the brain.

Through this award, the IIT-BME team will initiate the AHA Challenges - a one-year program for both undergraduate and graduate students to pursue research and develop technical skills in tissue model design, validation, and novel imaging technology development.

2018.08.18 MRTD Lab Updated! (Version 1.01) 

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Our website has been updated!  Now we are at Version 1.01 (rev date 2018.08.18), with new lab members, summer research, and more!  

MRTD (re-) welcomes the following students into the group:

May 2018
Clinical Summer Immersion ENGR 499/599.
- Nanyque Sirkis (also continuing in 4+1 graduate program)
- Sze Lam Or (Primary Advisor: Dr. Kawaji)
- Eric Cunningham (Primary Advisor: Dr. Vaicik)
- Amreen Nasreen (Co-Advised by Drs. Kawaji and Vaicik)

Academic Writing Workshop (Faculty Innovation Grant with BMES+SWE)
- Akila Goel (Academic Writing Workshop Program Coordinator)

June 2018
Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
- Asma Shuaibi (REU '18; from IIT-BME)
- Sarah Schroeder (REU '18; from Washington State University)
- Karolena Lein (REU '18; from Arizona State University)
- Madison Moucka (REU '18; from Texas A&M University)

Visiting Exchange
- Yudai Suzuki BS (Visiting Exchange; from Gifu University, Japan)

August 2018
Graduate Program
- Jacob Goes (MS-PhD Program; from Northern Illinois University)
- Austeja Staneviciute (returning from Summer Internship; Vaicik Lab Member)

Undergraduate Program
- Mark Dhom

 

--MRTD-Keig
 

2018.02.17 - Dr. K's Biomedical Engineering Department Seminar Presentation (Feb 23rd)

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I am excited to give the BME department seminar series presentation on Friday February 23rd.  The title of my presentation is: "Discover your story – Episodes that Shape You in becoming a Biomedical Engineer"

With the primary objective of helping the primary BME student audience discover their moments that shape their conviction in becoming a biomedical engineer, I have decided to offer my own.  Here is a sneak preview of select presentation slides that I've prepared to emphasize the importance of mentorship in shaping who you are.

--MRTD-Keig

feb 23 workshop preview 1.JPG
feb 23 workshop preview 2.JPG

2018.02.10 - Announcing several Career Development Workshop Events (SASE and BMES)

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Announcing several Professional Development Workshops here:

First, on Tuesday, February 13th 12:50 - 1:40pm in Perlstein Hall Auditorium, IIT's SASE Chapter is organizing the "How to Successfully get an Internship 101" workshop.  

Second, on Wednesday February 14th 12:50 - 1:40pm, IIT's BMES Chapter is organizing the "Career Development Workshop" on resume preparation.  

--MRTD-Keig

2018.02.06 - LaunchX Chicago Event on March 3rd

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Dr. K is sharing the news that the LaunchX program is holding a regional Chicago event on March 3rd.  If any undergraduate or graduate student may be available on this date to check out this event in Downtown Chicago, I would highly recommend this!  

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/launchx-clubs-midwest-regional-demo-day-tickets-41840182111

From the website description:

"LaunchX Clubs Midwest Regional Demo Day is an event hosted by teen entrepreneurs, for teen entrepreneurs. 

Demo Day is a event to celebrate the progress of high school startup founders, while providing these entrepreneurs with support to continue to grow their businesses. Students in the LaunchX Clubs program have  been building their companies since September, conducting market research, prototyping, seeking feedback, iterating, selling, and building their business operations. Demo Day is an opportunity for these innovative, out-of-the-box thinkers to come together from across the midwest to showcase their progress and build connections with like-minded entrepreneurs. We are excited to welcome teams from around the region who will present their ventures within our year's theme of environmental sustainability to a group of experienced professionals from the local business and entrepreneurship ecosystem. "

 

2018.02.01 - BMES IIT Chapter event on Academic Writing Bootcamp

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It was nice meeting this year's BMES officers for the IIT chapter and the student members, and Dr. K thanks both the BMES organizers and the student members here for the opportunity to say hello and offer a short presentation on my research interestes.  

I am excited that many students had found some interest in my academic area of research.

I hope to next make a preliminary announcement regarding the upcoming Academic Writing Bootcamp (Date and Time TBA), expected within the next two weeks by February 14th.  

--MRTD-Keig

2018.01.31 - MRTD Lab Welcomes two new ACE-PURE & MIND students!

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Congratulations to Asma Shuaibi (BME `2020) and Neal (Nilkanth) Patel (BME `2018), who were respectively awarded the PURE (research) and MIND (design) awards from the Armour College of Engineering. They will spend the Spring 2018 semester working on their 10-week research and design projects.

Asma's PURE research project, entitled: "New Heart Tissue Biomarker Validation with Magnetic Resonance Imaging", will provide specific opportunities to gain initial research exposure to fundamental research methods, academic writing, and application of learned BME principles to conduct scientific experiments.  Her initial research focus will be on regional tissue measurement reproducibility, an important topic agreed by leading imaging experts as a priority task that warrants extensive validation.

Neal's MIND design project, entitled: "Extending Clinical Heart Tissue Scoring by Magnetic Resonance Imaging" will offer a BME software design experience that will eventually be used in the clinical hospital setting.  His project requires: learning concepts such as protected health information and anonymized data, how to handle imaging data, and developing a simple but robust software for physicians to better utilize and assess specific analysis features that has only been introduced on the newest of MRI scanner software system from the vendor Philips.

Again, congratulations to both Asma and Neal, and welcome to the MRTD Lab!

--MRTD-Keig