Stephanie Bryant News

CU Boulder receives $1M grant to advance biofabrication training for PhD students

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 21:51:49 +0000

CU Boulder receives $1M grant to advance biofabrication training for PhD students Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/15/2024 - 15:51

Susan Glairon

Professor Stephanie Bryant

Professor Jason Burdick

Photo caption: Morgan Riffe (left), a PhD candidate in Materials Science & Engineering, looks on while Meg Cooke, PhD, research associate in the BioFrontiers Institute, explains the 3D printing process to fabricate biomaterial scaffolds.

The Materials Science and Engineering Program at the �� received a $1M grant to fund interdisciplinary doctoral research training in biofabrication.

The National Institutes of Health T32 award will support this rapidly developing field, which enables precise and effective ways to study and treat various medical conditions, such as growing new organs for transplants or repairing damaged tissues.

The grant, along with support from CU Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science, Research & Innovation Office (RIO), the Graduate School and various departments and programs, will support five new trainees each year for a period of two years each, over the next five years. Professors Jason Burdick and Stephanie Bryant with the Materials Science and Engineering Program, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the BioFrontiers Institute are the principal investigators.

“Biofabrication is an emerging field with growing advances each year,” Burdick said. “It’s important to train students in this field to not only advance their own dissertation research, but also to train a future workforce that will help turn biofabrication methods into new products and clinical therapies.”

Biofabrication uses advanced 3D processing techniques, allowing engineers to design and build materials that serve as tools in medical research and treatments. Examples of these materials include: scaffolds that support the growth and development of new tissues, microparticles used for targeted drug delivery, and microfluidic platforms, which are small-scale devices that manipulate tiny amounts of fluids for research and diagnostic purposes.

Representative biofabrication technologies include 3D printing, the use of electrospinning to create fine fibers similar to natural tissues and photopatterning to develop detailed and complex designs.

The ability to shape material structures at such a detailed level can be used to grow new tissues for transplants or repair damaged organs, develop materials that can help the body heal itself by promoting the growth of healthy cells, design microparticles that can deliver medication directly to targeted areas in the body, provide more accurate environments for growing cells in the lab, and create more realistic models of human tissues for research and testing to reduce the need for animal models.

At CU Boulder, students applying to the program will be starting their second year of PhD training in one of the following five engineering disciplines—biological engineering, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, and mechanical engineering. Those accepted to the training program will be supervised and mentored by the T32 preceptors based in these engineering departments and programs and co-mentored by clinical collaborators to provide a biomedical and clinical focus to the work.

“This training program builds upon the excellence in biofabrication that we have in engineering at CU Boulder,” Bryant said. “It offers an exciting new opportunity for our graduate students to gain a deeper understanding of biofabrication, complementing the core knowledge they are developing in their PhD program.”

As part of the training program, a monthly seminar series will be developed for students and postdocs across biofabrication groups to share their work within the community. Students will also receive a certificate in biofabrication. The group will create a website for the training program and include biofabrication resources to the broader community.

CU Boulder's Materials Science and Engineering Program received a $1M grant to fund doctoral research training in biofabrication, a field that enables precise and effective ways to study and treat medical conditions, such as growing new organs or repairing damaged tissues.

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Joints that could heal themselves? Researchers could get there in 5 years

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 15:52:50 +0000

Joints that could heal themselves? Researchers could get there in 5 years Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/26/2024 - 09:52

Imagine a day when joints could heal themselves.

At the first inkling of a creaky knee, patients could get a single shot in the joint that would not only stop their cartilage and bone from eroding, but kick start its regrowth. In more advanced cases, that shot might also deliver a biomaterial repair kit to patch holes in tissue. If multiple joints ached, an annual IV infusion could ferry regenerating therapies to all of them at once.

This may seem like a dream to the 32.5 million people who suffer from osteoarthritis. This week, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) awarded up to $39 million to a ��-led team of scientists to work toward making it a reality.

The Novel Innovations for Tissue Regeneration in Osteoarthritis (NITRO) program was the first created under ARPA-H, a new federal agency to support “high-impact solutions to society's most challenging health problems.”

With the cash infusion, a dream team of engineers, medical scientists and veterinarians from CU Boulder, the CU Anschutz Medical Campus and Colorado State University can make an aggressive final push toward a goal many have spent their entire careers pursuing.

“Within five years, our goal is to develop a suite of non-invasive therapies that can end osteoarthritis,” said project leader and Principal Investigator Stephanie Bryant, PhD, professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and the BioFrontiers Institute at CU Boulder. “It could be an absolute game-changer for patients.”

An epidemic without a cure

Osteoarthritis is the third most common disease in the U.S. and affects roughly one in six people over age 30 worldwide.

The disease causes cartilage—the buffering tissue that keeps bones from grinding together—to decay. Over time, bone is damaged too, which reshapes the joint and results in movement becoming painful.

Age and obesity increase risk, and rates are on the rise as the U.S. population ages and grows more sedentary. At present, patients are generally limited to two options: Treat the pain and, when that is no longer adequate, surgically replace the joint. There is no cure.

Co-Principal Investigators Michael Zuscik, PhD, professor and research vice chair in the Department of Orthopedics and Karin Payne, PhD, associate professor of orthopedics at CU Anschutz (Photo by Ryan Wuller/CU Anschutz)

Co-Principal Investigator Laurie Goodrich, DVM PhD, a veterinary clinician scientist and director of the Orthopaedic Research Center at Colorado State University’s Translational Medicine Institute (Photo courtesy of Goodrich)

“To truly address osteoarthritis, you have to get at both the biology and the structural problem,” said co-Principal Investigator Michael Zuscik, PhD, professor and research vice chair in the Department of Orthopedics at the Anschutz Medical Campus. “This unique Colorado dream team we have put together has the multidisciplinary expertise, and now the resources, to tackle both at once. We can approach curing the disease like never before.”

Zuscik spent 15 years developing and testing a drug that addresses the biology, nudging both cartilage and bone cells to produce proteins needed to rebuild. While promising, it must be injected every day.

Meantime, Bryant, a materials scientist, has worked for 26 years to develop three-dimensional gel-like biomaterials that can slip into the cracks of torn cartilage or worn bone, providing supportive scaffolding—like the joists of a new building—for the body’s own cells to migrate to.

And scientists at CSU have been working for years to perfect gene therapy techniques aimed at controlling inflammation and hastening cartilage healing.

The team now faces an engineering challenge—to devise methods to deliver these technologies to the body together, in a way that provides lasting benefit and treats multiple joints at once if needed.

A one-shot medical breakthrough

To that end, the team is developing nanoparticles that could be administered intravenously, serving as Trojan horses that migrate to inflamed sites and deliver a regenerative medicine cocktail that enables joints to heal.

The team hopes to ultimately commercialize three innovations: a healing shot, an injury-patching hydrogel, and an annual infusion for systemically treating osteoarthritis.

When it’s time for trials, co-Principal Investigator Laurie Goodrich, DVM PhD, a veterinary clinician scientist and director of the Orthopaedic Research Center at CSU’s Translational Medicine Institute, will lead the charge in animals.

“CSU’s expertise in veterinary medicine will play a crucial role in helping to move this science to the next step,” said Goodrich. “It’s humbling to be a part of it.”

However, it’s not enough to simply develop such treatments, said Co-Principal Investigator Karin Payne, PhD, associate professor of orthopedics at CU Anschutz.

“At the core of this, the goal is to develop a therapy that’s going to be available to all Americans, not just a privileged few,” Payne said, noting that researchers will include a demographically diverse group of study participants and minimize cost to make the treatments as affordable as possible.

Learn more about AB Nexus

Early collaborations between team members were catalyzed by AB Nexus, which provides internal funding and resources to support partnerships between CU Boulder and CU Anschutz.

The Colorado team is one of five performer teams to receive an award in the NITRO program.

“This is one of the most debilitating diseases there is and leads to people not being able to work or do the things they love,” Bryant said. “The resulting lack of exercise increases the risk of other problems like heart disease. For us to have a chance to improve people’s lives—it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

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National Science Foundation REU grant will support summer undergraduate research into materials science and engineering

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 19:33:03 +0000

National Science Foundation REU grant will support summer undergraduate research into materials science and engineering Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/07/2023 - 13:33

Jeff Zehnder

Above: Four 2022 summer program students at a poster presentation.
Header Image: Participants in the 2022 Materials Science and Engineering summer research program.

Undergraduate students interested in materials research will get a boost at the �� next summer thanks to a new Research Experience for Undergraduates grant from the National Science Foundation.

The Materials Science and Engineering Program is receiving a three year award from NSF to support a 10-week summer program that pairs students from across the country with CU Boulder’s top researchers in the field.

The effort is particularly focused on hosting students from smaller and minority serving institutions that may not have large research budgets said Professor Stephanie Bryant, director of the Material Science and Engineering program in the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

“I’m super excited. Our job as a university is to educate students and the ability to do this over the summer and give them a research experience – which for many may be their first research experience – is outstanding and enables us to have a broader impact beyond Boulder,” said Bryant.

The new program will start in summer 2024. Interested students will complete an application in spring 2024 to be reviewed by faculty and staff. Selected students will then spend 10 weeks working full time on an materials-focused research project and will receive funding for travel and a stipend along with housing in on-campus apartments.

Faculty and students in the materials science and engineering program conduct work across a broad range of disciplines, including medicine, sustainability, nanotechnology, and advanced computing.

The material science program has hosted undergraduates for summer research programs the past two summers, but those efforts relied on faculty with pre-existing funding whereas this initiative will provide dedicated support.

“This really opens up opportunities for both students and faculty,” Bryant said. “Students will have more options for the kind of projects they can work on and faculty can participate – even if they don’t have standalone funding from the National Science Foundation.”

The ultimate goal of the summer initiative is to encourage more students to pursue careers in research.

The Research Experience for Undergraduates program will particularly focus on “Engineering Materials for a Healthy World,” with enrolled students able to conduct interdisciplinary work with materials in energy, health, and infrastructure.

The initiative also has a seminar series for participants that aims to bring together materials science with science justice, science policy, and social justice.

“Students are the next generation and they’ll be solving hard problems. We want to get them thinking about justice and policy and how the work they do impacts people across socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities so they can have long term positive impacts in the world,” Bryant said.

Undergraduate students interested in materials research will get a boost at the �� next summer thanks to a new Research Experience for Undergraduates grant from the National Science Foundation. The Materials Science and Engineering Program is receiving a three year award from NSF to support a...

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Growing materials science research at CU Boulder - Letter from the Director

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 19:11:22 +0000

Growing materials science research at CU Boulder - Letter from the Director Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/13/2022 - 12:11

Save the Date for the 2023 Innovation in Materials Symposium!

The second annual Innovation in Materials Symposium at CU Boulder will be held Friday, August 18, 2023. Find out more and sign up to receive registration information.

Prof. Michael Toney discussing shared facilities at the Innovation in Materials Science Symposium.

The 2022 Research Experience for Undergraduates cohort with Stephanie Bryant.

Prof. Wei Zhang (right) and Graduate Research Assistant Zepeng Lei study plastic materials in the Zhang Lab.

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

As we near the end of the fall semester, I wanted to take this opportunity in our biannual newsletter to highlight some of our recent exciting events and outstanding achievements by our faculty and students. As director, I continue to be impressed by the high caliber materials community at CU Boulder.

Building the materials community

The MSE Program hosted its inaugural “Innovation in Materials Science Symposium” in August 2022. The symposium was the first of its kind but was built from the rich history of excellence in Materials Science at CU Boulder over the past 30+ years. The symposium brought together over 180 attendees from across our campus as well as our neighbors at NREL, Colorado School of Mines, CU Anschutz Medical Campus and local companies.

The scientific talks from leaders in the field and over 50 posters from our trainees highlighted how materials are helping to address some of the world’s toughest problems including the energy crisis, the need for sustainable construction, and use of 3D printing to improve healthcare. We are excited to announce this symposium will be an annual event; next year's is planned for August 18, 2023. Sign up to receive more information about the symposium.

Undergraduate engineering research with science justice and policy

This past summer, the MSE Program held its first summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) on “Engineering Materials for a Healthy World”. The program offered a diverse array of research opportunities covering topics in energy, health, and infrastructure. Unique to our program was a weekly seminar series on science justice and science policy.

These concepts should be closely intertwined with research to solve real-world problems in a just and equitable way. We are in the early stages of planning for next summer, with applications opening up in early spring. Please encourage your undergraduate students to apply.

Big awards and high impact publications

Our faculty and students have been busy. In Professor Gang Cao’s Nature paper, he explains a new phenomenon of how electrons move in a honeycomb lattice for applications in quantum materials. Professor Wei Zhang is making strides to address the plastic waste problem through a new chemistry that enables chemical recycling of thermoset plastics; this work appears in Nature Chemistry. Professor Kristi Anseth has developed a novel expansion microscopy technique that uses materials to enable super-resolution of 3D tissues, which is described in Advanced Materials. Assistant Professor Wyatt Shields has had a tremendous year being awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation along with NSF CAREER Award, Pew Biomedical Scholars Award, and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program Award.

Several MSE faculty, who are also Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) fellows, will contribute to five recently funded multi-million dollar Department of Energy Centers (EFRCs) tackling climate change. Our PhD students, Tom Chaney and Keenan Wyatt were awarded NSF GRFP fellowships. Two MSE PhD alumni, Camila Uzcategui and Johnny Hergert who co-founded the company Vitro3D in 2020 have received their first investment round of $1.3 million. Vitro3D aims to bring volumetric 3D printing to the market.

I am incredibly proud of our graduate students and faculty that make CU Boulder one of the top institutions for materials research.

Professor Stephanie Bryant
Director, Materials Science and Engineering Program

As we near the end of the fall semester, I wanted to take this opportunity in our biannual newsletter to highlight some of our recent exciting events and outstanding...

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Summer engineering research with a science justice and policy component at CU Boulder

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 18:03:26 +0000

Summer engineering research with a science justice and policy component at CU Boulder Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/30/2022 - 11:03

Jeff Zehnder

Above: Four REU students at a poster presentation.
Header Image: Participants in the 2022 Materials Science and Engineering REU program.

Undergraduate students picked up hands-on experience in materials science through a unique research program.

The 2022 Research Experience for Undergraduates pilot offered college students from across the country a chance to come to the �� and spend ten weeks over the summer working in the labs of leading materials science and engineering faculty.

“The theme of the program was engineering materials for a healthy world,” said Stephanie Bryant, director of the materials science and engineering program. “Students were looking at health, alternative energy, and infrastructure; things that can really improve life on this planet.”

For participant Jaylen Lewis, an undergraduate engineering student from Texas’s Prairie View A&M University, it was his first chance at research experience.

“I’d never done research before or even had an internship, so it was opportunity after opportunity,” Lewis said. “I liked working in the fabrication center and working on PCB design the most.”

The goal of the REU was to provide immersive experience where students could study a topic in depth, working with a supportive community to help cement their career trajectory. Bryant said programs like this are particularly beneficial to students from smaller or less research intensive universities.

“Some institutions have very limited research for undergrads. Research experiences like this one at CU Boulder gave students a chance to work on cutting-edge materials technologies that are addressing some of our world’s biggest problems,” Bryant said.

Additionally, attendees had opportunities to take part in seminars on science justice issues and public policy, which Bryant said are critical to making an impact in our world.

Numerous MSE graduate students also served as mentors to program participants.

Undergraduate students taking part in the REU received a stipend and travel assistance, and were provided an on-campus apartment during their stay in Colorado.

Bryant is hopeful the REU initiative helped to get the word out about CU Boulder’s materials science and engineering program, which is as graduate program and research hub for dozens of interdisciplinary faculty members conducting cutting-edge investigations and education in the materials realm.

The MSE program aims to continue the initiative in summer 2023, with an application announcement window expected in early spring.

Undergraduate students picked up hands-on experience in materials science through a unique research program. The 2022 Research Experience for Undergraduates pilot offered...

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