Illinois Medicine

years, has predicted the structure of an important class of membrane proteins and their complexes in bacteria that cause meningococcal meningitis, anthrax and staphylococcal infections. Bioengineering Associate Professor David Eddington along with COM Assistant Professor Yong Wang and Professor José Oberhol- zer, both in the department of surgery, were just awarded a $1.7 mil- lion NIH grant for a project on "A Novel Beta Cell Specific Microflu- idic Perifusion and Imaging Device for Islet Potency Testing," which started Jan. 1. The grant results from more than five years of previous collabo- ration and will generate a device used to run multiple tests simultane- ously to evaluate tissue rapidly prior to transplantation, which is only possible with their integrated microfluidic device. Speed is especially important with transplantation given that tissue function declines with every minute of delay. On another front, Bioengineering Associate Professor Yang Dai and COM Associate Professor Jonna Frasor, from the department of physiology and biophysics, will finish a 2 1/2-year project in June 2012 that addresses "A Systems Biology Understanding of Estrogen Receptor Action." With $100,000 from the Chicago Biomedical Consortium, the project has sought to integrate proteomic and genomic data through bio- informatics approaches, with the goal to identify key mechanisms con- trolling the activity of estrogen receptors, a drug target for breast cancer treatment, in different tissues in response to different drug compounds. This, in turn, may lead to novel therapeutic approaches in the treatment of hormone-dependent diseases. And wearing his newly fitted College of Medicine hat, Royston T Royston Brings Expertise, Long Tenure to Role as Department Head HOMAS ROYSTON TOOK ONLY A SMALL STEP up a very familiar ladder when he ascended to become head of the department of bioengineering in August. Interim head for two years after Richard Magin stepped down, Royston first joined University of Illinois at Chicago as an assis- tant professor in the department of mechanical engineering in 1995, upon receiving his PhD from The Ohio State University. Royston became associate professor in 2000 and a full professor in 2004, serving as director of graduate studies and associate head of mechanical and industrial engineering. He also became an adjunct faculty member in bioengineering in 1999. The director of the UIC Acoustics and Vibrations Laboratory, which develops novel medical imaging technology, Royston is currently focused on two related strands of research within bioengineering. The Audible Human Project is a National Institutes of Health-spon- sored effort to understand how sound and vibration are generated and travel throughout the torso and pulmonary system—and how disease and injury alter that dynamic. Royston's work in microscopic magnetic resonance elastography, with funding from NIH and the National Science Foundation, could help to identify anomalies such as tumors in nearly every organ in the body. It would accomplish this by vibrating a person inside the MRI in a way that helps to quantify stiffness and damping, properties that disease or trauma often alter. Royston's professional background also includes summer faculty appointments with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and Argonne National Laboratory. Royston has received awards from the Acoustical Society of America, National Science Foundation and the Univer- sity of Illinois at Chicago College of Engineering, and he became a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2007. R 32 | WINTER 2012 is working with Magin on a $1.5 million, four-year project that ends in February 2013 to study "MR Monitoring of Engineered Tissues." They've worked to develop new techniques to noninvasively monitor engineered tissue development, in vitro and in vivo, using novel magnetic resonance imaging techniques, including MR elastography, which involves estimat- ing tissue mechanical properties (stiffness and damping) based on im- ages of vibratory wave propagation in the tissue. This and similar research will be catalyzed further by the recent acquisition of a new high-field (9.4 Tesla), small-bore MR system placed near the bioengineering space on the west side of campus. This $2 mil- lion acquisition was made possible by an NSF equipment grant led by Magin as principal investigator, with co-investigators from six different colleges at UIC, including Medicine and Engineering. OYSTON FIGURES THE JOINT NATURE of the department will accelerate these sorts of efforts. "We have a presence on both sides of campus. That physi- cal closeness will foster successful research collabora- tions," he says, echoing Tobacman. "My being aware of what's going on at both colleges will lead to more connections being made. [What's going on] is not al- ways obvious if you're not in on those conversations." Within just a couple months of the structural switch, Royston had noticed a shift in the dynamic. "I've definitely seen a greater awareness on both sides of campus about each other, a fresh, increased eagerness to explore what we can do together," he says. "I view that as my job, to facilitate those types of connections. I'm thrilled about that." With 14 full-time faculty right now, the department envisions having 19 by fiscal year 2015. The undergraduate bioengineering program expects to expand to more than 270 students from 230 by 2016. At the graduate level, the department has 50 master's students and 110 PhD can- didates, and the expansion plan calls for 75 and 135, respectively, within five years. Bioengineering graduate courses focus on multidisciplinary sub- jects like neural engineering, cell and tissue engineering, bioinformatics and biomedical imaging. Royston says he's working with the UIC Innova- tion Center to explore interdisciplinary experiences in areas like medical device development. "I'm optimistic that something can be developed there," he says. "The interdisciplinary thing would be very attractive to a significant subset of our students. There's already a lot of synergy." Department heads across the College of Medicine are looking forward to further developing those synergies, Tobacman says. "They saw the possibilities of how it could benefit them to have a strong depart- ment of bioengineering that was not apart," he says. "Across the different disciplines, leaders in the college saw opportunities." PHOTO: LLOYD DEGRANE

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