Eight Undergraduates Participating in the Fall 2018 Armour R&D Program
Eight Armour College of Engineering undergraduate students and their faculty mentors have been awarded Fall 2018 Armour R&D Fellowships. The program, an Armour College of Engineering Distinctive Education initiative, offers undergraduate engineering students the opportunity to gain hands-on research and development experience in the lab of a faculty mentor.
Armour R&D is a competitive program offered every fall, spring and summer semester. Students are selected to participate in the program based on the proposed research scope and quality of their submitted proposals. The program culminates each semester with the Armour R&D Expo in which students present the results of their research.
The Fall 2018 Armour R&D projects are categorized under two of the four IIT Engineering Themes: Health and Energy. These themes represent areas in which engineers can create solutions of global impact that advance society.
HEALTH
Andrew Budiman (BME, 5th Year) and Abhinav Bhushan, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering will work on the project, Insulin Resistance in a Liver-Adipose organ system-on-a-chip. The purpose of this project is to study the mechanisms of insulin resistance and prediabetes by utilizing and constructing a liver-adipose organ-on-a-chip metabolic system. Future applications of this research could open opportunities for creating multi-faceted organ-on-a-chip, as well as adding to the knowledge base of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Yasmin Ahmed (BME, 4th Year) and Abhinav Bhushan, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, will start on their project Insulin Resistance in Adipose Tissue from Patient-Derived IPS Cells. This project aims to explore the development of insulin resistance in adipose tissue derived from patient stem cells by designing and assembling a microfluidic device to mimic the native environment
Chaeeun Lee (BME, 4th Year) and Abhinav Bhushan, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, will start work on their project, Establishment of a Microfluidic Model of Insulin Resistance in Primary Hepatocytes. The objective of this project is to establish a microfluidic model of insulin resistance in primary hepatocytes and to study adipose-liver interactions under different conditions of insulin resistance. In the future, this project will contribute to development of disease models, drug screening, and drug development.
Diana Carolina Velasqyuz Aldana (BME, 3rd Year) and Ken Tichauer, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, will start work on their project, SUSD2 expression levels on various breast cancer cell lines. The project objective is to evaluate the SUSD2 protein expression in various cancer cell lines to establish a more complete analysis of its expression levels in breast cancer and validate its potential use as the biomarker of choice in the creation of an innovative method for cancer staging.
Daniel Medina (BME, 2nd Year) and Seok Hoon Hong Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, will work on the project, Controlling Bacterial Biofilms for Medical, Environmental, and Food Safety Applications. The overall research project seeks to investigate different ways to inhibit a pathogenic bacteria biofilm with a probiotic bacteria biofilm. Potential future applications for this research project include the engineering of new antimicrobial products and use of innovative, more effective techniques to control bacterial infections.
ENERGY
Bijun Chen (ECE, 5th Year) and John Shen, Grainger Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will begin their project Parasitic Inductances Extraction of Wide Bandgap Power Semiconductor Devices. The aim for this project is to extract the parasitic inductances of Wide Bandgap(WBG) power semiconductors. WBG devices have better performance than normal semiconductors produced by silicon, but also have limitations. This work will focus on different types of GaN power devices. Such parasitic inductances extraction will be helpful to both circuit designers and packaging engineers.
Zhu Wang (ME, 4th Year) and Philip Nash Charles and Lee Finkl Professor of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering and Director of the Thermal Processing Technology Center, will begin their project, Numerical Simulation of Diffusion in Capillaries on Earth and in Microgravity. This project will analyze diffusion coefficients of various impurities in molten Germanium and Silicon for more efficient semiconductor manufacturing. Diffusion coefficients will be evaluated in a controlled environment on Earth before testing it in microgravity at NASA's International Space Station. This work will help promote the advancement of fabricating semiconductors, enhance manufacturing procedures, and create better crystals for smaller, more powerful devices.
Poshak Saran Guru Moorthy (ME, 3rd year) and Carrie Hall Assistant Professor of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, will continue their project, Engine Simulation. There is a need to simulate the models of high diesel fuel engines in various operating conditions in order to further understand the intricacies of combustion models in the engine to convert them to dual fuel. This project entails building the simulation from the ground up and acquiring data of the engine model under a range of engine operating conditions to help enable further work in converting to dual fuel systems.
