Speakers

Hani Awad, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Orthopaedics and a principal investigator in the Center for Musculoskeletal Research. He received his PhD degree in 1999 at the University of Cincinnati and later completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Duke University. Since joining the University of Rochester in the Fall of 2004, Dr. Awad's research programs focusing on musculoskeletal tissue engineering have won several grant awards from the NIH and multiple foundations, and resulted in more than 20 peer-reviewed manuscripts out of a total of 44 published papers to date. Dr. Awad has received multiple honors including the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Early Career Translational Research Award in Biomedical Engineering. In addition, Dr. Awad along with the research group from his alma mater won the 2007 AAOS Kappa Delta Ann Doner Vaughn Award in recognition of their research on Functional Tissue Engineering for Tendon Repair.
Dr. Awad's research focuses primarily on Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering with an emphasis on challenging clinical problems and translational solutions, using in vivo and in vitro models of tissue repair and clinically translatable outcome measures to assess the efficacy of repair. A major theme in his laboratory has been the development and evaluation of scaffolds that are derived from decellularized tissue grafts and modified as cell and drug delivery vehicles for applications in clinically relevant models of tendon, bone, and cartilage repair.

Dr. Lawrence Bonassar is Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. His research group focuses on the regeneration and analysis of musculoskeletal tissues, including bone and cartilage. His laboratory approach involves a multidisciplinary strategy using techniques in biomechanics, biomaterials, cell biology, and biochemistry. Applications of this technology include the repair of articular cartilage, intervertebral disc, trachea and craniofacial defects. At the cellular level, this work focuses on understanding the interactions of chondrocytes, fibroblasts and stem cells with biomaterials. This includes grafting of cell adhesion peptides to polymers and characterizing the effects of these alterations on the way in which cells sense their environment. Of specific interest is the extent to which intrinsic mechanical properties and externally applied forces control chondrocyte matrix assembly. This work feeds into studies of the generation of biological structures at the tissue level, where cell-biomaterials interactions include understanding the way in which materials processing techniques affect cell behavior. This has led to the development of techniques known as tissue injection molding and cell-mediated sintering, whereby living implants are formed under conditions that support cell viability. Extensions of this work are aimed at fabricating composite tissues with heterogeneous structures and anisotropic properties. The third focus area of the group is understanding structure-property relationships in native and engineered tissues. This involves experimental correlation of tissue mechanical properties with biochemical composition as well as mathematical modeling of tissue assembly processes and structure-property relationships.

Dr. Bonassar earned his Doctoral and Masters degrees in Material Science from MIT and a Bachelors in Materials Science from Johns Hopkins University. He has been a member of the faculty at Cornell since 2003 and is the author of 90 publications.

Michael Guzzo is the Site Engineering Manager for Ethox International, Inc., part of the Moog Medical Devices Group in Buffalo NY. Ethox is a medical device manufacturer specializing in the design, manufacture, and sterilization of proprietary and contract medical devices. The Engineering group is responsible for device design and development, working with customers on requirements definition, material selection, prototyping, design and process validation, and sterilization management.

Michael has a BS degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo and has been in the medical device industry for 14 years. He has been in various engineering and management positions in Quality, Sterilization, Manufacturing/Operations, and Design Engineering. Prior to entering the medical device field, he was a flight controller at NASA Johnson Space Center for 8 years, working in the Communications Division and Safety & Mission Assurance Office before returning to Western New York.

MICHAEL V. SEFTON is University Professor and Michael E. Charles Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry and the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto. He was educated at the University of Toronto (B.A.Sc., 1971) and at M.I.T. (Sc.D., 1974) and has been at the University of Toronto since 1974. He was Director of the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto from 1999-2005 and President of the US Society For Biomaterials in 2006. He was named University Professor in 2003 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2005. In 2008, he received the Founders Award of the US Society For Biomaterials and the Killam Prize in Engineering of the Canada Council.

Patrick T. Mather earned B.S. (’89) and M.S. (‘90) degrees from Penn State in Engineering Science and Mechanics, following which he went on to receive his Ph.D. in Materials at U.C. Santa Barbara in 1994. He then worked for the Air Force Research Lab until 1999, focusing on polymeric nanocomposites. Mather’s academic career began at University of Connecticut, Chemical Engineering, in 1999. There, he focused on polymeric materials science, studying liquid crystalline polymers, hybrid inorganic-organic polymers, and fuel cell membranes. Having received tenure, Mather then moved to Case Western Reserve University where he established a research program on functional biomaterials. In the Fall of 2007, Pat was recruited to Syracuse University, as the Milton and Ann Stevenson Professor of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering. He is the director of the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute. Mather’s research interests center around smart materials, including shape memory polymers, polymeric nanocomposites, and biodegradable polymers for medical devices.

Stephen Caracci joined Corning in 1998 as a Senior Research Associate in the Polymer Core directorate where he led the Polymer Optical Devices group. He worked on a variety of different optical devices for the telecommunication sector focused on polymer material processing.

In mid-2002, he began working with Corning Life Sciences to determine the commercial opportunity for Corning’s micro-barcode technology as a taggant for bioassays. By late 2002, Steve began working on the Epic® project in a variety of roles. These included investigating alternative manufacturing technologies, managing its IP portfolio, waveguide coatings, project manager for new optical reader technology development.

In June 2009 Steve joined the Synthemax™ project as the project manager. The project has delivered a new completely synthetic coating to enable the growth of Human Embryonic Stem Cells (HESC) in serum free media.

Steve holds 15 US patents and has written over 20 journal publications

He holds a Doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana

Tracy MacNeal is a chemical engineer/MBA in Business Development for Praxis Technology, a titanium medical device company focusing on artificial joints, cardiac implants, and endoscopy. Her background includes new product launches in pharmaceuticals with Merck and consulting for several startups in cosmetics and sterile injectables. Her current role includes expansion of Praxis’ portfolio through the development of strategic relationships, as well as stewardship of Praxis’ finances and corporate strategy.