The BME Abrams Scholars Program provides outstanding BME undergraduate students at both UNC and NC State with the opportunity to conduct hands-on, mentored research projects throughout the academic year (September through April). The program is competitive, and each year about 30-35 rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors are selected and paid a stipend to perform research under the guidance of a faculty member. The Scholars are highly motivated students who are generally very productive in the lab, often presenting their work at local, regional, and even national conferences (such as BMES and IEEE meetings) and co-authoring journal articles. The Abrams Scholars Program experiences are a strong foundation for pursuing advanced degrees (graduate school, medical school, etc.) or applying for competitive jobs after graduation.
The Abrams Scholars Program is named after C. Frank Abrams, Jr., a BME and BAE emeritus faculty member. Dr. Abrams led the development of the first courses in Biomedical Engineering at NC State and was instrumental in the founding of NC State’s BME Department and ultimately the creation of the Joint BME Department at UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State. He was the Joint Department’s first senior design instructor and the first Director of Graduate Studies. He also held many leadership positions at NC State, including in the Faculty Senate and Provost’s Office.
Below is the 2020-2021 cohort of Abrams Scholars. We selected 38 excellent BME undergraduates from a very strong applicant pool to receive a mentored research fellowship funded by the NC State College of Engineering Research Experience for Undergraduates program.
Congratulations to the 2020-2021 Abrams Scholars!
| NAME | YEAR | BASE SCHOOL | PI | PROJECT TITLE |
| Kathryn Benedict | Sophomore | NC State | Jacque Cole (BME) | Developing biomimetic mineralized bone scaffolds |
| Allison Boyer | Sophomore | UNC | Koji Sode (BME) | Development of continuous D-serine sensor for mental health monitoring |
| April Brown | Junior | NC State | Yevgeny Brudno (BME) | Refillable Drug Delivery Devices |
| Anne Hope Cooper | Junior | UNC | Bill Polacheck (BME) | Unsupervised classification of engineered microvascular networks |
| Caroline Dau | Junior | NC State | Danny Freytes (BME) | Development of a novel delivery system for solubilized extracellular matrix biomaterials |
| Noah Dover | Junior | UNC | Rahima Benhabbour (BME) | Investigation of the Impact of Stem Cells on the Rheological Properties of Nanocellulose/ Chitosan-Based Bioinks |
| Mary Erb | Senior | NC State | Ashley Brown (BME) | Mechanisms of clot formation following treatment of traumatic injury with synthetic platelet-like particles |
| Jordan Feldman | Sophomore | UNC | Jason Franz (BME) | A novel self-paced treadmill controller to establish cause-effect relations between reduced push-off intensity and slowed walking speed |
| Callum Funk | Junior | UNC | Jason Franz (BME) | A ultrasound-based framework to inform the tailored prescription of assistive devices to enhance ankle push-off |
| Noor Hakam | Junior | NC State | Nitin Sharma (BME) | Modeling combined voluntary and artificially-induced muscle contractions for a fluidic human-robot interaction during 3-D reaching movements |
| Luciana Herrero | Senior | UNC | Michael Lewek (UNC Allied Health Sciences) | Quantifying limb propulsion through accelerometry |
| Aasim Hussain | Junior | NC State | Matt Fisher (BME) | Mechanical and bioactive effect of coating Melt electrowritten poly(ε-caprolactone) fibers with gelatin |
| Carina Iboaya | Junior | NC State | Matt Fisher (BME) | Interpenetrating hydrogel networks as a method for mimicking the mechanical behavior of human meniscus |
| Kamellia Karimpour | Sophomore | UNC | Virginie Papadopoulou (BME) | Time-series analysis of venous gas emboli after human dives: individual susceptibility, acclimatization and ultrasonic quantification |
| Maddison Khire | Sophomore | UNC | Andrea Giovannucci (BME) | A comparison of deep learning approaches for calcium imaging neural segmentation |
| Jeehyun Kim | Senior | UNC | Xiaogang Hu (BME) | Design of a portable multi-channel electrical stimulator |
| Manasi Krishnakumar | Sophomore | NC State | Ashley Brown (BME) | Drug-loaded nanogels for treatment of myocardial infarction and cardiac fibrosis |
| Rohan Krishnan | Sophomore | UNC | Brian Diekman (BME) | Genome editing and tissue engineering to investigate the genetic basis of osteoarthritis risk |
| Tahia Monjuli | Junior | NC State | Nitin Sharma (BME) | Spatially Distributed Electrical Stimulation of Muscles |
| Bevin Neill | Junior | NC State | Yevgeny Brudno (BME) | Mathematical Modeling of Drug Delivery Systems |
| Napoleon Nguyen | Junior | UNC | Koji Sode (BME) | Development of faradaic impedimetric immuno-sensor for POCT type mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) biomarker detection |
| Ana Laura Pantaleão dos Santos | Senior | NC State | David Lalush (BME) | Analytics of Combined PET-MR Imaging of Renal Cell Carcinomas |
| Emily Pierce | Sophomore | NC State | Michael Daniele (BME) | 3D Printing and Patterning of Vascularized Tissues and Vasculogenic Biomaterials |
| Jennifer Potts | Junior | NC State | Jacque Cole (BME) | Effect of Brachial Plexus Birth Injury on Bone Osteoclast and Osteoblast Activity |
| Nita Prabhu | Sophomore | UNC | Wesley Legant (BME) | Microfabricated substrates to measure physiologically realistic cell migration forces |
| Bhairavy Puviindran | Junior | NC State | Danny Freytes (BME) | Bioreactors for vocal fold decellularization |
| Vincent Roche | Junior | NC State | Jacque Cole (BME) | Effects of tissue heterogeneity on vertebral bone mechanical properties |
| Mohini Sauhta | Sophomore | UNC | Helen Huang (BME) | Identifying agonistic and antagonistic relationship of muscles using the synergy hypothesis |
| Jake Schulman | Junior | NC State | David Zaharoff (BME) | Development of Vaccines against Fentanyl and Other Drugs of Abuse |
| Sahil Sethi | Sophomore | UNC | Helen Huang (BME) | Fault-tolerant control – reactive balance adjustment in perturbed Human – Robot system |
| Dylan Silkstone | Sophomore | NC State | Ke Cheng (BME) | Biodistribution of exosomes in the murine lung |
| Elizabeth Stanley | Junior | UNC | Imran Rizvi (BME) | Photochemical Targeting of Chemoresistance in Ovarian Cancer: The Role of Mechanical Stress |
| Matias Tenorio | Junior | NC State | Rohan Shirwaiker (NC State ISE) | Computational Modeling of Particle Drug Delivery in a 3D Canine Bronchopneumonia Model |
| Matthew Traenkle | Senior | NC State | Ke Cheng (BME) | 3D cell culture lung stem cells regenerative medicine |
| Christopher Vogel | Junior | NC State | Alon Greenbaum (BME) | Investigating the effects of E-cigarette smoke on mice lungs through 3D-imaging and novel exposure generation system |
| Emily Warren | Junior | UNC | Bill Polacheck (BME) | Quantitative morphometrics of cell derived matrix |
| Annie Kate Watson | Sophomore | NC State | Jacque Cole (BME) | Designing a bone-on-chip platform to mimic the ischemic stroke bone microenvironment |
| Jason Xie | Junior | UNC | Xiaogang Hu (BME) | Continous and real-time control of a virtual robotic hand |