Category: News

Dr. Lawence J. Bonassar, the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria Professor in the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, has been announced as the recipient of the Orthopaedic Research Society 2023 Outstanding Achievement in Mentoring Award.

Nelly Andarawis-Puri (PI), Scott Rodeo (Co-I), Cindy Leifer (Co-I), Nozomi Nishimura (Co-I); Iwijn De Vlaminck (Co-I) have been awarded a $75,000 Cornell Engineering Sprout Award to study tendon injuries. Cornell Engineering Sprout Awards provide seed funding to support teams of investigators pursuing novel research at the intersection of multiple fields with a goal of being able to submit the work to outside funding agencies.

The proposed studies are to determine the damage component that is lacking in sub-rupture injuries to mount the necessary inflammatory response by using precise laser ablation to differentiate between the effect of matrix micro-rupture and cellular necrosis. They also utilize cell-free RNA profiling of different tendon injuries in their mouse injury model and in human samples to make a leap towards managing each injury based on its environment. This first aspect alone is highly impactful because of the potential clinical translation of precisely employed laser ablation to promote healing of overuse tendon injuries. In addition, the search for biomarkers that are indicative of onset of tendon injuries has been an unattainable target. The investigative team is uniquely positioned to identify circulating cell-free RNA signatures of different tendon injuries, and test the findings in human subjects, thereby pioneering a non-invasive mechanism to diagnose onset of tendon injuries to tailor treatment.

Congratulations to Sean Kim, PhD candidate in the Bonassar Lab, for winning an Orthopaedic Research Society Spine Section Innovation Award for his work on finite element modeling of bioresorbable cages for tissue engineered intervertebral discs at the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) and Philadelphia Spine Research Society (PSRS) 6th International Spine Research Symposium.

What began as a small biomechanics program between Cornell Engineering and Hospital for Special Surgery has blossomed into a full-fledged center that continues to make major advances in orthopaedic care. Read more…

On September 27 a group of students from the University of Twente participating in the Wahweenga Study Tour of the US and Canada visited HSS. The aim of the tour is to investigate state-of-the-art medical technologies in countries that are leaders in the global biomedical field. The students participated in a series of presentations by HSS researchers about cartilage, topics related to lower extremities and implant longevity. The students also learned about CAMEO’s collaborations between HSS and Cornell and toured a number of the hospital’s research facilities.

A human has received a 3D-bioprinted ear grown from the patient’s own living cells – thanks to a technology platform developed by a Cornellian-founded startup.

Read this story here

Congratulations to Chris Hernandez for named to the inaugural class of BRITE Fellows. The award comes with $1 million in research funding from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation. Read more

In her more than 20 years as an ORS member, Dr. van der Meulen has served in numerous and varied roles at the organization, as well as being a longtime advocate for early-career and marginalized professionals in the academy. Read more

The 2022 Kappa Delta Ann Doner Vaughn Award was presented to Lawrence J. Bonassar, PhD, for his research on the microscale mechanics and composition of articular cartilage and their relevance to musculoskeletal disease. Read more 

Congratulations to Atieh Moridi on being selected as the 2022 Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D Scholars Award winner for the Manufacturing Category.

Atieh Moridi earned her Ph.D. (cum laude) in Mechanical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2015; served as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering Departments at Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 2015 and 2018; and has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University since 2019.  Dr. Moridi’s proposal addresses a number of the challenges to personalized medicine, in which treatments can be tailored to the individual needs of each patient. In particular, in a customized-materials–reliant field like orthopedics, which has stringent regulatory oversight and requires high-quality, defect-free parts, these challenges include the inability for current implants to mimic the structure and mechanical properties of the bone, inaccurate anatomical fitting that adversely affects surgical placement of the devices, and limited restoration of the biological function of the remaining bone surrounding the implant. One field that is expected to play a growing role in the evolution of materials that will enable more personalized medical treatment is Additive Manufacturing (AM). The ease of design customization and the achievable structural complexity via AM could present the solution to unanswered materials issues in orthopedics. Unlocking the full potential of AM requires addressing a number of fundamental challenges including process stability, part quality and reproducibility. Dr. Moridi’s research aims to improve the quality of AM by developing a new paradigm for real-time detection of process anomalies by “listening” and “watching” the AM process using acoustic emissions and synchrotron X-ray imaging. She proposes to use machine learning to correlate physics-based insights from sophisticated X-ray imaging experiments to simpler, low-cost, and scalable acoustic emission signals. Having such a reliable technology for qualification of parts as they are printed is critical for one-off printing of patient-specific implants and provides a new paradigm for affordable, personalized healthcare. Through her collaboration with the Center for Advanced Materials and Engineering in Orthopedics (CAMEO) at the Hospital for Special Surgery, her research discoveries promise to be translated into clinically relevant applications, ultimately impacting real patients.

She has an excellent publication record for someone at this stage of her career, with 13 peer-reviewed journal articles (first author on 6 of these papers) and a sole-authored book. Her record shows an impressive citation count of 1345 and a Field Weighted Citation Index of over 2.5. She is Principal Investigator or Faculty Adviser on current grants totaling over $1,000,000.