Current and former Knight Campus Internship Program students are invited to attend the third annual Inclusion Network Symposium in Portland, Oregon. The symposium is the capstone event of the summer inclusion workshop series, which focused on topics such as legal rights and responsibilities on the job; how to push for inclusion by example; company culture and how it affects success; and the value of difficult conversations with coworkers and supervisors. The workshops included guest speakers from academia and industry who shared perspectives and insights. There will also be an Alumni Social the night before the symposium on Friday, August 16th at 6:00 pm at Brix Tavern. 

Modern biomedical research has been revolutionized by our ability to fluorescently label cellular structure and function. The rapid evolution of transgenic techniques, novel organisms and organoids, and manipulation tools like optogenetics as well as tissue clearing have further expanded the scope of how we can study living systems. However, imaging methods that can capitalize on these diverse samples face limitations on their imaging speeds, particularly for 3D imaging in complex samples and networks. To address these challenges, Columbia University biomedical engineering and radiology professor, Elizabeth Hillman, has developed techniques that promote high-speed in-vivo imaging and microscopy.

Hydrogels represent a class of biomaterials that have great promise for the repair of tissues and to probe questions related to cellular microenvironments. They can provide instructive signals to cells through material properties alone via chemical signals presented by the hydrogel, or through the release of therapeutics that can influence morphogenesis and tissue repair. Dr. Jason A. Burdick is particularly interested in the engineering of hydrogels from hyaluronic acid (HA), where chemical modification – either through non-covalent self-assembly or through stable covalent crosslinking – is used to engineer hydrogel properties. 

Dr. Burdick has explored how the introduction of peptides (e.g., HAV to mimic N-cadherin interactions) influences the chondrogenesis of mesenchymal stromal cells, including through the development of high-throughput screening platforms where optimal cellular environments can be easily identified. After encapsulation and early in culture, cells deposit their own extracellular matrix, which temporally modulates this engineered interface. He is utilizing metabolic labeling techniques to visualize this matrix and to better understand how this evolving/new cell-matrix interface influences cell behavior, such as during chondrogenesis or in mechanobiology. Dr. Burdick's lab is developing 3D printing techniques to translate these findings of cell-hydrogel interactions towards therapeutic applications, including in the development of printing techniques that expand on the potential materials that can be printed.

Duke University mechanical engineering and materials science professor, Ken Gall, will be the inaugural speaker in this seminar series presented by the Knight Campus. Professor Gall will discuss the development and understanding of deployable shape memory polymers to mitigate damage when reattaching soft tissue to bone. He will also discuss a new approach to the formation of an interconnected surface porosity in a high strength polymer that results in the first-ever FDA clearance and clinical success of an all polymer spinal fusion cage with porosity. Finally, find out why 3D printed materials are shown to have promise as implantable materials for both custom and cleared patient-specific implants.