Bioreactor Design for Viable Recellularization of Whole Porcine Kidney

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Wandelt, Kennedy Bioreactor Design for Viable Recellularization of Whole Porcine Kidney Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alonzo Cook, Chemical Engineering Kidney failure affects tens of thousands of individuals annually causing many to rely on dialysis to replace this organ’s function. Most of these individuals are on a waiting list to receive a transplant for years, and unfortunately […]

Cell Attachment to Alginate Hydrogel Structures

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Livingston, Sarah Cell Attachment to Alginate Hydrogel Structures Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alonzo Cook, Chemical Engineering Introduction One of the most pressing needs within the medical community is the demand for transplantable organs. On average, 22 people per day on average die waiting for a transplant. Even if a patient receives an organ, the risks associated […]

Re-epithelialization of whole porcine kidney scaffold

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Re-epithelialization of whole porcine kidney scaffold Evan M. Buckmiller, Advisor: Alonzo D. Cook, Department of Chemical Engineering Introduction An estimated 20 million adults (approximately 10% of all individuals over the age of 18) in the United States suffer from some level of chronic kidney disease (CKD), making CKD the 9th leading cause of death in […]

A Solution to the Problems of Heart Transpantation

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Struk, Jeremy Men’s Hearts Shall Fail Them: A Solution to the Problems of Heart Transplantation Faculty Mentor: Alonzo Cook, Chemical Engineering Ischemic Heart disease, according to the World Health Organization, is the leading cause of death in the USA and abroad.1 As a result of the high incidence of the disease and low transplant availability, […]

Geogrid-Reinforcement’s Zone of Influence

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Shaun Hilton and W. Spencer Guthrie, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Introduction Geogrid is a polypropylene material manufactured with approximately 1-in. wide openings, called apertures. A triaxial geogrid configuration is illustrated in Figure 1. Geogrid reinforcement is typically positioned beneath and/or within an aggregate base layer in a pavement structure and is designed to […]

A Handy Underwater Solution

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Benjamin Murdoch, Matt Ricks, Ales Ball, Jacob Olson, Ethan Durrant, Connor Monson, Lars Watts, and Mark Killpack, Department of Mechanical Engineering Hod Lipson once asked an audience at TED, “Where are the robots?” We’ve been waiting for them a long time now and modern robotics still hasn’t caught up with our hopes and dreams. Through […]

Thermally Stable Support for Improved Synthetic Fuel Catalysts

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Mark Lindsay, Dr. William Hecker and Dr. Morris Argyle, Department of Chemical Engineering Introduction Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) has attracted interest recently as large natural gas deposits have been discovered across the globe. FTS is a gas-to-liquid technology that produces fuels with far fewer sulfur or nitrogen impurities, making it an attractive cleaner alternative to petroleum […]

Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC) Differentiation to Kidney Phenotype with Conditioned Media of RCTEs

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Angela Nakalembe and Dr. Alonzo Cook, Department of Chemical Engineering Introduction According to the latest U.S. Renal Data System Annual Data Report, more than 660,000 Americans are currently being treated for kidney failure, also called end stage renal disease (ESRD). The current treatment options, dialysis and kidney transplants, work well in some instances but have […]

Autonomous Identification and Classification of Targets using an Unmanned Aerial System

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Taylor McDonnell and Tim McLain, Department of Mechanical Engineering Introduction: Commercial applications of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are expected to grow significantly in the coming years [1]. Applications of unmanned aerial vehicles in the commercial market include agricultural and infrastructure monitoring, aerial photography, package delivery, fire monitoring, wildlife tracking, and search and rescue operations. One […]