Dr. Flavia Vitale has been appointed as Assistant Professor within the Department of Neurology and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at The University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Vitale is a core collaborator in the Litt Lab with research focused on nanofabrication and development of novel bioelectronic devices for recording and neuromodulation in the brain.
Dr. Shawniqua Williams
Dr. Shawniqua Williams has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Vanderbilt University. She will also be joining the ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group.
Visit the Vanderbilt Department of Neurology website: https://ww2.mc.vanderbilt.edu/neurology/
Visit the ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group website: http://www.icudelirium.org/
Brendan Murphy
Bioengineering PhD student Brendan Murphy has been awarded a 2018 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowship. The GRFP promotes vitality and diversity in the scientific and engineering workforce by recognizing and supporting outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.
Dr. Kathryn Davis, co-founder of the CNT was awarded the Dreifuss-Penry Epilepsy Award at the 2018 American Academy of Neurology’s Annual Meeting. The award recognizes physician-scientists in the early stages of their career for their contribution to epilepsy research.
Dr. Shawniqua Williams
Dr. Shawniqua Williams had been selected for a Dynamic Poster presentation at the Society for Neuroscience Meeting in Washington DC, held in November 2017. She presented her work: “Spatiotemporal neuronal activation patterns associated with self-paced verbal fluency utterances”.
Nicolette Driscoll
Nicolette Driscoll (Nicki) made 2 important presentations in the fall of 2017.
She presented “Transparent graphene electrodes for chronic in vivo optical and electrophysiological recording” at the 2017 Biomedical Engineering Society Conference in Phoenix, October 2017 (featured in accompanying photo).
Nicki’s work on “2D Ti3C2 MXenes for high-resolution neural interfaces” was selected for oral presentation at the Symposium on Materials Design for Neural Interfaces, 2017 Materials Research Society Meeting in Boston, November 2017.
Timothy H. Lucas, II, MD, PhD
Timothy H. Lucas, II, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Neurosurgery (also director of the Translational Neuromodulation Lab in the Perelman School of Medicine and co-director of the CNT) has been awarded the 2017 Fellow in Leadership Award by Alpha Omega Alpha national medical honor society. This fellowship is awarded to three mid-career physicians nationwide who exhibit outstanding leadership in their institutions. Alpha Omega Alpha provides one year of funding to winners as they explore creative, sustainable, and ethical modes of leadership. Penn Medicine will match Lucas’ funding award.
Clinical revenues are strained as insurance reimbursements fall, funding for grants from the National Institutes of Health are becoming more competitive, and academic positions are being depleted. Lucas hopes to identify innovative business models that can provide a viable financial future for both academic medical centers and hospitals.
Link to article: https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2017/july/penn-medicine-neurosurgeon-named-alpha-omega-alpha-fellow-in-leadership
Dr. Flavia Vitale
Dr. Flavia Vitale has developed a new class of very small, flexible electrodes that can be independently controlled after they are implanted, allowing surgeons to safely map epileptic networks in the brain with high precision. With support from CURE, Dr. Vitale will build these new devices and test them in animal models of focal epilepsy, to detect and map seizure generation and spread. If successful, this exciting new technology could precisely localize seizure networks, and allow clinicians to focally ablate or suppress them with unprecedented accuracy, exactly where they are generated.
From Penn Medicine in the News, 09-May-2016: “Flexible electrodes have been created that dissolve harmlessly inside the brain after use.” The lab of Brian Litt, MD, a professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Bioengineering, developed the new device. They hope that the electrodes could be used to pinpoint the source of epileptic seizures or monitor a patient’s recovery after surgery before dissolving away, thereby removing the need for further surgery to extract the electrodes.”
Link: https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2016/may/nextgen-electrodes-proofofconc
On May 2, 2017, the University of Pennsylvania will celebrate the launch of the Penn Center for Health, Devices and Technology, or Penn Health-Tech, a University-wide effort to advance Penn’s world-class breakthroughs into new devices and health technologies to meet the world’s most pressing health care needs. Marking the opening of the Center, the University will host the first in a series of regular symposia.
Penn Health-Tech was established by the Perelman School of Medicine, the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Office of the Vice Provost of Research. It is sponsored in part by a generous gift from Penn alum Jonathan Brassington.
The Penn Center for Health, Devices and Technology will be co-directed by Brian Litt, professor of neurology, neurosurgery and bioengineering in the Perelman School of Medicine, and Insup Lee, the Cecilia Fitler Moore Professor in Penn Engineering’s Department of Computer and Information Science. The Center will also be supported by Mark Turco, Penn Center for Innovation’s chief innovation and corporate outreach officer.
Visit Penn Health-Tech website: https://healthtech.upenn.edu/
