Past Mentorships
Summer of 2010
Member Name: Sonia Godbole
Mentor Name: Dr. Rafi Avitsian, CCF
Field: Anesthesiology
Description of Mentorship: Sonia shadowed Dr. Avitsian and other Cleveland Clinic anesthesiologists in both the operating room and the lab. When not watching surgeries, Sonia aided Dr. Avitsian's fellow in the research of Awake vs Asleep Craniotomies. Given patient charts, Sonia learned to analyze data collecting during operations, from any chemicals injected into the body to the heart rhythm throughout the procedure. She then used these analytical skills to compile the data that would later be used for comparative research.
Member Name: Trent Navran Mentor Name: Dr. Anirban Sen Gupta, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, CWRU (site) Field: Biomedical Engineering and Nanotechnology Description of Mentorship: Trent continued his work at the Wickenden Biomedical Engineering Building at Case with Dr. Sen Gupta and his group of graduate and undergraduate students. He is conducting experiments that deal with the treatment of cancer and cardiovascular disease through the use of targeted nanoparticles. Specifcally, he is involved with releasing drug via irradiating hollow gold nanospheres. Mentor Name: Dr. Christian Zorman, CWRU Field: Microtechnology
Member Name(s): Daniel Sperling and Nikhil Khrisnan
Member Name: Sharon Wong
Summer of 2009
Member Name: Asheq Ahmed
Mentor Name: Dr. Dominique Durand, CWRU
Field: Biomedical Engineering, Neuroscience
Description of Mentorship: Asheq's work with Dr. Durand involved studying the neuropathic mechanisms in rats and the application of this knowledge to reduce peripheral nerve pain in mammals. Asheq was primarily responsible for the design and fabrication of the electrodes used to electrically stimulate the subjects in the study.
Member Name: Danny Haig
Mentor Name: Dr. Jing Li, CWRU
Field: Computer Science, Bioinformatics
Description of Mentorship: Danny used his broad knowledge of the C++, Java, and Python programming languages to code programs that will be used to map and visualize DNA. His code was able to spot patterns in test sequences and to convert the data into different formats to be utilized for other projects.
Member Name: Sammy Kasper
Mentor Name: Dr. Arthur Huckelbridge, CWRU
Field: Civil Engineering
Description of Mentorship: Sammy conducted research on and helped gather background information about wind turbines. She is aiming to accumulate proposals for offshore wind turbines on Lake Erie. She also shadowed graduate student John Cleary and assisted him in studying computer models of the nature of wind turbines.
Member Name: Chris Kaul
Mentor Name: Dr. Alan Riga, CSU
Field: Chemical Analysis
Description of Mentorship: Chris and Dr. Riga are working together to build a gel that can become tense and then relax on contact with slight electric impulses. The final goal of this project is to have the gel aid in total knee/elbow replacement to limit wear and tear of the prosthetics.
Member Name: Max Kolysh
Mentor Name: Dennis P. Stocker, NASA
Field: Microgravity
Description of Mentorship: Max worked with Mr. Stocker in the 2.2 Second Drop Tower at the NASA Glenn Research Center to learn how combustion and flames behave in a weightless environment. He also assisted in drafting the console of one of the four combustion experiments that will be sent up on the next shuttle launch to the International Space Station.
Member Name: Trent Navran
Mentor Name: Dr. Anirban Sen Gupta, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, CWRU (site)
Field: Biomedical Engineering and Nanotechnology
Description of Mentorship: Trent is working at the Wickenden Biomedical Engineering Building at Case with Dr. Sen Gupta and his group of graduate and undergraduate students. Trent is shadowing each of the students to observe their projects, which include drug delivery via nanoparticles, polymer synthesis, biocompatibility and hemocompatibilty of polymer materials, and methods of treating diseases and cancer by implementing medical treatments such as photodynamic therapy.
Member Name: Cory Pomerantz
Mentor Name: Dr. Jerry Meyers, NASA
Field: Human Research
Description of Mentorship: Cory assisted Dr. Meyers and several interns in two projects. The first project was the Suit Impact Load Attenuation (SILAS). The purpose of SILAS is to determine how effective astronaut's space suits are at resisting impacts of varying intensity. The second was the Doppler Ultrasound Hematocrit Project, which has the goal of finding a way to determine a person's blood characteristics by using ultrasound. It is essentially trying to find a non-invasive way to determine someone's health in a microgravity environment.
Member Name: Sharon Wong
Mentor Name: Dr. Christian Zorman, CWRU
Field: Microtechnology
Description of Mentorship: Sharon helped Dr. Zorman in the field of microfabrication, specifically, implanting devices into a paralyzed patient's body to make previously paralyzed limbs functional. Sharon was mainly involved in the research and development of the devices, as well as testing the prototypes for impedance.
Summer of 2008
The following mentorships took place over the 2008 summer, the first year of LabLink:
Member Name: Chris Kaul
Mentor Name: Dr. Alan Riga, Professor of Chemical Analysis, CSU
Field: Thermal Analysis
Description of Mentorship: Chris used a series of machines that could read various thermal signatures of a substance - in their case, tooth brush fibers - and sucsessfully identified their molecular fromulas when x-ray and infrared defraction failed. He wrote a paper on the topic and later submitted his work into NATAS (North American Thermal Analysis Society) and won first place in their International Undergraduate Poster Competition.
Member Name: Max Kolysh
Mentor Name: Dr. Roger Quinn, Professor of Engineering, CWRU (site)
Field: Biologically Inspired Mechanical Engineering
Description of Mentorship: Max worked with Roger Quinn and his graduate students to construct SolidWorks CAD (Computer Aided Design) models of model surveillance airplane components.
Member Name: Trent Navran
Mentor Name: Dr. Gary Wnek (site)
Field: Macromolecular Science and Engineering
Description of Mentorship: Trent worked with Dr. Wnek's tissue engineering group to create electrospun polymer scaffolds that function as biomaterials.
Member Name: Brian Pomerantz
Mentor Name: Jerry Myers, NASA
Field: Engineering
Description of Mentorship: Brian assisted Mr. Myres's intern calculate the amount of force different types and thicknesses of foam absorbed in order to determine which foam would best represent human skin and tissue. This information would then be used to construct tests on the probability of bone fracture for an astronaut at different heights. Eventually, a model would be constructed that would enable NASA to decide which course-of-action to take in case of different medical emergencies that could happen during a space mission.
Mentor Name: Nancy Hall
Field: Biological/Physical Science
Description of Mentorship: Brian's work involved measuring the contact angle of water drops on different types of materials (e.g. glass, rubber, copper, etc.). He also attended most meetings between Mrs. Hall's interns and the mechanics who were building a new toilet design for the space shuttle and helped water a green house for an experiment on bio-fuels.
Member Name: Josh Sperling
Mentor Name: Dr. Dominique Durand, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, CWRU (site)
Field: Biomedical Engineering
Description of Mentorship: Josh evaluated data from rats who had been given epilepsy and were being treated with seizure reduction medications. He also created a program which allowed the data to be analyzed 6x faster than by humans.
Member Name: Sharon Wong
Mentor Name: Dr. Christian Zorman, Professor of Nanotechnolgy, CWRU (site)
Field: Microtechnology
Description of Mentorship: Sharon is assisting Dr. Zorman in the field of microfabrication, specifically, implanting devices into a paralyzed patient's body to make previously paralyzed limbs functional. Sharon is mainly involved in the research and development of the devices, as well as testing the prototypes for impedance.
