Speakers

Borelli Award Talk

Professor Ellen M Arruda is the Tim Manganello / BorgWarner Department Chair and Maria Comninou Collegiate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. She also holds appointments in Biomedical Engineering and in Macromolecular Science and Engineering. Professor Arruda earned her B.S. degree in Engineering Science and her M.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics from The Pennsylvania State University, and her Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Under her leadership the Mechanical Engineering department earned the Inaugural MEDHEC Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2022 and the Rhetaugh G. Dumas Progress in Diversifying Award, from the University of Michigan, also in 2022. Recent recognition for her teaching, research, and service contributions to engineering include the 2021 Eringen medal from the Society of Engineering Science, the 2019 Nadai medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the 2018 Rice medal from the Society of Engineering Science, the 2015 Outstanding Engineering Alumnus Award from the Pennsylvania State University, the 2014 Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from the University of Michigan, and the 2014 Trudy Huebner Service Excellence Award from the College of Engineering, University of Michigan.

Professor Arruda teaches and conducts research in the areas of theoretical and experimental mechanics of macromolecular materials, including polymers, elastomers, composites, soft tissues and proteins, and in tissue engineering of soft tissues and tissue interfaces. Her research programs include experimental characterization and analytical and computational modeling of soft materials, including native and engineered tissues. She has pioneered a novel inverse method to characterize the non-linear, anisotropic response of soft tissues such as the anterior cruciate ligament and the supraspinatus tendon.

Professor Arruda has over 100 papers in scientific journals with 15,000 citations. Her H-index is 47 (Google Scholar).  Professor Arruda is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Academy of Mechanics, the Society of Engineering Science, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She is currently President of the American Academy of Mechanics. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (class of 2017).

Presenting August 9th, 8:15am- 9:15am

Catherine K. Kuo is an Associate Professor in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering and in the Department of Orthopaedics, and holds appointments in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices at the University of Maryland. Her laboratory focuses on tendon tissue engineering and regenerative medicine strategies informed by the mechanobiology of embryonic tendon development. She serves as an elected Council Member for the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society-Americas (TERMIS-AM) and on the Advisory Council for the International Society of Ligaments and Tendons. She is a founding officer of the Tendon Section of the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS), for which she served as Research Chair from 2017-2020. She is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE, 2019), and was recipient of the Sweden GoLife Innovation in Research Award (2015), Emerging Investigator Award by Stem Cell Research and Therapy (2015), an NSF CAREER Award (2013), and March of Dimes Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award (2011). She is a two-time recipient of the University of Maryland Bioengineering Faculty Instructional Impact Award (2021, 2022) based on student nominations for excellence in teaching. She is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. She has a B.S.E. in Materials Science and Engineering and Ph.D. in Biomaterials and Macromolecular Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. She completed her postdoctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the Cartilage Biology and Orthopaedics Branch of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.

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Presenting August 10th, 8:15am- 9:15am

Cynthia Reinhart-King is a University Distinguished Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Research in the School of Engineering, the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering, and a Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University.  Prior to joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 2017, she was on the faculty of Cornell University where she received tenure in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She obtained undergraduate degrees in Chemical Engineering and Biology at MIT and her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Bioengineering. Her lab’s research interests are in the areas of cell and tissue mechanics and cell migration as it relates to disease progression particularly in cancer, atherosclerosis, and angiogenesis. She was awarded the Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award in 2010 and the Mid-Career Award in 2018 from the Biomedical Engineering Society, an NSF CAREER Award, the 2010 Sonny Yau ‘72 Excellence in Teaching Award, a Cook Award for “contributions towards improving the climate for women at Cornell,” the Zellman Warhaft Commitment to Diversity Award from the Cornell College of Engineering, and the Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Award for Research. She is a fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and she was an inaugural New Voices Fellow of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. She served as a standing member of the NIH CMT study section panel, and currently serves as an elected Board Member of AIMBE and President of the Biomedical Engineering Society.