Tag: University of Vermont

University of Vermont student-athletes closed the Fall with their best collective semester GPA on record. The Catamounts combined to post a 3.28 GPA, marking their 27th straight semester with at least a 3.0.

“I’m incredibly proud of the academic performance of our student-athletes,” said Director of Athletics Jeff Schulman ’89.  “This success doesn’t happen by accident and is a reflection of highly committed and hard-working student-athletes and a broad departmental commitment to academic excellence.  I’m especially appreciative of our coaching staff who recruit strong students and create team cultures that value academic success, as well as our outstanding Student-Athlete Development staff members who are on the front lines in providing support and advising.”

The collective student-athlete GPA has now exceeded that of the overall UVM student body in 28 of last 31 semesters. Additionally, Catamount student-athletes had a 95.5% Graduation Success Rate (GSR) in the most recently reported data from the NCAA, which places Vermont in the top 15% of Division I schools. The GSR is a metric created by the NCAA to accurately reflect student-athlete graduation outcomes. 

More than two-thirds of UVM student-athletes were named to the most recent America East Academic Honor Roll. A total of 170 Vermont student-athletes earned Honor Roll status, marking the highest number of Catamounts to receive the honor in eight years.

“The level to which our student-athletes dedicate themselves to both their academics and athletics is outstanding,” said Cathy Rahill, Associate Athletic Director for Student-Athlete Development and Academic Affairs. “Catamount student-athletes represent the true essence of what it means to develop, grow and compete at the Division I level.”

12 different Catamount teams combined to earn at least a 3.15 GPA during the Fall of 2017.

Source: UVM News

It’s been a tough winter for aliens. Earlier this month, astronomers showed that the flickering of the so-called Tabby’s Star—some 1280 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus—was not, in fact, caused by a huge sphere built around it by extraterrestrial beings. The more-likely culprit: dust.

Then there is the mysterious deep-space flashbulb called FRB121102—a fast radio burst first detected at the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, November 2, 2012, and recorded more than 200 times since, including a dozen detections on Christmas Day in 2016.

A team of scientists cheerfully speculated that these erratic, super-powerful, millisecond-long blasts of radio waves—from more than three-billion light-years outside our galaxy—might be the long-awaited Contact: a radio beacon built by aliens to power a gargantuan light-powered sailing craft.

Now, new research, published January 10 in the journal Nature, begins to unravel the origin and nature of these bizarre bursts of energy that, in the blink of an eye, emit far more energy than our sun does in 24 hours. The study points away from extraterrestrial spacecraft and toward more natural explanations, like a neutron star near a black hole, a highly magnetized pulsar-wind nebula, or perhaps the remnants of an exploded star.

Whatever the cause, fast radio bursts may be the hottest and deepest mystery in astronomy today—and Casey Brinkman, University of Vermont class of 2017, was a co-author on the new Nature study, the only undergraduate student on the team.

A physics major at UVM, she focused on astronomy and astrobiology with UVM professor Joanna Rankin and visiting astronomer Dipanjan Mitra, studying an exotic type of star called a pulsar—including two trips with Rankin to study them at the Arecibo telescope. This background helped her land an internship this year—looking for aliens—and a role in the new study.

We spoke with Brinkman, a few days before the paper in Nature was released, about her love of astronomy and how she’s planning a career searching for signs of extraterrestrial life.

A lot of college students wonder what they’ll do after graduation. Tell us what you’re doing.

When I graduated from UVM, I went to do an internship at UC Berkeley—at the Berkeley SETI Research Center. SETI stands for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. I’m searching for aliens—but not in the X-Files kind of way, more in the Carl Sagan kind of way.

How did you get to be a co-author on this new Nature study?

I work for a postdoctoral researcher who studies fast radio bursts. Those are hot stuff in astrophysics right now because we really have no idea what they are.

When we observe these radio bursts from different stars, we first check a pulsar in order to verify that what we think we are seeing is correct. If the pulsar data comes back with the exact right intensity and polarization then we know that the machines—the telescopes—were working properly that day.

And that’s how I ended up getting on this new Nature paper: because of my experience with UVM professor Joanna Rankin, I knew about pulsars and how to measure them. My job was, basically, a calibration of pulsar data we had from the Green Bank Telescope, in West Virginia, to make sure the fast radio bursts weren’t just some kind error. We don’t want to come forward saying, “we found the salient signal around the star,” when really it’s a fault of the machinery. CERN did something like that a few years ago, saying that neutrinos are faster than light. But it was a measurement error. We’re trying to avoid measurement errors with aliens!

Could these fast radio bursts be from aliens?

Not likely! Our study doesn’t say anything about that. The big reveal in this paper was about this fast radio burst’s polarization, which is something that people haven’t been able to measure very well in the past because the bursts are so quick. We didn’t put forth a strong theory of origin, but we precisely measured the polarization and a thing called the “Faraday rotation measure” which basically is talking about how the overall source is moving relative to us.

The new findings help us understand that this radio burst is an extremely dynamic source, that’s moving a lot, and that it comes from a strong magneto-ionic environment, which is the source of the polarization. The fact that it’s polarized tells a lot about the type of event that created it—in a crazy-strong magnetic field. We do put forth that, because the bursts were so short, they might be from a neutron star. That’s one of the least cool ways to explain it, but it’s one of the most-sound ways to explain it, unfortunately!

You’re an intern at an institution that has a mission to discern if and where extraterrestrial intelligence might be lurking. What’s that like?

It’s very interesting to go from studying pulsars, which the vast majority of the public doesn’t know or care about—to aliens. The Berkeley SETI Research Center is committed to science and to thorough research methods—and to not jumping to any conclusions before there is very strong data. We survey in the neighborhood of 100 million of the nearest stars and then focus on stars that we think might have habitable exoplanets. But we do scan of a lot of different stars, just looking for any type of radio signals, very similar to the movie Contact. We observe things that, in the media, get blown up to: “this could be aliens!” like the Tabby’s Star and the bizarre asteroid that came through our solar system recently. Are we looking for the possibility of ET? Yes, but the people at Berkeley do a great job of not leaping to any conclusions, though we have a fridge in the lab with a bottle of champagne reserved for when we find aliens.

Do you feel confident that there is extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe?

Mathematically speaking, there’s almost no way that we’re alone in this universe. That’s what really drew me to SETI. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our one galaxy. Even if one percent of those has planets that are habitable and one percent of those have life, that’s still thousands of civilizations that could be out there.

Philosophically, we can ponder what it might take for civilizations to emerge and evolve—versus just life. But with the abundance of different types of situations that could be out there, and with the prevalence of organic molecules— we’re learning more and more about how prebiotic materials, just a step below amino acids, are formed everywhere in space—I think it’s really unlikely that were alone.

What about the counterpoint that if there are the conditions for life in such a vast stretch of universe, how come we haven’t heard from anybody yet?

That’s the classic Fermi paradox. There are a number of ways that can be explained. What seems the most likely to me is that we only have a tiny scope of understanding. We’ve just barely started to explore our nearby universe, outside of our solar system.

Jill Tarter, one of the founders of the SETI Institute (and Carl Sagan’s bestie), said what we’ve done so far in searching for extraterrestrial life—which we’ve only been doing for 50 years with limited tools—is similar to dipping a Dixie cup into the ocean, looking at it with your bare eye, and then saying, “there’s no life in the ocean.” When, really, there are giant whales out there that you can see without a microscope, and also millions of microbes in that cup that we don’t have the ability to see yet.

If and when we make contact, what will that mean for humanity?

Oh my God. I think it will bring up philosophic revolutions. I’ve always been of the mindset that humanity, and our place in the universe, is a very small part, but I think that’s a very foreign mindset for a lot of people. I think the confirmation of alien life will push the worldview that the universe is a lot larger and stranger—and we are less important—than we often think.

What’s next for you?

I’m currently applying to graduate schools for Ph.D. programs that focus in astrobiology, and solar system and planet formation, because that’s the really important science you need to understand in trying to look for life out there.

I understand you’re at home, in Vermont, now, working remotely with the team at Berkeley.

Yes, we’re pretty good at remote communication! It’s not a fat paycheck, but it’s pretty insane that I’m getting paid to look for aliens.

 

Homepage photo: A cosmic cloud by Andrew Campbell via nasa.gov 

Source: UVM News

The Gund Institute for Environment announced nearly $250,000 in Catalyst Award seed grants and event support today.

Five interdisciplinary teams will receive Gund Catalyst Awards between $35,000 and $50,000 to establish new research projects seeking real-world solutions to critical environmental issues.

The inaugural Catalyst Awards will accelerate new efforts on global climate modelling, renewable biofuels, climate impacts on mountain communities, nitrogen ‘trouble zones’ and sustainable agriculture. 

“We are excited to support these ambitious projects with our first Gund Catalyst Awards,” says Donna Rizzo, Acting Director of the Gund Institute for Environment. “These are important efforts that will attract more funding to UVM, address critical issues, and develop solutions for the people of Vermont, the U.S. and worldwide.”

Gund Catalyst Award recipients for 2017-18 are:

• Mark Budolfson (CAS) and colleagues from UVM and Princeton University will develop next-generation climate models to improve environmental decision-making and policy. The team will enhance existing models by adding key factors that are currently largely ignored, including health co-benefits from air pollution reduction, economic inequality between nations, and carbon pricing based on nations’ varying ability to respond to climate change.
• Nathan Sanders (Rubenstein), Beverley Wemple (CAS) will lead an international team of collaborators in one of the first projects to synthesize how climate change will impact mountain communities worldwide. Faculty and students will research and develop more accurate projections of climate impacts on human livelihoods and mountain ecosystems, including biodiversity, soils, water, lakes and rivers.
• Meredith Niles (CALS), Eric Roy (Rubenstein) and colleagues will lead a comprehensive study of nitrogen use across the U.S., including areas where excess nitrogen – largely from agricultural fertilizers – poses risks to human health and ecosystems, including air quality and water. Faculty and students will identify counties where farmers are most likely to participate in nitrogen use reduction programs based on socio-economic, behavioral, agricultural, and environmental factors, and collaborate with carbon offset initiative stakeholders to reduce GHG emissions resulting from nitrogen hotspots.  
• Britt Holmén (CEMS), Cecilia Danks (Rubenstein) and colleagues will improve understanding of “biogas” (ie. methane, CO₂) emissions and dynamics. By developing new technologies and systems for real-time biogas monitoring, the team will link regional partners around applications requiring biogas sensing data, including community adoption of renewable natural gas, an increasingly viable renewable energy source. Scholars and industry partners will establish real-time, spatial emissions monitoring at a pilot field project in Vermont, and aim to develop novel, miniature biogas sensors for deployment on farms, trucks, drones and satellites.
• Heather Darby (Extension/CALS) and Gillian Galford (Rubenstein) will help develop milkweed as a commercial crop to enhance farm viability and biological diversity. Milkweed has declined 58% over 20 years in the Midwest, due largely to herbicides, producing a staggering 81% decline in monarch butterflies, which are key crop pollinators. Faculty and students will determine optimal techniques for growing milkweed for an emerging international market seeking natural textiles for clothing and apparel.

The awards will support at least 19 UVM scholars from four colleges/schools and seven departments. At least 22 external partners from 12 countries will participate, including colleagues from Harvard, Princeton and Yale, and international collaborators in China, India, Australia, Britain, France, Sweden and Canada.

Launched in June 2017, Gund Catalyst Awards are a UVM-wide seed grant competition. They support the Gund Institute’s mission to mobilize scholars and leaders to understand and solve the world’s most pressing environmental issues. The inaugural competition attracted 21 proposals from 90 scholars for $780,000 in research.

“We thank all 21 teams for their excellent submissions,” says Rizzo, noting that recipients will become Gund Fellows. “It was difficult to choose from such a strong pool. Given the overwhelming response, we are exploring partnerships that will help support even more exciting research collaborations next year.”

Proposals were evaluated on six criteria: intellectual merit, interdisciplinary reach, strength of team, potential for impact, potential for growth, and feasibility. Additional priority was given to new UVM collaborations with external partners and opportunities for students. Proposals were reviewed by UVM and external evaluators.

In addition to Catalyst Awards, the Gund Institute also announced funding for two major events to be held at UVM:

• Josh Farley (CDAE) and Jon Erickson (Rubenstein) will host an international symposium to develop a new research agenda for ecological economics, a transdisciplinary field that examines relationships between ecological and economic systems to address environmental challenges. The Gund Institute is global leader in ecological economics, and this event will inform scholarship at UVM and beyond.
• Adrian Ivakhiv (Rubenstein) and Luis Vivanco (CAS) will host an international symposium of transdisciplinary experts from leading ‘artscience’ and ‘eco-humanities’ initiatives, such as MIT MediaLab, Sciences Po and UVM FabLab. The event aims to develop new collaborations bridging the arts, humanities and sciences, and engage universities and citizens in environmental solutions. 

The 2018-19 Gund Catalyst Awards will be announced by Fall 2018.

Learn more about opportunities at the Gund Institute, including Catalyst Awards, PhD funding and postdoctoral positions.

Source: UVM News

Over the past several years, young alumni Aaron Rice ’12 and Tyler Wilkinson-Ray ’12 have taken to the mountains out west on audacious quests. For Rice, that meant attempting to ski 2.5 million vertical feet under his own power in one year, largely in Utah’s Wasatch Range. For Wilkinson-Ray, it meant a move from Vermont to Telluride, Colorado, aspiring to turn avocation into vocation as an outdoor filmmaker and cinematographer.

Those two quests become one in “2.5 Million,” Wilkinson-Ray’s documentary about Rice’s attempt to not just break the existing world record, but exceed it by 500,000 feet. This is “human-powered” skiing. No lifts, snowmobiles, or helicopters, just Aaron Rice on a pair of backcountry skis, doggedly ascending and gracefully descending day after day after day.

The film has earned accolades, including a Best Documentary Powder Award, a Vimeo Staff Pick, and a place in the Banff Mountain Film Festival, gold-standard of the genre. Banff comes to the Flynn Theatre Thursday and Friday, Jan. 25 and 26. Sponsored by Skirack, the Banff screenings are a Burlington tradition—picture a puffer jacket and trucker hat gala—with proceeds helping fund UVM’s Outing Club.

Rice will be on hand to speak at the showing of “2.5 Million” on Friday night, and the Thursday program will include a different film focused on a UVM alumni athlete. In “Stumped,” Maureen Beck ’09, an accomplished rock climber despite missing her lower left arm, is featured as she attempts her first 5.12 climb. Beck will speak on Thursday. 

Rice and Wilkinson-Ray were both active in the Outing Club during their UVM days. But despite travelling in similar circles, they didn’t know one another well. Mutual friendship with Vasu Sojitra ’13 would provide the connection that led to the film. Wilkinson-Ray’s documentary “Out on a Limb” chronicles Sojitra’s life and remarkable skill as a paraskier, tackling backcountry powder on one leg.

After setting his sights on the world record, Rice called Wilkinson-Ray about possibly documenting his journey. “Tyler is especially skilled with storytelling in his films,” Rice says. “I’m a good skier, but I’m not hucking 40-foot cliffs; so, I knew this was going to be more about the story.”

In an early scene, Rice pulls his gear out of the back of his Honda Odyssey, green-and-gold UVM Euro sticker on the bumper. With characteristic understatement, he walks past the camera and says, “Day one. I’ve got a lot of walking to do. Wish me luck.” So it begins. Across the next calendar year, Rice climbs on his skins, skis, and scarfs 6,000 calories daily; periodically, Wilkinson-Ray, following the same human-powered rules—no helicopters, no snowmobiles, no crew of camera Sherpas—joins him on the journey.

The film takes viewers from Rice’s home terrain in Utah to the peaks of Patagonia, where he chases snow and vertical feet through the summer. On a human scale, we’re there through the moments that test the athlete’s resolve, all against the sublime mountain backdrops we expect from a Banff Festival film.

For Wilkinson-Ray, “2.5 Million” was a passion project. With work for Columbia Sportswear, Hoka One running shoes, National Geographic, and others, Wilkinson-Ray’s commercial film work has taken a firm hold. Now a partner with Wilder Studio, he was on more than a hundred flights last year to shoot film at locations worldwide.

As for Rice, he’s now living a lower-altitude life, putting his degree in environmental science from the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources to work as a staff scientist with Stone Environmental in Montpelier. When he took on the “2.5 Million” quest, part of Rice’s motivation was placing an exclamation point at the end of several years of post-graduation ski bumming. He says he would joke with friends about “maybe finally getting skiing out of his system.”

Happily, that’s not the case. Living in Waterbury, he often skis before work and, as of mid-January, already had 35 ski days in for the season. Asked where he skis, Rice pauses a few beats before answering. “I don’t want to totally blow up the spot,” he says. “But there are valleys up in Waterbury and Stowe that have some amazing backcountry runs.” 

Ticket information for the Banff Mountain Festival Tour at the Flynn Theatre and more on climber Maureen Beck.

Source: UVM News

Two Puerto Rican college students will attend the University of Vermont for the spring semester at no cost while their home colleges, devastated by Hurricane Maria in late September, rebuild.

Jonathan Lopez, a junior chemical engineering major, was attending the University of Puerto Rico’s Mayaguez campus. Leishla Perez, a junior biology major, was a student at Metropolitan University in San Juan.

UVM will waive the students’ tuition, fees and room and board for the semester.

UVM came to know of the students through contacts made by Jim Vigoreaux, associate provost for faculty affairs and former chair of the Biology Department, who had learned of other colleges who were helping displaced Puerto Rican college students and was eager for UVM to play a role. After getting a green light from UVM president Tom Sullivan, Vigoreaux reached out to the Puerto Rican students who had participated in a summer research program at UVM funded by the National Science Foundation designed to engage Puerto Rican high school students in the sciences.

Lopez and Perez responded, and their academic credentials qualified them to attend UVM.

Perez has worked in the lab of Biology professor Bryan Ballif for the past three summers. Lopez worked in Vigoreaux’s lab in the summer of 2014. 

“Among Hurricane Maria’s many victims are the Puerto Rican college students whose education was abruptly interrupted by the devastation,” said Sullivan. “Our hope is to help these students use their semester at UVM to keep on track, so they can stay on schedule in obtaining their degrees.” 

Vigoreaux, who is Puerto Rican, is glad the university is able to help. 

“This touched close to my heart,” he said. “We would have done this no matter where the student were from, but when it’s your home country, you feel especially obligated to help.”

UVM is providing additional financial aid to four Puerto Rican students already enrolled at the university. 

Source: UVM News

Noted scholar of American art Alexander Nemerov, chair of the Art and Art History Department at Stanford University, who writes frequently on the importance of the humanities in contemporary life, will give the commencement address at the University of Vermont on May 20. 

Nemerov is a UVM alumnus who graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1985 with degrees in Art History and English. He received an honorary doctorate degree from the university at UVM’s May 2017 commencement. 

“Alexander Nemerov is one of the university’s most accomplished alumni, whose celebrated career is still unfolding,” said UVM president Tom Sullivan. “His post-UVM success as one of the foremost scholars of American art by itself will be inspiring to our graduates. In addition, his insights into the importance of the humanities in helping us all find meaning in life – an area he writes and speaks about with great eloquence – will be of great value to our students as they embark on making meaning in their own post-UVM lives. It will be a great honor to welcome him to the speaker’s platform.”

Over the course of his twenty-year career, Nemerov has published seven highly regarded books, including the acclaimed Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War, considered boldly original for its reading of the Civil War through the lens of a single night’s performance of Macbeth in Washington, D.C. attended by President Lincoln.

He has also published more than thirty articles and essays in top peer-reviewed journals and has curated three exhibitions at national museums, each accompanied by a catalogue under his authorship.

This past spring he gave the 66th annual Andrew W. Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art, becoming the first speaker in the history of the series to speak on American art.

After earning his doctorate in art history from Yale in 1992, Nemerov began teaching at Stanford. In 2001 he returned to Yale, where his class “Introduction to Western Art” attracted one of the largest enrollments of any undergraduate class at Yale.      

In 2009, Nemerov was appointed chair of the Department of the History of Art at Yale University, and in 2010 he was named to an endowed professorship.            

In 2012, Nemerov accepted the position of Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University and was named chair the Department of Art and Art History. 

His classes are some of the largest humanities classes taught at Stanford. In 2014 the Stanford Daily named him to their Top 10 Professors list.

 

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont has joined the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) through its BioFabUSA program. ARMI is a non-profit, federally sponsored consortium dedicated to making the large-scale manufacture of engineered tissues and tissue-related technologies practical, to benefit existing industries and grow new ones.

ARMI is one of 14 sites under the federal umbrella of Manufacturing USA and the Department of Defense focused on catalyzing specific and promising advanced manufacturing technology areas.

Composed of leading higher education institutions and corporations, ranging from large multi-nationals to start-ups, ARMI/BioFabUSA is located in Manchester, N.H.

Regenerative medicine translates fundamental knowledge in biology, chemistry and physics into materials, devices, systems and a variety of therapeutic strategies that augment, repair, replace or regenerate organs and tissues.

While great strides have been made in research, practical, large scale manufacturing in regenerative medicine has lagged.

“Regenerative medicine as a field is on the verge of transforming the treatment of disease and disability, as the research breakthroughs of the past decade move into the world of practical medicine,” said Richard Galbraith, vice president for research at UVM. “Our membership in ARMI/BioFabUSA both recognizes UVM as a leader in this rapidly emerging area and provides an opportunity for the university to advance even further.”

“The academic and commercial R&D community has done a tremendous job driving innovation in the field of regenerative medicine,” said Gray Chynoweth, chief membership officer at ARMI/BioFabUSA. “Now it is time to move from bench and clinical scale to commercial scale manufacturing. New and different types of talent and expertise are needed for this transition to succeed.  We are thrilled that UVM will be joining forces with us to support this transition and develop this talent pipeline.”

Universities are eligible to join ARMI/BioFabUSA if their research and teaching programs make them a good fit for the organization, Galbraith said. 

UVM has strength in regenerative medicine, where the university is developing a multi-disciplinary program focused on basic science, commercialization, entrepreneurship and biotechnology training under the leadership of Daniel J. Weiss and Jeff Spees. The university also has a robust biomedical engineering program. An undergraduate degree program in that discipline, under the leadership of Jason Bates and Jeff Frolik, recently joined existing masters and doctoral degree programs.

Faculty grant program

A key element of the ARMI/BioFabUSA mission is to support basic and applied research in regenerative medicine through an ongoing grant program members are eligible to apply for. The organization has $80 million in funding it will disperse to consortium members over seven years.

ARMI/BioFabUSA has issued its first call for projects for 2018. Interested faculty should submit a letter of intent no later than February 13 at 5 p.m. For more information, contact Hilda Alajajian in the Sponsored Projects Administration. 

Student benefits

In addition to research, ARMI/BioFabUSA is also focused on workforce development designed to create a new generation of employees to fill skilled, high paying jobs in regenerative medicine that barely exist today. 

For the universities that are part of ARMI/BioFabUSA, Galbraith said, that represents a rare opportunity for students. 

“The ARMI/BioFabUSA ecosystem of companies will give our students exceptional networking, internship and employment opportunities,” he said. “And the connections our faculty make with corporations in the consortium will provide us an early-stage understanding of market needs that has the potential to translate to new curriculum and give UVM graduates a significant competitive edge in the marketplace.”

ARMI/BioFabUSA will also offer workshops in technical innovation, research funding opportunities and workforce development that UVM faculty and staff can participate in.

ARMI brings together a consortium of nearly 100 partners from across industry, government, academia and the non-profit sector to develop next-generation manufacturing processes and technologies for cells, tissues and organs. ARMI will work to organize the current fragmented domestic capabilities in tissue biofabrication technology to better position the U.S. relative to global competition. For more information on ARMI, please visit www.ARMIUSA.org.

Source: UVM News

From the moment Claudia Benito Alston first peeked into the Fab Lab – a crowded room in Votey Hall full of 3D printers, laser cutters, micro-controllers and other high-tech gizmos – she was hooked.

“It had so many instruments for creating things, it just really looked cool,” says the mechanical engineering major, who graduated in December.  

That first look turned out to be a window on Benito Alston’s future at UVM that the then-sophomore couldn’t have imagined.

Following her initial encounter, Benito Alston landed a work-study job in the Fab Lab, which has since expanded to a large new space, where she took a particular interest in 3D printers, boxy machines of various sizes that create dimensional objects by building up film-thin layers of plastic, directed by a computer design program.

“I really started learning their capabilities,” she says.

When a design project came along that would enable her to put her 3D printer chops to work and was related to an academic area she was interested in – biomedical engineering – she jumped at the chance. 

The project, to develop a type of 3D printer called a “bio-printer,” which used living material rather than plastic as its basic building block, had additional appeal for Benito Alston: it was centered in UVM’s highly ranked on-campus medical school, where faculty often found time to work with and mentor undergraduates.

“When I saw a doctor at UVM’s medical school was heading up the project, I really wanted to get involved,” she says.

The doctor was Dan Weiss, professor of medicine at UVM’s Larner College of Medicine and a member of the Vermont Lung Center. His project was so provocative, it approached science fiction. 

Weiss’s goal, in partnership with a colleague at the medical school, was to use a 3D printer to bio-print breast implants made from a living material like collagen for women who’d had mastectomies. The material would also serve as a scaffold, in future stages of the research, for stem cells that would differentiate inside the body into living breast tissue. Weiss also wanted the device to print a variety of other living materials, which could serve as scaffolding, for instance, for lung tissue in patients with lung cancer.

Benito Alston was part of a student team led by postdoctoral student Robert Pouliot that “designed and wired up” an off-the-shelf 3D printer so it would serve the new purpose, Pouliot said.

The project was a major success.

“Dr. Weiss is very happy,” Benito Alston said. “Whatever further research he and his team do will require minimal engineering input.”

“The sky’s the limit in terms of what we’ll be able to do with it,” Weiss says.

The bio-printer success led to yet more 3D printer work for Benito Alston. A graduate student who knew of the project recruited her to work on another student team to develop a 3D printer that would extrude two different materials at the same time, a novel application Patrick Lee, a faculty member in the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, needed in his research.

Art Imitates Engineering

For Benito Alston – a dual citizen who grew up in an artistic household in Spain – the wonders of 3D printers and the Fab Lab extended beyond engineering to the art classes she took as part of her art minor.           

A true evangelist, Benito Alston reveled in showing her fellow art students how the Fab Lab could be used to make art – like a human skull she created with strips of wood cut with a laser printer and a program called 123D, half covered with clay and half exposed, so her fellow students could behold the wonder of the Fab Lab-created architecture beneath.

Ultimately, though, she wants to attend graduate school and put her technical expertise to use in a biomedical engineering career, one for which UVM has given her unique preparation. 

“When I apply, I’ll have a lot of previous knowledge and a lot of technical information that other kids may not have.” 

Source: UVM News