2019 Honors and Awards
CORE FACULTY
Lawrence Bonassar
Named 2019 Class of Fellows of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).
Jonathan Butcher
Elected American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows; awarded 2018 Sonny Yau ’72 Award for excellence in teaching and mentoring from Cornell Engineering.
Ben Cosgrove
Awarded 2018 Research Grant for Junior Faculty from the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research and the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR); awarded 2019 John Swanson '61 ME in honor of his mother Dortothy G. Swanson Award for excellence in teaching and mentoring from Cornell Engineering.
Iwijn De Vlaminck
Awarded $200,000 grant from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation for research on cell-free DNA as a non-invasive test of bacterial translocation, ileal inflammation, and extra-intestinal Crohn’s disease; honored as an inspirational Cornell faculty member by a Merrill Presidential Scholar.
Chris Hernandez
Elected American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows; Fellow of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR).
Jan Lammerding
Awarded Faculty Teaching, Advising, and Mentorship Award from the Cornell Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA); awarded 2019 Sonny Yau ’72 Award for excellence in teaching and mentoring from Cornell Engineering.
Esak (Isaac) Lee
Appointed the Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences.
Nozomi Nishimura
Honored as an inspirational Cornell faculty member by a Merrill Presidential Scholar.
David Putnam
Awarded Excellence in Teaching award from Cornell Engineering.
Chris Schaffer
Elected American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows; Research Excellence Award from Cornell Engineering.
Michael Shuler
Awarded 2019 Biotechnology Progress Award for Excellence in Biological Engineering Publication to be awarded at the AIChE meeting Nov 10-14.
Ankur Singh
Awarded Research Excellence Award from Cornell Engineering; elected inaugural Chair of the new Immuno Delivery Focus Group at the Controlled Release Society.
Shalu Suri
Awarded James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching Award from Cornell Engineering.
Marjolein van der Meulen
Renewed as the James M. and Marsha McCormick Director of Biomedical Engineering for an additional five-year term starting July 1, 2019, and ending June 30, 2024.
STUDENTS & POSTDOCS
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Bayan Alturkestani (M.Eng.) awarded 1st place at the SABIC competition for entrepreneurship in Washington D.C.
David Bassen (Butcher Lab) awarded an INTERN fellowship from the NSF.
Carolyn Chlebek (van der Meulen Lab) selected as one of two winners of the 2019 Kappa Delta/ORS Travel Awards; received the Cornell Caroline Coffey Fund Travel Award to participate in the 2019 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research Annual Meeting.
Nicole Diamantides (Bonassar Lab) won a poster award at the meeting of the International Society of Biofabrication in Wurzburg, Germany.
Elizabeth Feeney (Bonassar Lab) placed 3rd in the Ph.D. Student Paper Competition at the Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering, and Biotransport Conference (SB3C).
Marie Beatrix Kruth (M.Eng.) won second place at the MIT Hacking Medicine competition held in New York City in November 2018.
Menansili Mejooli (Schaffer-Nishimura Lab) awarded 2019 Africa Fund Fellowship.
Jill Middendorf (Bonassar lab) awarded a young scientist travel grant to attend the ORS 2019 annual meeting.
Taylor Oeschger (Singh Lab) won first place in the Collegiate Poster Competition at the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Local in Baltimore; awarded the Nellie Yeh-Poh Lin Whetten Memorial Award from CNF.
Leah Pagnozzi (Butcher Lab) awarded a Provost Diversity Fellowship.
Monet Roberts (Paszek Lab) inducted into the Cornell chapter of the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society.
Guy Scuderi (Butcher Lab) awarded a Vertebrate Genomics Training fellowship.
Stephen Sloan (Bonassar Lab) won a podium presentation award at the meeting of the Philadelphia Spine Research Society and the Spine Section of the Orthopaedic Research Society; awarded a travel grant to attend the 2019 Association for Clinical and Translational Science Conference in Washington, D.C.
Reagan Stephenson (Singh Lab) awarded a poster award from the Society for Biomaterials.
Taylor Walker (M.Eng.) selected a Forbes 30 Under 30 Scholar.
Tibra Wheeler (Singh/van der Meulen Labs) selected a Forbes 30 Under 30 Scholar; awarded a SIG poster award from the Society for Biomaterials.
Yuying (Sylvia) Zhang (Nishimura Lab) selected as recipient of the Hsien Wu and Daisy Yen Wu Scholarship from the Cornell University Graduate School.
Chelsea Stephens (Butcher Lab), Monet Roberts (Paszek Lab), Carolyn Chlebek (van der Meulen Lab), Rose Buchmann (Erickson Lab), and Tibra Wheeler (Singh/van der Meulen Labs) each received awards at the Diversity Programs in Engineering 2019 banquet.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Heather Lukas awarded a scholarship from Tau Beta Pi for the 2018-2019 academic year.
Crystal Lee, Shweta Modi, Alice Yan, Joy Li, and Holly Zheng awarded first place in the 2019 Engineering Showcase held at Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters on Feb. 28, 2019.
Haley Antoine and Samantha Pitts each received awards at the Diversity Programs in Engineering 2019 banquet.
POSTDOCS
Oliver Bracko (Schaffer-Nishimura Lab) awarded 3MT Competition Post-Doctoral Fellow award from the Vascular Cognitive Disorders PIA.
Tyler Kirby (Lammerding Lab) awarded a development grant from the Muscular Dystrophy Association for his research on Emery-Dreifuss Muscular Dystrophy (EDMD).
Ana Maria Porras (Brito Lab) selected Ambassador for the If/Then program from the AAAS; awarded a Cornell Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship.
ALUMNI
Young Hye Song (Ph.D. 2016, Fischbach-Teschl Lab) will join the University of Arakansas Department of Biomedical Engineering as an assistant professor in August 2019.
STAFF
Belinda Floyd received the Unsung Hero Award from Cornell's Graduate Office of Inclusion and Student Engagement and the Graduate and Professional Student Diversity Council.
MEET THE 2019 NSF FELLOWS
The Meinig School proudly congratulates Ph.D. students Garrett Beeghly (Fischbach-Teschl Lab), Christine Harper (Hernandez Lab), Daniella Fodera (Andarawis-Puri Lab), Yuyan Wang (Paszek Lab), and Ben Albert (Butcher Lab) who each won a 2019 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP). The NSF GRFP offers three years of stipend support during a five-year fellowship tenure to applicants selected through a national competition. Congratulations also go to students receiving honorable mentions this year: Taylor Oeschger (Erickson Lab) and David McKellar (Cosgrove, De Vlaminck Labs).
FACULTY PROMOTIONS
Steve Adie promoted to the rank of associate professor.
Claudia Fischbach-Teschl promoted to the rank of professor.
Nozomi Nishimura promoted to the rank of associate professor.
Ankur Singh promoted to the rank of associate professor.