University at Buffalo Biomedical Engineering

It's hard to believe it's been one week since our bittersweet celebration and send-off to our graduating students! Congratulations to the Class of 2026! We are so proud of you!

BME students recently had a wonderful opportunity to present their Senior Design Project – “DrainSight” – at UB’s Surgery Day event at the Jacob's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. DrainSight is an AI-powered drain monitoring system that uses a cell-phone photo to measure output fluid type and volume. The app component organizes this data by patient, and stores it over time to create a trend. This project was sponsored by both Brian Quaranto, MD and Michael Chopko, MD.

BME student Rachel Getzler presented their project alongside Ansh Kumar, UB MBA/BME student for help with the demonstration. Other developers who could not be present were Samuel Hromchak and Joshua Vidro. This presentation won the Quick Shots Presentations award!

UB’s Surgery Day is a research-based conference with medical students, residents, undergraduates, and even high schoolers. This is a wonderful example of the innovative and translational work our students are doing here at UB BME! Congratulations the entire DrainSight team on this outstanding achievement!

Congratulations to BME PhD student, Laura Sherwood, on receiving the SUNY GREAT Award! This award recognizes students who were selected as recipients or honorable mentions for federal awards sponsored by agencies including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and U.S. Department of Energy, among others.

Laura is the recipient of the F31 Award from NIH. She was recognized by UB President Tripathi and Provost Weber at the UB Celebration of Student Academic Excellence.

For our last seminar in the Spring 2026 BME seminar series, we welcomed Dr. Raj Kothapalli for his presentation: “Multimodal Optical, Ultrasound and Photoacoustic Imaging Strategies for Pre-clinical and Clinical Applications”

Dr. Raj Kothapalli is an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Penn State Cancer Institute, at the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Kothapalli served as an instructor in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University from 2014 to 2016, during which time he conducted the first-in-human photoacoustic prostate imaging studies. Since 2017, he has led the BioPhotonics and Ultrasound Imaging lab at Penn State, which focuses on developing novel multimodal imaging strategies combining optical, ultrasound and photoacoustic technologies. Dr. Kothapalli was awarded the Hamalainen Peter Michael Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Sir Peter Michael Foundation (2009 to 2012), the K99-R00 NIH Pathway to Independence award in 2014, and the NSF CAREER award in 2023.

Congratulations to the BME Graduate Student Association (GSA) for winning The Student Organization Collaboration of the Year Pillar of Leadership Award! This award is given to a student organization that orchestrates the most valuable co-sponsored program that has a meaningful contribution to students. This award also considers an organization’s collaboration with other groups.

For our Spring BME Seminar Series, we hosted Dr. Song Li for his presentation: “Mechano-Immunoengineering for Cancer Therapy”

Dr. Song Li is a Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Associate Dean of the Samueli School of Engineering at UCLA. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and on the Governing Council of the International Academy for Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE). Dr. Li’s research centers on cell engineering and mechanomedicine, with notable contributions to understanding how biophysical cues influence stem cell differentiation and cell reprogramming. Dr. Li is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Med-X Journal. His achievements have earned him numerous awards and honors, including the Global Biomaterials Leadership Award from the Chinese Association of Biomaterials, and election as a Fellow of AIMBE, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and IAMBE.

Congratulations to UB BME Faculty Dr. Ciprian Ionita and Dr. Jonathan Lovell on being acknowledged for most promising startups at the first-ever Buffalo Startup Draft hosted by Series B[uffalo]! In total, 11 Buffalo-based companies were acknowledged and rewarded by former Buffalo Bills legend Eric Wood.

QAS AI, led by Dr. Ionita, gives neurosurgeons something they’ve never had before: real-time AI that can predict, mid-procedure, whether a patient’s brain treatment is on track to succeed.

Pop Biotechnologies is a biotechnology startup led by cofounders Dr. Lovell and Jonathan Smyth and was recently awarded a $2.46 million federal grant to advance the development of a vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease.

Read the full story here! https://www.seriesbuffalo.com/articles/11-buffalo-based-startups-drafted-to-series-b-uffalo-team

Congratulations to UB BME PhD students Rob Bing, Zhijian Tan, and Yunqi Xi on winning 3rd Place in the Panasci Technology Entreprenurship Comeption (Panasci TEC) on April 16th! The group received a $5,000 prize sponsored by UB’s Office of Business and Entrepreneur Partnerships for their pitch on “EchoWell Health." EchoWell Health is developing an AI-guided ultrasound acquisition platform that enables patients to perform standardized breast scans at home using a wireless probe. The system provides real-time guidance and quality control to ensure clinicians receive clinically usable data for longitudinal monitoring without requiring in-clinic imaging or trained sonographers.

Panasci TEC was created in 2001 by the UB School of Management and the UB Office of Business and Entrepreneur Partnerships, and is funded with a $1 million endowment from the late Henry A. Panasci Jr. to facilitate and promote the commercialization of UB-generated technologies.

Check out the full story here: https://management.buffalo.edu/about/news.host.html/content/shared/mgt/news/model-rocketry-company-wins-ub-entrepreneurship-competition.detail.html

As part of our Spring BME seminar series, we hosted Dr. Li Feng for his presentation: “MRI at 0.55T: Opportunities, Challenges, and Recent Advances”

Dr. Li Feng is an Associate Professor of Radiology at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, where he serves as Director of Rapid Imaging and oversees research efforts in rapid MRI within the Department of Radiology. He is an internationally recognized expert in rapid MRI, non-Cartesian MRI, and free-breathing MRI, and has pioneered several fast-imaging methods that have been successfully translated into clinical practice. In recent years, Dr. Feng’s research has also focused on MRI at 0.55T, with particular emphasis on developing self supervised-based approaches to improve image quality at low field.

BME Chair, Dr. Yun Wu, was featured this week on Monday Minute with the Dean! Dr. Wu and Dean Lewis discuss exciting opportunities here in BME and what makes us unique - check it out below!

March 23, 2026 - Spotlight Series: Biomedical Engineering Monday Minute with the Dean: Spend a minute with University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Dean Kemper Lewis! Each Monday, Dean Lewis ...