By Anita Srikameswaran, Andréa Stanford and Chuck Finder
UPMC and Pitt Schools of the Health Sciences experts in
psychiatry, rehabilitation science and regenerative medicine are among the 17
recently named recipients of the
Carnegie Science Awards.
The winners include
Steven R. Little,
Ph.D., and
David Vorp,
Ph.D., of Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering and the University of
Pittsburgh/UPMC McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine;
Nancy Minshew,
M.D., a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the School of Medicine, and
graduate student Elaine Houston, of the School of Health and Rehabilitation
Sciences.
Houston, who received the University/Post-Secondary Student
Award, works on the Personal Mobility and Manipulation Appliance (PerMMA) team
under
Rory
Cooper, Ph.D., at the Human Engineering Research Laboratories in Bakery
Square.
“For somebody with a spinal cord injury, it’s very
challenging to control a (robotic) system,” said Houston, who works on
interfaces to allow people with spinal cord injury to operate certain robotics.
“I’ve been involved for about 2½ years now, but this project has been going on
for about 5 years.”
She spends most of her fall weekends with the Lego ® League
competition, coaching two teams of kids who are 9 to 14 years old.
“It’s been a lot of fun to play around with the robots and
with kids,” Houston said. “What’s unique about the teams we have compared to
all the other teams in Pittsburgh [is that] we’re very focused on students with
disabilities. They might not be on a team anywhere else. This is a really good
chance to get kids with disabilities into the STEM [science, technology,
engineering and mathematics] fields and getting them excited. Just because they
have disabilities doesn’t mean they can’t be in STEM or do what they want to
do. “
 |
| Steven R. Little, Ph.D. |
Dr. Little, associate professor and chair of the chemical
and petroleum engineering department at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering
and who is affiliated with the McGowan Intsitute for Regenerative
Medicine, received the Carnegie Science Center's University/Post-Secondary
Educator Award. In addition to teaching courses in the fields of chemical
engineering transport phenomena and drug delivery, Dr. Little has 20 to 25
undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students working in his lab on
biomimetics, which intends to make synthetic systems replicate biological
function.
“As just one example, we have a large number of students
working on projects where we are mimicking the same kind of signals in the body
that recruit immune system cells that can reduce inflammation,” he said. “That
could help reduce rejection of organ transplants, for example. When teaching, I
encourage students to try to work on problems that matter, and to try to apply
what they have been learning to real-life problems.”
Dr. Vorp’s work with tissue-engineered replacement blood
vessels won him the Life Sciences Award. Dr. Minshew, director of Pitt’s Center
for Excellence in Autism Research, is the recipient of the Catalyst Award.
The
awards will be presented at a ceremony May 30 at the Carnegie Music Hall.
