Week 3 CGregg

For the third week of summer immersion was I back in Ithaca to run the Butcher Lab's contributions to the 4-H Career Explorations Conference held at Cornell.  For this activity I ran 3 days worth of lab experiments and presentations regarding biomedical engineering.  With the help of my fellow labmates, we designed activities ranging from medical imaging, biomaterials, 3D printing, embryonic heart isolation, stages of chick development, and fluorescence cell imaging.

With a group of 19 students the days were broken down as follows.  On the first day (Tuesdays) I gave a brief introduction about biomedical engineering and what exactly it is that we do.  Then the first two activities that we did were an ex ovo chick culture and uniaxial biomechanical tissue testing.  The ex ovo egg culture was fun but definitely messy and not many chicks survived.  The biomechanics activity was something that high school students have never seen before  and have never really considered.

On the second day of the conference (Wednesday) we started with a short presentation about cardiovascular development.  I talked about the different stages of heart development, how the heart goes from being the cardiac crescent, to linear, and then goes through two different looping patterns.  Additionally, I talked about the onset of beating and how blood is formed during development.  After the morning presentation, the kids were broken into 3 groups which rotated through 3 different activities.  One was a biomaterials activity where different colored hydrogels were loaded into syringes and the students were allowed to make a design on a cell culture plate.  Then the hydrogels were photocrosslinked with the UV light.  The second activity was the cardiac patch where a chick heart was isolated and cultured.  The heart continues to beat for several days after being isolated as long as the tissue remains alive.  The third activity was about medical imaging, specifically CT/microCT.  Then I had them build the hardware needed for image gating of the chick heart.

After the mornings activities there was a lunch break and then a labmate gave a presentation about what is engineering and engineering solutions related to cardiovascular disease.  Then the same format consisted for the afternoon where three more activities were performed.  This included green and red cell fluorescence imaging, the bioprinting activity, and the stages of development.

The third day (Thursday) consisted of revisting activities from the last few days.  The ex ovo chick culture from day one was examined and the students were able to note the changes in vasculature and heart rate.  Additionally, the cardiac patch from day two was examined to see if the tissue was still beating.  We finished the conference with a game which covered a lot of the basic concepts that we were hoping they would learn over the three days.  Based on the evaluations given to the students and chaperones, it seems like the students enjoyed their time.

As far as research goes for my summer project, I was able to get the vascular network that had been printed out for me on the 3D bioprinter.  I also began working with Solid Works to design simplified vascular networks that are much easier to print.