Professor Tom Webster has been selected as this year's recipient of the Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award by the Biomedical Engineering Society based on originality and ingenuity in a manuscript he published in a peer-reviewed journal. The award is in honor of the memory of Rita Schaffer, former Executive Director of BMES, who passed away in 1998.

Professor Webster will present a 20-minute Rita Schaffer Memorial Lecture during the BMES Annual Fall Meeting in October in Houston, TX, where he will receive his cash award and plaque. The presentation will be based on his work, "Mechanisms of enhanced osteoblast adhesion on nanophase alumina involve vitronectin," co-authored by L. S. Schadler, R. W. Siegel, and R. Bizios, which appeared in Tissue Engineering 7: 291-301 (2001). Professor Webster's selection was based largely on the review of this work, his curriculum vitae, and confidential letters by two recognized authorities in his field of work, neither of whom is associated with Purdue University.