For her outstanding productivity and service to BME, Jennifer McCann has been presented with the Geddes-Laufman-Greatbatch Award for the academic year 2002-2003. Jennifer is a Master's student, working with Professors Tom Webster and Karen Haberstroh on flow in arterial vessels and the interaction of the cells in the arterial wall. The result of her studies will aid medical researchers in better understanding the mechanisms involved in the development of heart disease. Jennifer plans on finishing up her Master's in May of 2003, and has already received a Special Initiatives Fellowship from Purdue to continue in our PhD program.

The Geddes-Laufman-Greatbatch Award was established by Dr. Leslie A. Geddes after he received the 1987 AAMI Foundation/Laufman-Greatbatch Prize in recognition of the importance and unparalleled diversity of his contributions in biomedical instrumentation. Dr. Harold Laufman is emeritus professor of surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and director emeritus, Institute of Surgical Studies, Montefiore Medical Center in New York. Wilson Greatbatch was trained as an electrical engineer but his research, which combined engineering with medical electronics, agricultural genetics, and electrochemistry, resulted in the first implantable pacemaker.