Grace joined Purdue as an NSF IGERT Fellow from the University of Florida, where she received her BS in Materials Engineering with honors. At Purdue, she decided she wanted to work on developing biomaterials to repair cartilage defects, and independently developed a series of experiments to test her hypothesis that polymers with surface features similar to cartilage tissue could increase cartilage-producing cells. Through Purdue's Office of Technology and Commercialization, Grace and Professor Tom Webster have applied for a patent for the materials she developed, and they are also in discussion with various industry representatives on commercializing these materials. Grace already has 5 publications, 14 presentations, and 3 book chapters to her credit, and just successfully defended her thesis last month.

The Geddes-Laufman-Greatbatch Award was established in 1988 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. The award is presented each year to the outstanding student or post-doctoral fellow in biomedical engineering.