Abstract: Dr. Ford Versypt leads the Systems Biomedicine and Pharmaceutics research lab, which develops and uses multiscale systems engineering approaches including mathematical modeling and computational simulation to enhance understanding of the mechanisms governing tissue remodeling and damage as a result of diseases and infections and to simulate the treatment of those conditions to improve human health. The lab specializes in (a) modeling mass transport of biochemicals through heterogeneous porous materials—primarily extracellular matrices—that change morphology dynamically due to the influence of chemical reactions and (b) modeling dynamic, multi-species biological systems involving chemical, physical, and biological interactions of diverse, heterogeneous cell populations with these materials and the chemical species in tissue microenvironments. In this seminar, vignettes of research will be highlighted from the organ systems currently under instigation in the lab: bone, lung, kidney, eye, and tumor tissue microenvironments. This work is currently supported by an NSF CAREER award and NIH R35 MIRA, R01, and R21 grants. Additionally, Dr. Ford Versypt is active in engineering education research and training. She will briefly showcase some of her team’s interactive computing activities as chemical engineering educational tools in university and informal learning environments for broad access to students, educators, researchers, and lay people.

Bio: Dr. Ford Versypt earned a B.S. from the University of Oklahoma and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, all in Chemical Engineering. She did her postdoc at MIT. She started her academic career at Oklahoma State University in 2014 before joining the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York as a tenured associate professor in 2021. Dr. Ford Versypt leads the Systems Biomedicine and Pharmaceutics Laboratory. She has received a number of awards for her research, teaching, and service including the NSF CAREER Award, ASEE Chemical Engineering Division’s Fahien, Martin, and Corcoran Awards, and AIChE CAST Division Himmelblau Award for Innovations in Computer-Based Chemical Engineering Education. Her research program is funded by the NSF, NIH (R35 MIRA, R01, R21), and others.

~BME Host: Kinzer-Ursem/Pienaar~

Historic Quote of the Week: "Always give the student a problem he/she can solve." - Leslie A. Geddes, founder of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue, est. 1974

ZOOM LINK: https://purdue-edu.zoom.us/j/98493971181?pwd=weYbiMjTeExVLr1icgTQijaKhsatN4.1

*Students registered for the seminar are expected to attend in-person