Purdue University biomedical engineering professor Alyssa Panitch has been named the first faculty entrepreneur-in-residence at Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship.

Panitch, who has been involved in launching three companies, will serve as a resource for university faculty, staff and students looking to start a company from their work or research at Purdue. She also plans to create a network of faculty experts who can serve as a university-wide resource to help advance the university's commercialization efforts.

Professor Zheng Ouyang has been notified that he has been selected to received R21 funding from the National Institutes of Health. The funding will support his research on the development of a paper spray ionization mass spectrometry device for direct analysis of biofluid samples.

Yunzhou (Sophia) Shi, Hamsa Jaganathan, and Chia-Jung Wu were each honored with the Baxter Innovation Award from Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Deerfield IL. Baxter created the Innovation Awards to stimulate and reward research that can be directly used for critical care therapies and the development of medical products that save and sustain patients' lives.

Shriram Raghunathan has been selected as one of six finalists to present his research on low-power implantable circuits for the 4th TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Corp) Outstanding Student Award.

At the recent "Sweet Successes" welcome back gathering, it was announced that four BME graduate students had been selected to received Ronald Dollens Graduate Scholarships.

Professor Jenna Rickus is part of a research team whose project has been selected to receive research funding from the Ralph W. and Grace M. Showalter Research Trust Fund.

Jim Leary, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and SVM Professor of Nanomedicine has been selected to receive the Distinguished Life Sciences Scientist Award from the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation and the U.S Chamber of Commerce.

Becky Bercich, a graduate student working with Professor Pedro Irazoqui, has been selected to serve as director of the Golden Silks color guard and winter guard for the 2010-11 season of Purdue Bands.

Keith Hansen, a senior in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, has been notified of his selection as Indiana's only student representative to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

Professor Kevin Otto of the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, a co-investigator along with Joe Garner (Animal Sciences) and Jessica Huber (Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences), has been selected to receive research funding from the Showalter Foundation.