Brian Ward, a graduate student in the joint MD/PhD program sponsored by Purdue BME and the IU School of Medicine, has been selected as a PhD Student Award Finalist at the upcoming 2005 Summer Bioengineering Conference.

At a recent black-tie event in Indianapolis, attended by 300 Purdue friends, donors and alums, a recently formed EPICS team was showcased.

At a luncheon ceremony held on April 28th in Indianapolis, Dr. Leslie A. Geddes was presented with the first annual Outstanding Contribution to Scientific Commercialization Award at the Indiana Health Industry Forum's 2005 Indiana Health Innovention.

In a stiff competition held on Friday, April 29th, sophomore BME student Melissa Linker of Waterloo, IL, was named one of two drum majors to lead the Purdue "All-American" Marching Band for the 2005-2006 season. She will be only the fifth female in the history of Purdue Bands to hold this position.

Each year, more than 11,000 Americans join the more than 250,000 people suffering a debilitating spinal cord injury. The loss of mobility and productivity in individual lives is devastating on many levels, and until recently little could be done for these people and fellow sufferers world wide.

Purdue biomedical engineers Saba Choudhary, Professor Tom Webster and Professor Karen Haberstroh are presenting results today at the Society for Biomaterials 2005 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Memphis, Tennessee, that show vascular stents used to repair arteries might perform better if their surfaces contained "nano-bumps" that mimic tiny features found in living tissues.

Professor Karen Haberstroh has been selected to serve on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biomaterials Research Part B.

Ganesh Balasundrum was selected as a finalist in the outstanding poster competition at the recent Materials Research Society Spring Meeting, held in San Francisco.

The Purdue Board of Trustees approved faculty promotions at their April 8th meeting.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of $75,000 to the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue for a project entitled "Undergraduate Engineering Laboratory for Quantitative Analysis and Design of Molecular and Cellular Systems."