News
November 2023: The 2021 iGEM team's project is published as a paper in Nature: Communications Biology. [Paper] [Team Details] [Paper Highlights]
October 2023: Senior Design team BAMBI wins in the category, AI/ML related to treatment of Cardiac, Respiratory, or Stroke diseases, and inSPIRE (currently known as AeroLux) wins in the category of electrical/computer science, at the 2023 Medronic/BMES Student design competition; Two of the four tracks available.
July 2023: Michael Patterson, former student employee & Lab Engineer, becomes the new Director of the Bioengineering Educational labs.
June 2023: Senior Design team, inSPIRE (currently known as AeroLux), wins first place for the 2023 SB3C/NSF Undergraduate Student Design Competition.
May 2023: Senior Design team, Sonura, with Tifara Boyce, Gabriela Cano, Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, & Caroline Magro, profiled for winning the 2023 President's Innovation Prize. [Article]
April 2023: Senior Design teams, BAMBI, with Ria Dawar, Pallavi Jonnalagadda, Jessica Ling, & Grace Qian, wins the Technology & Innovation Award, and StablEyes, with Ella Atsavapranee, Jake Becker, Ruoming Fan, & Savan Patel, wins the Judges' Choice Award at Penn Engineering's Senior Design competition. [Article]
April 2023: Senior Design team, Sonura, with Tifara Boyce, Gabriela Cano, Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, & Caroline Magro, wins the 2023 President's Innovation Prize. [Article]
April 2023: Senior Design team, StablEyes, with Ella Atsavapranee, Jake Becker, Ruoming Fan, & Savan Patel, is featured in Biomeditations, the Holman Biotech Commons News page. [Article]
April 2023: Our Senior Design Expo and Bio-MakerSpace are featured in a Technical.ly Philly article. [Article]
April 2023: Senior Design team, Sonura, with Tifara Boyce, Gabriela Cano, Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, & Caroline Magro, wins 1st Place at the 2023 International Johns Hopkins Healthcare Design Competition Advanced Health Track. [Article]
March 2023: A multidisciplinary venture with Penn Engineering and the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and institutes around the world, and with extensive work done in our Bio-MakerSpace is published. [Paper] [Article]
March 2023: Senior Design team, Sonura, with Tifara Boyce, Gabriela Cano, Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, & Caroline Magro, wins the Founders' Award at the Texas Christian University's Values and Ventures Competition. [Website]
March 2023: Our Bio-MakerSpace and lab program are featured in a Technical.ly Philly article. [Article]
January 2023: Lab Director, Sevile Mannickarottu, is interviewed for the Shifting Schools Podcast about "the only interdisciplinary Bio-MakerSpace in the world." [Apple Podcast] [Shifting Schools Podcast Link] [Podcast on YouTube] [Article]
November 2022: Penn President, Liz Magill, visits our Bio-MakerSpace. [Photos]
October 2022: Penn's iGEM team wins a gold medal at the 2022 Jamboree in Paris, France. [Website]
August 2022: Penn's iGEM team wins an iGEM Impact Grant Award for 2022. [Information]
May 2022: Lukas Yancopoulos (BE 2022), along with William Danon, win the 2022 President's Innovation Prize for their company, Grapevine. The company was partly inspired through Lukas's work in our Bio-MakerSpace and he was able to continue work on the project through Senior Design. [Article] [Senior Design Project]
May 2022: Our Senior Design teams accomplished amazing work, winning numerous competitions. [Article]
May 2022: A team of students whose venture, ToxiSense, wins the Perlman Grand Prize at the Venture Lab Startup Challenge. Some of their development work was done in the Bio-MakerSpace. [Article]
April 2022: Senior Design teams, Modulo Prosthetics, with Alisha Agrawal, Michelle Kwon, Gary Lin, Ian Ong, & Zachary Spalding, wins the Technology & Innovation Award, and ReiniSpec, with Caitlin Frazee, Caroline Kavanagh, Ifeoluwa Popoola, Alexa Rybicki, & Michelle White, wins the Leadership Award at Penn Engineering's Senior Design competition. [Article]
April 2022: Senior Design team, COR-Assist, with Francesca Cimino, Allen Gan, Shawn Kang, Kristina Khaw, & William Zhang, wins 2nd place at the Emerging Medical Innovation Valuation Competition at the Design of Medical Devices Conference at the University of Minnesota. [Web page]
March 2022: Senior Design team, MEViD, with Yuzheng (George) Feng, Daphne Kontogiorgos-Heintz, Carisa Shah, Pranshu Suri, & Rachel Zoneraich (CIS), wins 2nd Place at Penn's 2022 M&T Summit.
March 2022: Senior Design teams, Chrysalis, with Julia Dunn, Rachel Gu, Julia Lasater, & Carolyn Zhang, wins the People's Choice Award, and Modulo Prosthetics, with Alisha Agrawal, Michelle Kwon, Gary Lin, Ian Ong, & Zachary Spalding, wins third place at Rice University's 2022 Rice360 Design competition. [Rice 360 Press Release]
March 2022: Ossum Technologies, a five person team which did some of their development work in our Bio-MakerSpace, wins Penn's 2022 Y-Prize. [Article]
January 2022: Senior Design team, Chrysalis, with Julia Dunn, Rachel Gu, Julia Lasater, & Carolyn Zhang, along with their Penn Nursing partner, Jessica Abene, wins $2.5K at Penn's Nursing Innovation Accelerator competition.
November 2021: Penn's iGEM team wins several prizes at the 2021 international competition. [Article]
August 2021: Penn's iGEM team of Saachi Datta (Bio & RELS 2021), Juliette Hooper (BE 2022), Gloria Lee (BE 2023), & Grace Qian (BE 2023), wins an iGEM Impact Grant Award for 2021. [Information]
July 2021: Senior Design team, rUmVa, with Yasmina Al Ghadban, Rachel Madhogarhia, Jeong Inn Park, Robert Paslaski, & Phuong Vu, wins the Best Application Award for the Medical Robotics for Contagious Diseases Challenge, as part of the Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics at Imperial College, London. [Article] [Project Information]
May 2021: Senior Design team, OtoAI, with Yash Lahoti, Nikhil Maheshwari, Jonathan Mairena, Krishna Suresh, & Uday Tripathi, wins the Technology and Innovation Prize at Penn Engineering's Senior Design Competition. [Project Information] [Penn Engineering News Article]
May 2021: Our BE 310: Bioengineering Modeling, Analysis, and Design class, being the largest in-person class and one of the only in-person classes at Penn due to the pandemic, is profiled by Penn News. [Article]
March 2021: Senior Design team, Tula, with Miriam Glickman (MEAM), Ebtihal Jasim (CIS), Shreya Parchure, & Tiffany Tsang (CIS) wins the grand prize at Penn's Weiss Tech House Senior Design Pitch Competition. [Project Information]
March 2021: Our Bio-MakerSpace is profiled in Penn Health-Tech's new blog. [Article]
February 2021: Our Bio-MakerSpace is open for limited use for BE 310 and senior design students. [Video Series] [BE 310 Photos] [Senior Design Photos]
December 2020: Solumtochukwu (Somto) Egboga (Masters BE 2020), a student-employee in our Bio-MakerSpace, writes a piece in the BE Blog on how our lab is managing classes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. [Article]
September 2020: Sevile Mannickarottu discusses the lab's sustainability efforts as part of the "Green Labs Panel" for the Climate Week at Penn. [Green Labs Panel Site] [Video Recording]
July 2020: Our new video series, created by Nicole Wojnowski (BE 2022), highlighting our lab, is profiled in the BE Blog. [Article]
June 2020: Sevile Mannickarottu presents the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) paper, "Under the hood of a Bio-MakerSpace: Automating Lab Operations," written along with Lab Engineer, Michael Patterson (BE 2018, Masters BE 2020), former student employee, Carolyne Godon (Masters BE 2019), and Professor LeAnn Dourte, PhD. [Paper]
June 2020: BE 472: Medical Device Development course is profiled in the BE Blog. [Article]
April 2020: Strella Biotechnology, a start-up which Katherine Sizov (Bio 2019) founded in our Bio-MakerSpace, receives a $3.3 M in seed funding. [Article] [Article] [Penn Engineering Article]
April 2020: Our BE 570: Biomechatronics class, created and taught by Dr. LeAnn Dourte, is profiled in the BE Blog by Sophie Burkholder (BE 2020). [Article]
April 2020: Senior Design team, relieVR, with Nicole Chiou, Gabe DeSantis, Ben Habermeyer, and Vera Lee, wins 2nd place at the 2020 International Johns Hopkins Healthcare Design Competition Digital Health Track. This team was also a winner of the 2019 Berkman Prize for Innovation at Penn Engineering. [Article] [Presentation]
April 2020: The Bio-MakerSpace's facilities and equipment are used to make face shields and ventilators to help the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. [Article]
March 2020: Senior Design team, Relila, with Alisa Bhakta (BE), Alexander Connor (BE), Lauren McLeod (BE), Alexa Murray (ESE), and Caroline Raquel (BE M&T), wins 2nd place at the Integration lab competition of Penn's 2020 M&T Summit. Relila is a 3-in-1 pad that provides hospital-level care into one discrete product for postpartum care. [Presentation]
March 2020: Formal laboratory operations are stopped following the University's closure as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. All PPE is given to Penn Medicine.
February 2020: Our Bio-MakerSpace as a hub for start-ups at Penn is profiled in the BE Blog by Sophie Burkholder (BE 2020). [Article]
November 2019: Our Bio-MakerSpace and the inexpensive tools we use are profiled by Sophie Burkholder (BE 2020) in the BE Blog to show how a MakerSpace can be created for under $1500. [Article]
October 2019: Our Bio-MakerSpace developed Open-Source Plate Reader is being built as part of a BioHackathon sponsored by OpenCell in London, UK. [Website]
October 2019: Rothberg Catalyzer, organized by Penn Health-Tech, is hosted by our Bio-MakerSpace, and our Bioengineering Senior Design team wins the "Pioneer Award." [Article]
October 2019: Sevile Mannickarottu presents his American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) paper, "From Course Instruction to Bio-MakerSpace: Creating a Lab Space for Independent Investigation and Innovation" at Penn Nursing's Research and Innovation Colloquium Series. [Paper]
August 2019: BioAlert Technologies, a start-up led by Marc Rosenberg (M BioTech 2019) which launched from our Bio-MakerSpace, is profiled by Taylor Durham, Associate Director of Communication at Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship. [Article]
June 2019: Sevile Mannickarottu presents his paper, "From Course Instruction to Bio-MakerSpace: Creating a Lab Space for Independent Investigation and Innovation" at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference in Tampa, FL. [Paper]
June 2019: Medical device projects in BE 101, a course taught by Dr. Michael Rizk, profiled in the BE Blog. [Article]
May 2019: BE 310's Spectrophotometer lab, part of a course taught by Drs. Brian Chow and David Issadore, profiled in the BE Blog by Sophie Burkholder (BE 2020). [Article]
May 2019: Penn's 2017 iGEM project, an Open-Source Plate Reader, and published paper profiled in the journal, Nature. [Article Link] [PDF]
April 2019: Katherine Sizov (Biology 2019) and Malika Shukurova (BE 2019) of Strella Biotechnology, a start-up which Katherine begin as a sophomore in our Bio-MakerSpace, & Michael Wong (Wh 2019) of InstaHub, a start-up he co-founded with Oladayo (Dayo) Odewole (BE 2014, GrBE 2020) with work done in our Bio-MakerSpace, win Penn's 2019 President's Innovation Prize. [Penn News] [DP article] [Philadelphia Inquirer] [Article about Strella winners] [Article about InstaHub winners]
April 2019: BE 310's ECG lab profiled in the BE Blog by Sophie Burkholder (BE 2020). [Article]
March 2019: BioAlert Technologies, a start-up led by Marc Rosenberg (M BioTech 2019), launches from our Bio-MakerSpace. [News]
March 2019: Brianna Wronko (BE 2017) founder and CEO of Group K Diagnostics interviews with Select Greater Philadelphia Council's podcast Growing Greater Philadelphia and gives a shout out to our Bio-MakerSpace (~minute 18) for helping her develop her business and for its role in encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation. [Link]
January 2019: Karol Szymula (BE 2018), Michael Magaraci (BE & Wharton 2013, BE PhD 2020), Michael Patterson (BE 2018), et al, have their 2017 iGEM project, an open-source plate reader, in collaboration with Brian Chow's lab, published as a paper in Biochemistry. [Paper] [Cover Art] [C&EN Article] [Penn Article] [C2W Article (Netherlands)]
December 2018: Katherine Sizov (Biology 2019) of Strella Biotechnology, a start-up which she begin in our Bio-MakerSpace, wins pitch competition on "The Pitch" at the Wharton School. [Podcast] [Article]
October 2018: Rothberg Catalyzer, organized by Penn Health-Tech, collaborates with our lab. [News Video]
October 2018: Vlogger and BE student, Lamis Elsawah (BE 2019) talks about a day in her life at Penn, featuring BE 570: Biomechatronics. [YouTube Video]
May 2018: Sevile Mannickarottu wins Penn Engineering's Staff Recognition Award for 2018. [Article]
May 2018: BE 310's Spectrophotometer lab module and BE Senior design team's (MEDISIGN with Kate Panzer, Jackie Valeri, Nick Stiansen, and Karol Szymula) Honorable Mention award profiled in the BE blog. [Article] [MEDISIGN Presentation]
April 2018: InstaHub, a start-up co-founded by Oladayo (Dayo) Adewole (BE 2014, GrBE 2020) and developed in our lab, wins the inaugural Hult Ivy Prize. [DP article]
October 2017: Sevile Mannickarottu presents "Integrated Laboratory Learning: Breadth and Depth in Bioengineering" at a special session on curricular innovation at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Conference in Phoenix, AZ. [Article]
September 2017: Profile of InnoWorks outreach event. [Article]
June 2017: Jaimie Carlson (BE 2018) and her team's design wins competition to test on the International Space Station (ISS). Development work, including 3D printing of their microfluidic devices, was done in our Bio-MakerSpace. [Article]
April 2017: BE 309's Cockroach-Machine-Interface (CMI) lab profiled in the BE blog. [Article]
April 2017: Brianna Wronko's (BE 2017) Senior design project launches as a startup, Group K Diagnostics, from our lab. [Article]
April 2017: Hey Day festivities carry on into the lab. [Article]
February 2017: Junior BETA Day brings local middle school students to BE. [Article]
January 2017: BE 570 - Biomechatronics, a new course developed and taught by Dr. LeAnn Dourte, profiled. [Article]
July 2016: The lab, in collaboration with Dr. Brian Chow's lab, welcomes the Franklin Institute STEM Scholars Program for a one-week synthetic biology session.
May 2016: Senior design teams, "Automated Pancreatic Cancer Diagnostic" with Moriah Cesaretti, Julia Chen, Pooja Khandekar, and Kinjal Shah, and "Digital Breast Tomosynthesis with Superior Resolution" with Fred Kwon, Joseph Licata, Tejas Narayan, and David Zhang, win Honorable Mentions at the SEAS Alumni Senior Design competition. [Cancer Diagnostic Presentation] [Digital Breast Tomosynthesis Presentation]
April 2016: Michael Magaraci (BE & Wharton 2013, BE PhD 2020), student in Dr. Brian Chow's lab, has paper published at ACS Synthetic Biology on a lab developed for BE 310. [Paper]
June 2015: BE 309's Cockroach-Machine-Interface (CMI) Lab profiled by WHYY's The Pulse and NPR's Here & Now Show. [Link with article, audio, & videos]
May 2015: Senior design teams, "Mobile Fluorescence Microscopy for Point-of-Care Diagnostics" with Connie Li, Matthew MacLean, Steven Huang, Renyao Wei, and Max Wasserman and "FloPro: Fluorescence Imaging and Projection" with Woo Yul Byun, Frederick Ding, Karthik Sethuraman, and Sara Liebreich win Honorable Mentions at the SEAS Alumni Senior Design competition. [Fluorescence Microscopy Presentation] [FloPro Presentation]
February 2015: Penn's 2013 iGEM team awarded the PubCo Award for Best Natural Sciences and Research Article in a Penn Publication, for their epigenetic toolbox for synthetic biology. [Paper]
August 2014: Dr. Andrew Tsourkas profiled by Beta Pleated Chic on the GEMS (Girls in Engineering Math and Science) program activities in the lab. [Article]
May 2014: Senior design team, "MicroFluFISH" with Camilo Bermudez, Liz Feeney, David Gabrieli, and Leah Suttner wins First place, and "ReSnare" with Elizabeth Boyle, Zachary Plona, Sharon Roth, and Melissa Schwartz and "Assist3D" with Oladayo Adewole, Lyle Brunhofer, Junyang Lu, and Colin Millar win Honorable Mentions at the SEAS Alumni Senior Design competition. [MicroFluFISH Presentation] [MicroFluFISH article] [ReSnare Presentation] [Assist3D Presentation]
February 2014: Sevile Mannickarottu presents "Laboratory Learning" as a mini-keynote address at the Penn Engineering Undergraduate Teaching retreat.
January 2014: Penn's 2012 iGEM team, led by Michael Magaraci (BE & Wharton 2013) and Avin Veerakumar (BE & Wharton 2013) and advised by Dr. Casim Sarkar, has paper published at ACS Synthetic Biology. [Paper]
October 2013: Penn iGEM team wins national competition. [Penn News] [Philadelphia Inquirer Article]
May 2013: Senior design team, "Tactile Feedback for Monopolar Electrocautery in Minimally Invasive Surgery" with Zach Shurden, Anna Brzezinski, Brian Horwich, and Nicki Blumenfeld win First place at the SEAS Alumni Senior Design competition. [Article] [Presentation]
October 2012: Penn iGEM team wins American East Regional competition. [DP Story] [Penn News]
October 2011: Penn iGEM takes silver medal in competition. [DP Story]