2024

09/01/2024 – THE WEICKENMEIER LAB MOVED TO OXFORD

It is with tremendous excitement that we announce our move to the University of Oxford. Dr. Weickenmeier will start as an Associate Professor of Brain Health in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and will also be affiliated with the Podium Institute.

06/27/2024 – New paper in International Journal of Solids and Structures

Ahsanul published his first peer review journal article on his experiments on 3D support bath printed GelMa constructs. His work dove deep into studying the effect of printing parameters on construct stiffness in order to inform future efforts to print customized constructs with well-defined mechanical properties. Congratulations, Ahsanul!

06/01/2024 – Dr. Weickenmeier receives the NSF CAREER AWARD

The five-year project seeks to use experimental and computational strategies to explain the impact of decade-long brain shape changes on functional brain structures.

Brain aging is characterized by progressive neurodegeneration that leads to cognitive slowing and functional decline. Cell-level changes manifest on the organ level in the form of cortical thinning, white matter shrinking and, most notably, lateral ventricular enlargement, in which the fluid-filled spaces of the brain (the lateral ventricles) become larger than usual.

Weickenmeier will combine medical image registration, brain tissue experiments and constitutive modeling to study how progressive tissue loss drives ventricular enlargement. He will also show how such loss is visible in medical imaging and establish a brain aging model that predicts ventricular enlargement and corresponding periventricular white matter lesion locations. This research stands to allow clinicians to identify subjects showing signs of abnormal aging early on.

04/02/2024 – Xuesong successfully defends his PhD!

Congratulations to Dr. Xuesong Zhang for successfully passing his PhD defense. We are truly proud of his accomplishments and are keen to see where goes next!

2023

09/13/2023 – Dr. Weickenmeier joins a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program informational panel at Stevens

Stevens hosted a workshop for students who wish to apply to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships Program (NSF GRFP). We provided basic information about the program and shared our experiences of reviewing for the program in the past. Moreover, we offer feedback on student’s application materials.

09/01/2023 – Lauren joins the WLab as a new PhD

After years of working with us as an undergraduate and graduate student, she is now our newest PhD student. Lauren is also the recipient of the inaugural Edwin A. Stevens Presidential Fellowship in recognition of her academic success to date. Lauren: we are excited to have you in the group!

07/21/2023 – ME Summer Research Program 2023

We organized the fourth edition of the Mechanical Engineering Summer Research Program this summer. From over 70 applications, we selected 25 students to join us for the 8-week program.

06/07/2023 – The Center for Neuromechanics receives an inaugural grant from Stevens to promote STEAM.

This seed grant aims to foster interdisciplinary research collaborations with an emphasis on STEAM education. STEAM is an educational and research initiative that seeks to integrate the arts into traditional STEM research and educational curricula to foster design thinking, technological innovations, and human creativity. We proposed BRAIN DAY and will get to invite high school students and undergraduate students for joint hands on activities to promote learning.

2022

11/06/2022 – Paper selected as Editor’s Choice

Andreia’s paper on white matter hyperintensity modeling was selected as Editor’s choice and made it onto the cover of Engineering with Computers!

10/28/2022 – Regional Symposium on Climate Change

The Weickenmeier Lab was invited to speak at the Regional Symposium on Climate Change – Planetary, and Human Health: Challenges and Opportunities at Rutgers University as part of a multi-institution research initiative. We shared our perspective on future health risks for the brain associated with increased exposure to pollutants, toxins, and infectious agents in a changing climate. A special thank you to Xuesong for representing our lab so well!

08/18/2022 – Yana successfully defends her PhD!

Congratulations to Yana Blinkouskaya for successfully passing her PhD defense. Yana is the Weickenmeier Lab’s first PhD student and we are endlessly proud of her important role in our lab. We wish her all the best for her next endeavors.

08/10/2022 – Brain Conference from the Center for Neuromechanics

The Center for Neuromechanics organized its inaugural BRAIN conference to facilitate innovative research projects addressing medically relevant brain health challenges by connecting researchers from various disciplines.

Read more about the event here.

07/01/2022 – Summer Undergraduate Research Programs

Dr. Weickenmeier organized the third edition of the Summer Undergraduate Research Program for the Mechanical Engineering Department. With 27 diverse participants it was another successful rendition of this increasingly popular initiative to increase student engagement in the department’s research active labs. Additionally, the Center for Neuromechanics organized its inaugural inter-departmental Student Research Program and selected 13 undergraduate and graduate students from mechanical engineer, biomedical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science to participate in this BRAIN-focused program. We ended both programs with virtual conferences and received wonderful feedback from our students.

06/06/2022 – Xuesong contributes to REU panel on careers in academia

Xuesong was invited to serve on a panel to discuss research methods as part of the NSF-funded REU program at Stevens this summer. He met with REU students to show them our lab and share his personal experience as a PhD student.

05/24/2022 – National Biomechanics Day at Stevens

Profs. Zaferiou and Weickenmeier organized this year’s National Biomechanics Day at Stevens. We invited 82 local students, grades seven through nine, from Jose Marti STEM Academy and Hillside Innovation Academy, to spend half a day at the campus and explore the fundamentals of the mechanics of the body, particularly as they relate to human movement and the biomechanics of the brain.

Learn more about this amazing day here.

03/2022 – Our work is highlighted in multiple outlets

The Weickenmeier Lab’s work is featured in the Stevens Indicator, the Stevens President’s Report, and in an article about our computational work on Alzheimer’s Disease.

01/01/2022 – New Initiatives at the Center for Neuromechanics

Dr. Weickenmeier takes over as Director of the Center for Neuromechanics and receives a SPRINT award from Stevens to Boost Research Activities in Neuromechanics (BRAIN).

Learn more about our center here.

2021

12/17/2021 – Wear and Tear in the Brain

As our brains age, small lesions begin to pop up in the bundles of white matter that carry messages between our neurons. The lesions can damage this white matter and lead to cognitive deficits. We recently published our work that provides an explanation for the location of these lesions as well as how they develop in the first place.

Find the paper here and get our perspective on this work here.

11/11/2021 – Andreia contributes to the Mechanical Engineering Career Conversations

Our postdoc Andreia was invited to be a panelist at the “The Mechanical Engineering Career Conversations”. This monthly event held by the ME department at Stevens discusses professional development options for women in STEM. Andreia shared her experience with job searches and interview preparation in academia with the goal to support female students at the undergraduate and graduate level when they prepare to enter the workforce.

07/01/2021 – Second Edition of the Summer Undergraduate Research Program

Dr. Weickenmeier organizes the second editions of the Summer Undergraduate Research Program for the Mechanical Engineering Department. We had 73 applications and selected 32 students to participate. The Weickenmeier Lab hosted four students of which Lauren Cunniff, currently a master student working in the lab, won first place in the Student Research Competition.

2020

12/08/2020 – Ahsanul passes his Qualifying Exam

Congratulations to Ahsanul Torza for passing his Qualifying Exam!! We are super excited for him.

09/11/2020 – Shima passes her Qualifying Exam

Congratulations to Shima Jalalian Sedaghati for passing her Qualifying Exam!! We are super excited for her.

08/14/2020 – Make sure to VOTE!

Check out this super helpful page from the Stevens Library on how to register and vote in New Jersey for the presidential election this November: New Jersey Voter Registration and Voting Guide

08/12/2020 – I&E Elevator Pitch Competition

Trisha Gollamudi placed 4th in the Elevator Pitch Competition that is part of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Summer Scholars Research Program. Congratulations, Trisha! A well-deserved recognition of your work over the summer!

Summer 2020 – Black Lives Matter Protests

The WLab supports the Black Lives Movement. We reject police brutality and the everyday violence that white supremacy imposes upon Black people everywhere. We reaffirm our commitment to actively mentor and support Black people, to practice an anti-racist pedagogy, to diversify our research community, and to dismantle structural racism.

07/15/2020 – Virtual Summer Conference of the ME Summer Research Program

We had a fantastic Virtual Summer Conference to mark the end of our first Mechanical Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program. A total of 21 students joined 10 different research groups in our department and contributed to their ongoing research.

Congratulations to the three winners of the SRP Research Competition:

First Place: Caleb Sang from the Weickenmeier Lab for their project titled “Effect of Seeding Location, Growth and Initial Concentration of Tau Protein in Alzheimer’s Disease”
Second Place: Alfonsina Santiago from the Weickenmeier Lab for their project titled “Gyrification Trajectories of Human Brain in Healthy Individuals and Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease”
Third Place: Richard He from the Manoochehri Lab for their project titled “Defect Detection during 3D Printing”

07/09/2020 – More News on our NSF LEAP HI Award

Stevens News interviewed the Weickenmeier Lab on their recently awarded NSF LEAP HI. We describe how mechanics is changing our fundamental understanding of brain behavior.

Read more here

05/19/2020 – Summer Undergraduate Research Program

Welcome to our 10 undergraduate students that will be working with us over the summer. We are excited to work with you!

05/15/2020 – Trisha becomes an I&E Fellow

Congratulation to Trisha Gollamudi for being accepted into the 2020 Innovation & Entrepreneurship Summer Scholars Research Program! She will be working on identifying common genetic mutations linked to Alzheimer’s Disease and Cerebral Small Vessel Disease.

05/10/2020 – Wlab receives prestigious NSF LEAP HI award

We are excited to announce that our collaborative team (PI: Dr. Kurt (Stevens), co-PIs: Dr. Zhang (Carnegie Mellon University), Dr. Weickenmeier (Stevens), and Dr. Balchandani (Icahn School of Medicine)) won the prestigious $2,000,000 National Science Foundation LEAP HI award for our project titled “Tackling Brain Diseases with Mechanics: A Data-Driven Approach to Merge Advanced Neuroimaging and Multi-Physics Modeling”! This proposal will support our work combining ultrahigh field MR techniques and multi-physics modeling to tackle and understand brain diseases, such as traumatic brain injury.We had a blast dissecting fixed brains to study anatomy, brain folding patterns, morphology, and inter-species variations (LINK).

Read more here.

05/05/2020 – David and GG Farber Award for our senior design team

Our senior design team DermaTest wins David and GG Farber Award. Congratulations to Shelby Stewart, Gregory Kortina, Luke Langner, Pujan Shah, and Douglas Wrede for an outstanding job in developing a suction-based testing device to determine the mechanical properties of skin.

04/15/2020 – Xuesong becomes PhD Student Mentor

Our PhD student Xuesong was selected to serve as a Doctoral Student Peer Mentor for the 2020-2021 academic year. Congrats, Xuesong, and thank you for supporting your community and mentoring your peers.

04/07/2020 – Ask a Stevens Prof

Ask A Stevens Prof (LINK): With schools shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, Stevens professors are reachingout to local K-12 students using virtual learning resources. We joined this informative series of talks and shared our research work on brainmechanics and dementia. 64 guests from Hoboken middle schoolers and brain-enthusiasts from around the world tuned in.

Here is the link to our talk on dementia: webinar

03/25/2020 – Weickenmeier Lab co-organizes National Biomechanics Day

Together with the Musculoskeletal Control and Dynamics Lab lead by Dr. Antonia Zaferiou we are organizing the 202 National Biomechanics Day and will engage low resource middle school students in STEM content with a particular focus on movement biomechanics, brainmechanics, and other biomechanics topics.

03/20/2020 – WLab receives NIH R21 Award

We are thrilled about the WLab’s first federal grant (LINK). We received an NIH R21 grant from the National Institute of Aging titled “Personalized predictions of biomarker progression in Alzheimer’s disease”. This work will support our effort to establish mechanics-based biomarkers for earlier Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

2019

12/23/2019 – Xuesong passes his Qualifying Exam

Congratulations to Xuesong Zhang for passing his Qualifying Exam!! He is the first in the WLab to jump through this hoop and we are thrilled to see the results from his work!

12/19/2019 – Launch of the Center for Neuromechanics

We are excited to announce the launch of the “Center for Neuromechanics” at the Stevens Institute of Technology (LINK). Our center focuses on enabling synergistic research activities in the field of neuromechanics in the New York metropolitan area. We will conduct research symposia, outreach activities, and facilitate multidisciplinary research projects to integrate imaging, experimentation, and modeling to strengthen the role of mechanics in understanding the brain.

12/01/2019 – New WLab Member

We welcome Valery Visser to the Weickenmeier Lab. She is joining us for her research internship as part of her Masters degree in Biomedical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Valery will be working with us on modeling brain aging mechanisms leading to white matter pathology.

10/31/2019 – NSF: The Computational Mechanics Vision and Future Challenges Workshop

We were invited to participate in an NSF-sponsored 2-day workshop to discuss the future of computational mechanics at the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. It was a phenomenal opportunity to discuss the impact of computational medicine with the leading experts in the field. We are inspired to continue working towards personalized medicine and data-driven modeling.

09/20/2019 – Exciting Brain Dissection Lab as part of ME692 Biomechanics of the Brain

We had a blast dissecting fixed brains to study anatomy, brain folding patterns, morphology, and inter-species variations.

09/15/2019 – WLab receives generous gift from the Semcer ’65 family!

The Weickenmeier Lab is excited to share that we received a generous gift from Frank, Sr. ’65 and Mary Jane Semcer. The gift comes in the form of the “Frank Semcer, Sr. ’65 Fellowship” which provides financial support to a PhD student working on their current research in the field of experimental and computational soft matter biomechanics for 5 years. We are grateful for this kind recognition of our work on computational modeling of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

09/01/2019 – Erin accepted into launchpad@stevens Program

We are excited to share that Erin Kreis was accepted into the launchpad@stevens program (LINK). During the next 12 months she will have the opportunity to learn entrepreneurship and innovation by working with real-world entrepreneurs in building new technology-based businesses.

07/01/2019 – Stevens launched DOROTHY

Under the leadership of Dr. Weickenmeier, Chair of the SES HPC Advisory Committee, Stevens launched its first high-performance computing cluster nicknamed Dorothy and made it available to the entire Institute. The hardware was generously donated by Oath Inc. and Extreme Networks. Thank you!

07/16/2019 – Trisha accepted into the CHI Healthcare Scholars Program

Congratulations to Trisha Gollamudi for being selected for the CHI Healthcare Scholars Program(LINK).She will be working with us in the 2019 Fall and 2020 Spring semesters to uncover the impact of Cerebral Small Vessel Disease on Alzheimer’s Disease progression.

05/01/2019 – New WLab Member

We welcome Lisanne Kuntz to the WLAb. She is visiting us from the Eindhoven University of Technology and will be working with us on brain indentation experiments for the next 6 months.

2018

10/12/2018 – Researchers Model How Toxic Proteins Course Through the Brain, Lead to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

Our two papers in PRL and JMPS on the prion-like progression of toxic proteins in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease received a lot of media attention:

07/24/2018 – WCCM Reception at Stevens

During the WCCM in New York this summer, we hosted a reception for our peers in computational mechanics. A great group of colleagues joined us on campus and enjoyed our spectacular views! And to top it all off, we made exciting connections for future collaborations.

02/2018 – 2018 Summer Projects in our Lab

We have a number of student projects this summer. They are listed here: summer projects. If you are interested in working in our lab on one of the ongoing projects, reach out to us at: info@weickenmeierlab.com

02/2018 – Brainmechanics?

Our work is featured in the newsletter of one of the oldest societies for applied mathematics and mechanics: GAMM Rundbrief