Melissa Grunlan, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Distinguished Visiting Fellowship.
This fellowship enables an academic engineering department in a United Kingdom university to host a distinguished visiting fellow from an overseas academic center of excellence.
This fall, Grunlan will visit Imperial College London to collaborate with Professor Julian Jones towards the development of a new material to heal bone defects such as those caused by injury, birth defects and tumor removal. Early work on this research was published in the scientific journal Acta Biomaterialia.
Grunlan, who completed her undergraduate career and earned her master’s degree at North Dakota State University, earned her Ph.D. at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles in 2004. She joined the biomedical engineering faculty at Texas A&M in 2005 after a postdoctoral appointment in the university’s Department of Chemistry.
Her laboratory focuses on developing new polymeric biomaterials for medical devices and regenerative therapies. She has produced coatings, hydrogels, elastomers and porous foams from “hybrid” systems based on combining inorganic and organic polymers. He projects include the development of self-cleaning membranes for implanted biosensors, clot-resistant coatings for blood-contacting devices and scaffolds for bone repair and for the regeneration of osteochondral interfaces.
About the Department of Biomedical Engineering
Committed to solving the world’s greatest health problems through the exploration of new ideas, integrated research and innovation, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M is producing the next generation of biomedical engineers, developing new technologies and new jobs, and achieving revolutionary advancements for the future of health care. The department has unique strengths in regenerative engineering, medical augmentation, molecular diagnostics/theranostics, tele-health, and precision medicine, and its faculty members are internationally recognized with collaborative relationships that span engineering, physical and natural sciences, medicine and veterinary sciences.