Biomedical Engineering Capstone

Katherine is in her last year of the Biomedical Engineering program with a Spanish minor at the University of Maine. As the communicator of the group, she is in charge of meeting coordination and contact between the team members, client, advisor, and anyone else involved in the project. UPLANT is the perfect project niche for Katherine, as she is particularly interested in sustainable engineering and human health. Her research experience has come from joining the Howell Biointerface and Biomimetics lab in the summer of 2018. Here she has been working on uncovering the mechanism behind the biostatic properties of cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) and exploring potential applications for these novel properties. For industrial experience she spent the summer of 2019 as an intern at IDEXX Laboratories, where she worked with the rare reagent design and development analytics team towards implementation of capillary electrophoresis (CE) technology to streamline and automate the traditionally used SDS-PAGE analysis of proteins.

Lindsey is a fourth year Biomedical Engineering student graduating in Spring 2020 from the University of Maine. She is the team’s project manager making her responsible for maintaining efficient communication between team members and ensuring that the project is organized and progresses in a timely manner. Lindsey has a background in robotics and is an alumni from FRC team BERT 133. Her robotics background grants her unique coding experiences as well as great team communication and fabrication skills. Lindsey also accepted a COOP at Eastern Maine Medical Center (EMMC), where she acted as a Clinical Engineering Intern for a semester. While on COOP, Lindsey was responsible for developing and testing maintenance plans for a variety of medical equipment, and prototyping additions to current medical devices to improve their functionality.  Lindsey was granted the opportunity to observe numerous surgeries while at EMMC, she was able to watch an open chest triple valve replacement, a malignant tumor brain biopsy, a cesarean section, two total knee replacements, a robot hysterectomy, and a spinal cord stimulation implant. Prior to graduation Lindsey plans to pursue a career as a Clinical Engineer. 

Jordyn is a fourth year Biomedical Engineering student with a Mechanical Engineering minor at the University of Maine. As the group’s financial administrator, she is responsible for collecting and handling the device components and ensuring that the team remains within their budget. Jordyn’s experiences in Mechanical Engineering give her insight into the structural stability of the device, which is integral to its stacking capabilities. Prior to and during her time at the University of Maine, Jordyn worked part-time as a manufacturer at an industrial cleaning product company, where she gained experience working with hazardous chemicals. Jordyn also spent the summer of 2019 as an intern at IDEXX Laboratories, where she worked with the rare reagent design and development team. At IDEXX, Jordyn worked on the optimization of the purification process of a monoclonal antibody (mAb) using affinity chromatography. Through the optimization process, she gained knowledge of fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) and how to operate automated FPLC systems.

Andre Khalil is an associate professor in the Biomedical Engineering department at the University of Maine. He requested to be the advisor of this team because of his personal passion for gardening. He received both his Bachelors and Masters in mathematics at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He then went on to receive his Ph.D. in Mathematics-Astrophysics at Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada. Dr. Khalil is the founder and director of the CompuMAINE (Computational Modeling, Analysis of Imagery & Numerical Experiments) Lab here on campus. In his lab, images and signals are processed, analyzed, and modeled. His expertise and research efforts have recently led to a patent for a computational approach that has the potential to assist in the early detection of breast cancer.

Stephanie Burnett is an associate professor of horticulture in the School of Food and Agriculture at the University of Maine. Her extensive knowledge in this discipline has made her a respected client as well as valuable resource throughout the development of UPLANT. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia and now teaches classes such as introduction to horticulture and green design, vegetable and fruit production, herbaceous landscape plants, and greenhouse management. Capitalizing on her professional interest of floriculture and greenhouse management, Dr. Burnett conducts research on improving the efficiency and sustainability of greenhouse plant production. Her research has a focus on improving irrigation efficiency and developing production protocols for herbaceous perennials.