2018 News

Below is the news from the pNEURO Lab from 2018.

December, 2018

Dr. Bruns and Aileen Ouyang attended the 2018 Society for Pelvic Research meeting in New Orleans. Aileen gave a research talk and was awarded as the 2nd best student talk (tie)! Dr. Bruns gave an invited plenary talk on the neuromodulation state-of-the-field.

PhD student Zach Sperry was nominated by the BME department for the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship.
PhD students Aileen Ouyang and Ahmad Jiman were notified that their 4-page submissions to the 2019 IEEE Neural Engineering Conference in San Francisco were accepted for presentation.

The lab had a good Society for Neuroscience 2018 meeting, with Ahmad Jiman, Micah Levy, and Zach Sperry each presenting posters. We also had a nice dinner with fellow U-M neuro people and lab alumni Indie Rice.

New BME PhD student Elizabeth Bottorff was officially matched with the lab. Welcome Elizabeth!

A manuscript preprint for a lab collaboration to develop a novel shuttle for inserting microelectrodes into neural tissue was posted to bioRxiv. This work was led by Kyounghwan Na and John Seymour of EECS, with PhD student Zach Sperry leading in vivo efforts from our lab. This project was supported by the NIH SPARC program.
Dr. Bruns was part of a U-M Medical School video highlighting research in the Basic Science departments. Biomedical Engineering is one of the Med School’s Basic Science departments, in addition to being in the College of Engineering.

Aileen Ouyang was selected to give a podium presentation at the upcoming December Society for Pelvic Research meeting.
The lab started a new project, funded by Medtronic.

Our first clinical study was published in the journal Neuromodulation, led by PhD student Lauren Zimmerman. In this collaboration with Mitchell Berger, formerly of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Priyanka Gupta of Urology, and colleagues in other U-M departments, we showed that peripheral neuromodulation can improve sexual function in women. This was a MICHR-supported study. This research was featured in a U-M article, which was picked up on other websites including Neuroscience News. the UK Daily Mail, and has racked up a pretty good Altmetric score!

Dr. Bruns received a Basic Sciences Teaching Award from the University of Michigan Endowment for the Basic Sciences.

BS student Nikolas Barrera wrapped up his summer REU experience in South Korea, through the U-M led NSF IPAN program.

We again held a fun Xplore Engineering camp, teaching 9-11 year old kids about neuroscience and neural engineering using Backyard Brains kits.

Aileen Ouyang and Lauren Zimmerman each presented posters at the 2018 Neural Interfaces Conference, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We also visited and toured a local medical device company.

A new lab paper was published at Bioelectronic Medicine journal by PhD student Ahmad Jiman. This was an MCubed-supported collaboration with Malcolm Low of Molecular & Integrative Physiology, Randy Seeley of Surgery, and Paul Cederna of Plastic Surgery. This study investigated renal nerve stimulation to modulate kidney filtration of glucose.

UROP students Nikolas Barrera and Morgan Dechter did a great job presenting their research projects at the UROP symposium.

Our recent work on nerve stimulation for female sexual dysfunction was featured in an article at The Daily Michigan, a UM student-led paper.
A new paper was published at the Journal of Neural Engineeringby PhD student Zach Sperry and involving collaborations with UM Electrical Engineers Euisik Yoon, John Seymour, and Kyounghwan Na, and Case Western Reserve University Biologist Hillel Chiel. Our paper explores the use of a novel flexible electrode for recording from the surface of neural ganglia. This project is part of the NIH SPARC program.
Nikolas Barrera was accepted as a scholar in the NSF-supported International Program for the Advancement of Neurotechnology (IPAN) to do research in South Korea during the upcoming summer.

A new lab paper was published by PhD student Lauren Zimmerman. This paper at the Journal of Sexual Medicine, including former lab undergrad Indie Rice and OB/G collaborator Mitchell Berger, showed that electrical stimulation of the tibial nerve in anesthetized rats can lead to increases in vaginal blood flow. This work supports that stimulation approach as a potential treatment for some types of female sexual dysfunction.
Dr. Bruns and Lauren Zimmerman each gave research talks at the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH) meeting, in San Diego.
The Fall BME newsletter (finally) came out in print and featured the December article on our research on the front cover!
Our recent paper in J Sex Med caught the eye of the press, leading to some sensationalized articles in several tabloids (The Sun, Daily Mail, NY Post) as well as a longer article in the Daily Mail.
Lauren Zimmerman received a Notice of Award for an F31 Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), through the NIH.
Dr. Bruns was recognized by the Journal of Neural Engineering as an Outstanding Reviewer for 2017.

The lab received news that our sub-contract collaboration on a new NIH SPARC OT2 project with Margot Damaser of the Cleveland Clinic, Dennis Bourbeau of the Cleveland VA and others in Cleveland would receive funding for 2018.