South Dakota Mines Ph.D. student
Laura Brunmaier has won a prestigious National
Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) totaling
$130,000 to continue her work in biomedical engineering.
The NSF GRFP website reads, “As the oldest graduate
fellowship of its kind, the GRFP has a long history of selecting recipients who
achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional
careers. The reputation of the GRFP follows recipients and often helps them
become life-long leaders that contribute significantly to both scientific
innovation and teaching."
“This award is yet another example that South Dakota
Mines researchers are on par with the top scientific labs and universities in
the country,” says Mines President Jim Rankin. “Kudos to Laura Brunmaier for her
excellent work. This is the kind of innovation that is changing the world.”
Brunmaier is working to overcome a major hurdle in
the ability to research and explain how blood vessels form and how they react
to various contaminants or to new medicines. Studying the inner workings of the
human body has posed a challenge for medical science for centuries. The device
that Brunmaier helped to invent allows researchers to study living blood
vessels in real time outside the body.
To achieve this goal, Brunmaier uses a syringe to
implant living cells into a gel medium that will grow the lining of a blood
vessel along the tube or cavity that the syringe leaves behind when it is
removed from the gel.
“We make a template that tells the cells what to do,
and, then they grow into the right shape of a blood vessel,” says Brunmaier. “We
have engineered a vessel scaffolding with the right properties needed by the cells
to make the actual blood vessels.”
Brunmaier built a sealed glass-topped container that
holds the gel in which the blood vessels can grow. She can then pump fluids
through the container at the same pressure and flow that they experience inside
the body. This effort allows her to view the living vessels through a
microscope where they can be tested. “We will get a really simplified view of
what is happening in the body,” says Brunmaier. “Because this is so simplified,
we can untangle the science.”
The ability to view and test living blood vessels
has huge advantages for researchers. “The end goal of this platform is to
develop a device that can be used in a wide range of biomedical research,” says
Brunmaier. “We can look at cancer. We can look at wound healing. We can look at
the processes around blood vessel growth. We can examine the impact of
pollution in the bloodstream. We can look at the chemical signals that cells
use to communicate with each other. We can look at the pressures that cells
undergo inside the vessels and how that can lead to other problems. The end
goal is to be able to apply this device to many things.”
Brunmaier is a non-traditional student who left a
successful career in the corporate world to study biomedical engineering at
Mines. She finished her undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering in 2019
and is continuing her doctoral research at Mines. She works alongside
members of the Walker
Research Group lead by Travis Walker, Ph.D., associate professor
of chemical and biological engineering at Mines.
On top of the NSF GRFP, Brunmaier was also awarded a
$20,000 grant from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health,
and her work led to a $40,000 grant from the Alternatives Research and
Development Foundation for her studies of blood vessels. An initial Nelson
Research Grant totaling $5,000 from South Dakota Mines helped launch her
initial idea.