Developing Multi-biofunctional Polymeric Materials 

August 17, 2020

Tenured, Now What?

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“Omnia Vincit Labor”, Latin for “Work Conquers All” was the motto of my high school St. Augustine’s College, and it still rings true today. I should add that the word “Hard” was always placed in front of the word “Work” by my administrators when the Latin language was translated into English perhaps to encourage discipline.

Here is to the past six years of a career in academia and to what the next six shall bring.

Some milestones worth highlighting include:

1. “Omnia Vincit Laboring” these six years and being awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering. It has been a great learning and developmental phase of constantly refining how to better train the next generation of biomedical engineers, exploring pedagogies and persuasive writing techniques; increasing leadership roles within the biomedical engineering and the sciences; defining and redefining my research terra firma; and building the right relationships.  

2. An established and still growing Biomedical Engineering Program. We’ve gone from a zero alumni base to one who are placed in house-hold name biomedical engineering companies and doctoral degree programs, and to those that are addressing some challenging and unmet clinical needs through a well-funded startups. Five years into its development, major growth investments were made in new faculty hire and research footprint to bolster our medical devices, functional biomaterials, and tissue engineering research agenda.

3. An established and vivacious biomedical research program. We’ve tied program growth to major investments which have led to a solid bottom line for sustaining further growth. Our mint condition biomedical research and teaching labs and the Bergami Center for Science, Technology and Innovation are new spaces for experiential student learning, faculty research, and community engagement. Here, #chargers will continue to innovate medical solutions for the next 100 years to come.

4. Expanded professional network. This, by far, has been my most important milestone and I’m nowhere near my targets.  Forming connections and maintaining relationships with professionals who have your best interest is critical for early career development. This is however not easily done as one learns to juggle all there are to the assistant professorship or career while squeezing in the time to nurture these relationships. Almost everything you take on would probably be new and would need more of your time. You mustn’t, however, squeeze in growing your professional network. As they say "not working" is one letter away from networking so find the time, place building these relationships not at the bottom of your development goals, build your network early, continue to work at it, and avoid putting off building your network until later.

The next six years brings a new and fresh clean slate to be filled. But with what? Not entirely sure but I do think of service to family, friends, and acquaintances; service to the profession at the institutional, local, national and international fronts; service to organizations that uplift our communities; new ventures and partnerships that create value; and for sure broadening my professional circles.

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They say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is now.  As a piece of advice to myself and early career professionals, go gung-ho on building your network now for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

March 25, 2020

Professor Amoako and students of the Biomedical Engineering Program at the University of New Haven have developed 3D printed flow connectors so that physicians can double up severe COVID-19 patients on one ventilator, and they developed the connectors over a couple of days while working remotely.

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His group is willing to donate these flow connectors to critical care units that need them to augment their COVID-19 case surge critical care support strategies. “Based on the trajectory of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and fatality in the US, it is not unrealistic to think that we may face similar experiences of not having enough ventilators to provide respiratory support for the sick as is currently happening in Italy and Spain”…said Dr. Amoako.

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So How Does A Mechanical Ventilator Work?

Mechanical ventilators are often used to provide respiratory support for critically ill patients. These patients, for several reasons, can’t breathe on their own and so a tube is advanced down their trachea and held just before where the trachea bifurcates. The other end of this tube is connected to the mechanical ventilator which flows oxygen into and removes carbon dioxide out of the patient’s lungs.

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How Will the Connectors Allow one Ventilator to Provide Respiratory Support for Two COVID-19 Patients?

Typically, breathing machines conduct oxygen through a single tube (inspiratory line) to the patient’s lungs. Another single tube (expiratory line) will then conduct expired gases away from the lungs. With the 3D printed connectors that Dr. Amoako and his students of the Biomaterials and Medical Device Innovation Laboratory at UNH has developed, the inspiratory and expiratory lines can be bifurcated so that two patients can be hooked up to a single breathing machine.

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Has this been tried on humans before?

Patients who suffered wounds to the torso and neck from the Las Vegas mass shootings needed respiratory support to keep them alive for treatment. With limited mechanical ventilators, the attending physician and care team divided the ventilator inspiratory and expiratory lines and were able to support patients for hours before they received treatment. This method of dividing up tubing of the breathing machine was published in the Academy of Emergency Medicine journal in 2006.

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Guidelines Suggested by a 2006 Critical Care Medicine Paper Authored by Dr. Gred Neyman and Dr. Charlene Babcock:

• The pair of patients must be of similar age so lung sizes are similar

• The inspiratory and expiratory lines should be of the same length for each patient

• Lung disease states of patients should be similar

• This will be off-label use of the ventilator

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November 13, 2019

https://www.newhaven.edu/news/blog/2019/hardika-panchani-biomedical-engineering.php?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=cocurricular&utm_term=research&fbclid=IwAR3HjNqMVGWzWYtTydc3d4jBuAnKS1SNuZ0MODCWGFyxQE_HViEh7yN-6Jk

August 16, 2019

Dr. Amoako gave a radio interview recently in Brasil at Radio Mega Brasil and was hosted by the very able Rosemary Campos and translation aided by his wife, Andrea Martins Campos. The interview covered various topics including current research at the Biomaterials and Medical Device Innovation Lab, prospects of Brazilian nationals pursuing Biomedical Engineering graduate degree at the University of New Haven, environmental impacts pharma and medical waste, how current funding programs can best foster new solution approaches to current medical challenges, etc.  Stay tuned for a recording of the interview.

June 16, 2019

Kagya Amoako, Asst. Prof of Biomedical Engineering at the University of New Haven deliver an invited short course anti-fouling surfaces at the 4th International Conference on Bioinspired and Zwitterionic Materials in Netherlands among short course presenters from University of Washington, University of Potsdam, Newcastle University, University of Twente, and Cornell University.

April 19, 2019

Congratulations to Ashley Widing for being recognized with a College of Engineering Student Achievement award this year.  Ashley won the 2019 Exceptional Service in BME award.

April 13, 2019

Congratulations to Brady Reynolds and Yaw Ansong for respectively winning second place in all oral presentations and poster presentations at the American Chemical Society New Haven Section's Fourth Annual Student Research Symposium hosted by Yale University. Competing schools included Yale, Quinnipiac University and Southern Connecticut University. 
Brady's work addressed pain management in Herpes Zoster patients while Yaw's work addressed protein aided drug release.

April 05, 2019

Congratulations to Ashley Widing, Negin Farzad, and Heinrich Kufeldt for being accepted to present their thesis and independent research findings at the 2019 University of New Haven’s Graduate Research Showcase.
Their research address some of the most challenging problems in medicine including cancer, controlled drug release and implant-related infections and were titled:

Minimizing Infection and Revision Surgeries through Nitric Oxide Releasing Total Knee Replacement Prosthesis.

Nitric Oxide Releasing Biomaterials: Methods for Long-Term Storage through Oxygen Exclusion.

The Treatment of MDA-MB-231 Breast Cancer Cells with Biocompatible Manganese Iron Oxide Magnetic Nanoparticles as Drug Carriers.

October 09, 2018

Well, find out from our newly published method for assessing anti fouling coating performance under flow in Langmuir.

September 12, 2018

Congratulations to Rana.

December 03, 2017

Hemocompatibility of Biomaterials for Clinical Applications: Blood Biomaterials Interactions

December 04, 2017

Review paper on "Achieving Totally Local Anticoagulation on Blood Contacting Devices"

October 10, 2017

BMDiLab students and faculty highlighted in UNH graduate experience clip.

October 01, 2017

Congratulations to Igor for winning the kazimierz Goszcz endowed scholarship!

August 03, 2017

Congratulations to the recent graduates from the Biomaterials and Medical Device Innov. Lab. Good job on your thesis defense on bactericidal polymers, Rana  and great work on catheter fabrication platform, Manfang.

May 26, 2017

Bioinspired Multifunctional Biomaterials

March 25, 2017

Biomedical engineering students at University of New Haven presented their work addressing large losses in stored NO in biomaterials that limits their self-sterilizing and anti-clotting activity.

November 22, 2019

BMDiLab research assistant, Anna Mercaldi, wins NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Research Fellowship Grant for anti-bacterial surfaces research!
Congratulations Anna!

BMDiLab Research Assistant wins best posters' award at the University of New Haven's Graduate Student Showcase!

Congratulations Rana Gbyli.

September 22, 2016

BMDiLab member discusses biomedical engineering research at UNH's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship seminar.

September 23, 2016

Regenerative research for bone repair and regeneration. More details here.

June 22, 2016

Designing low cost prosthetic arm

June 22, 2016

Anticlotting and Antibacterial Polymers

April 29, 2016

Read Here.

April 09, 2016

What’s this item about? What makes it interesting? Write a catchy description to grab your audience’s attention...

March 16, 2016

Work to begin towards keeping astronauts on long missions safe.

November 13, 2015

It's official! We have a brand new graduate program in Biomedical Engineering at the University of New Haven. www.newhaven.edu/MSBME. Spread the word.

October 16, 2015

Dr. Amoako spoke about current challenges in blood-contacting devices and his research on "anti-thrombotic" and "anti-septic" biomaterials. 

September 04, 2015

We now have a system to test whether an anti-fouling coating will remain on blood-contacting medical devices experiencing blood flow. See video here

August 09, 2015

Dr. Amoako speaks at the 2nd International Conference on Bioinspired and Zwitterionic Materials. He will be discussing synergy effects of NO relaease and carboxybetaine coating on anticoagulation on August 14 2015. [Slides]

August 05, 2015

My students illuminate acrylic block with LEDs to mark the conclusion of their hard work during the 2015 summer undergraduate fellowship at UNH!

July 22, 2015

Through UNH SURF, Dr. Amoako's team of engineering students has developed a flow cell system to screen medical coatings that are used on blood-contacting devices like the artificial lung.  The device will help to determine the stability of anti-fouling medical coatings and will impact the medical coating optimizaion process. It will ultimately help provide better indications of coatings for over 200 million blood-contacting devices used annually in the U.S. alone.

July 23, 2015

Dr. Amoako (Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering) is an Assistant Prof. and the graduate biomedical engineering program coordinator at the Tagliatela College of Engineering, University of New Haven. In his ground-breaking research, he and his University of Michigan team (Dr. Keith Cook) fabricated the first ever nitric oxide generating artificial lungs and tested their thrombogenicity in-vivo. Read more here.

February 19, 2015

Dr. Amoako discusses the history of the artifical lung, it's current state and use and what are the requirements for next gneration artificial lungs.

April 28, 2014

Dr. Amoako dicussses the many impacts of copying what nature does onto artificial surfaces. His work incorporates the anti-clotting properties of the endothelium onto the many artificial materials that go into our bodies. He is mimicking the surface of blood-vessels on devices that go into our bodies! He calls it  "endothelium masking".  Imagine a device that cannot be detected by our bodies? What we can do with that is endless!

February 19, 2016

We have a new publication in in Advanced Material Interial Interfaces!!!