11/20/2012 This article was posted on October 11th, 2012 by Meredith Staub. 3 min read
Written by This article was posted on October 11th, 2012 by Meredith Staub.
Graduate student Laurie Rustom translated MechSE research to a middle-school level when she visited the Campus Middle School for Girls to promote interest in science.
Rustom is part of the research group under MechSE associate professor Amy Wagoner Johnson, studying and developing ceramic bone scaffolds for medical purposes. Her presentation taught the students about what bone is made of and how bone grows, heals, and decays with old age. She used examples and diagrams showing post-traumatic bone loss, children born with cleft palates, and the changed facial appearance of the famous film critic and Illinois alumnus Roger Ebert due to his struggle with bone cancer.
“The dream of the bone regeneration field would be to give back to him, and to give back to people like him, their appearance and their ability to do the things that they can no longer do,” Rustom said in her presentation.
Musculoskeletal conditions are the leading cause of disability in the nation, Rustom told them, and affect more than one in four people in the United States. 6.8 million Americans are affected by bone fractures each year, and the average citizen will suffer two bone fractures over the course of their lifetime.
Rustom explained the processes of autografts and allografts, which are the standard procedures for healing large bone defects, and the significant problems with each. Then she passed around samples of the scaffolds that the Wagoner Johnson research group had manufactured, so that the students could hold and touch them.
The presentation was to prepare the students for a tour of the research lab where Rustom works. During the tour, they would be able to see how the scaffolds are manufactured and possibly make their own by mixing hydroxyapatite powder with gelling agents. This creates the toothpaste-like substance that the scaffold is made of. A specialized machine then squeezes the substance out of a tube in a specific pattern to construct the scaffold.
“Could we use it to write out our names?” one student asked.
“The robot could,” Rustom said. “It’s a very precise robot, and with the right coding, it can really make almost any design you want—but I don’t know if we’ll have time to write all of your names!”
Located about one block east of the Illini Union, the Campus Middle School for Girls is an independent, not-for-profit school that instructs about 30 girls a year in grades 6-8. There is a strong emphasis on encouraging interest in math and science, which is why the school has very strong outreach ties to the University of Illinois.
“Exposing young students to our research and having them replicate simplified versions of our experiments in their own school increases their understanding and awareness of engineering research methods,” Rustom said, “and it encourages their interest to study in STEM fields.”