Troy Ross, executive administrator, and Lynne Sasmazer, program director, at the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust visited the newly

finished Carver Biomechanics & Mechanobiology Laboratory May 21 at the Seamans Center for the Engineering Arts and Sciences.

The laboratory is a gift of the charitable trust, which has a long history of supporting a broad cross-section of academic and research initiatives at the University of Iowa.  Funding was matched by the College of Engineering.

The laboratory is a shared resource for the study of how cells, fluids, tissues, organs, and implants respond to physical forces.  Affiliated biomedical engineering faculty include Seth Dillard, lecturer and laboratory manager; Michael Mackey, associate professor; M.L. Raghavan, Robert and Virginia Wheeler Faculty Fellow of Engineering and professor; Ed Sander, assistant professor: and Sarah Vigmostad, assistant professor.

Laboratory research includes:

• Assaying cells and tissues to quantify mechano-biological activity
• Testing tissue mechanics to understand the mechanical behavior of biological tissues and biomaterials
• Quantitative imaging of cells using inverted phase contrast time-lapse microscopy and custom software for data acquisition and analysis
• Simulating blood flow using experimental flow loops to study implant performance under the action of pulsable flow conditions in the heart and vessels
• Preparing and testing stents used to repair arteries
• Measuring cellular flow using microscopic particle image velocimetry to study how red blood cell hemolysis and cancer cell metastasis take place