GWHT’s 2022 Year in Review

With the completion of 2022, we want to acknowledge all of the hard work that our staff and students at the Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies have done in the past year, and also highlight all of their milestones, awards, publications, presentations, and progress such as our ongoing Peru study.

Initiative Milestones

• WISH: launched studies targeting cervical cancer in Peru and Kenya.

• Ignite: implemented the middle school spring program at the Museum of Life and Science; launched the inaugural high school program; hosted its first ever Duke day.

• Invisible Organ: Duke senior Fatima Massare Somers started her study of the use of art to increase science literacy and decrease stigma related to sexual and reproductive health through screenings of GWHT's Invisible Organ documentary.

• Bass Connections: created new course led by Brian Crouch and Marlee Krieger titled "Novel Therapies for Treating Cervical Cancer in Peru."

Left: Members of the Durham, NC community engage with art inspired by the Invisible Organ Film. Right: Ignite students gather at the Museum of Life and Science.

Student Milestones

• Lillian Ekem passed her pre-lims this year!

• Kerry Eller received a second-year fellowship.

• This year GWHT had three students submit their thesis proposals. Congrats to Roujia Wang, Erika Chelales, and Riley Deutsch!

Students gathered at the BME student retreat in the spring. From left to right: Victoria D'Agostino, Enakshi Sunassee, Erika Chelales, Erica Skerrett, Riley Deutsch.

New funding

• Research Project Cooperative Agreement (U01) Grant from the National Cancer Institute within the National Institutes of Health.

• Pratt School of Engineering’s Thomas Lord Educational Innovation Grant for GWHT's Ignite initiative.

Awards

• Nimmi Ramanujam, 2023 Biomedical Engineering Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

• Megan Madonna, 2022 Burroughs Wellcome Young Investigator Award Winner by the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES)

• Erika Chelales, Best Basic Science Poster at SIO: Society of Interventional Oncology in San Francisco

• Victoria D’Agostino, Departmental Service Award for Outstanding Service to the Department

• Kerry Eller, BME 2nd year Fellowship Award

• Kerry Eller, Collaborative Fellowship Expedition for development of BME 290L: Tech Design for Global Health
  

Publications

• Riley Deutsch and Victoria D'Agostino, "A Spectroscopic Technique to Simultaneously Characterize Fatty Acid Uptake, Mitochondrial Activity, Vascularity, and Oxygen Saturation for Longitudinal Studies In Vivo."

• Megan Madonna, "In Vivo Metabolic Imaging Identifies Lipid Vulnerability in a Preclinical Model of Her2+/Neu Breast Cancer Residual Disease and Recurrence."

• Corrine Nief and Erika Chelales, "Ethanol Ablation Therapy Drives Immune-Mediated Antitumor Effects in Murine Breast Cancer Models."

• Corrine Nief, Alana Gonzales, Erika Chelales, & Júlia Sroda Agudogo, "Targeting Tumor Acidosis and Regulatory T Cells Unmasks Anti-Metastatic Potential of Local Tumor Ablation in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer."

• Nimmi Ramanujam and Megan Madonna, "Editorial overview: Biomedical engineering and women's health: Breaking new ground in gender- and sex-specific research."

• Michelle Shin and Patricia Garcia, "Evaluation of Women’s Empowerment in a Community-Based Human Papillomavirus Self-Sampling Social Entrepreneurship Program (Hope Project) in Peru: Mixed-Method Study."

• Erica Skerrett and Mercy Asiedu, "Multicontrast Pocket Colposcopy Cervical Cancer Diagnostic Algorithm for Referral Populations."

Conferences and presentations

• Nimmi Ramanujam, “Accelerating the Impact of Technology and Innovation for Global Cervical Cancer Prevention” at BMES 2022

• Megan Madonna, “Ignite: Scaffolded, Place-Based Human-Centered Design to Promote Global Citizenship in Engineering” at BMES 2022

• Erika Chelales, “Ethanol gel enhancements in percutaneous intratumoral chemotherapy injection with in vitro and in vivo studies of drug retention, tumor destruction, and overall survival” at SIO: the Society of Interventional Oncology in San Francisco

• Erika Chelales, “Innovations in Global Health: An Ultra-Low Cost, Minimally Invasive Ablative Therapy” at SIR: the Society of Interventional Radiology Annual Scientific Meeting in Boston

• Erika Chelales, “Ethanol Gel Enhances Percutaneous Intratumeroal Chemotherapy Injection: In vitro and in vivo studies of Drug Retention, Tumor Destruction, and Overall Survival” at SIR: the Society of Interventional Radiology Annual Scientific Meeting in Boston

• Riley Deutsch, “Development of a fluorescence illumination optimization algorithm for mobile imaging applications in resource-limited settings," at SPIE: The International Society for Optics and Photonics in San Francisco

• Erika Skerrett, "Cervical Cancer Detection Algorithms on a Class-Imbalanced Dataset," at SPIE: The International Society for Optics and Photonics in San Francisco

• Erika Skerrett, Accelerating the Impact of Biomedical Innovations on Global Health Inequalities," on behalf of GWHT director Dr. Nimmi Ramanujam at SPIE: The International Society for Optics and Photonics in San Francisco

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2022 was a great year for GWHT, and we have big things planned for 2023. Our staff and students are looking forward to our next Duke Day, commercializing the Callascope, completing more research, working on papers and dissertations, and more!

Stay tuned to see what amazing things GWHT will be up to next.

Wishing you all the best for 2023,

The Duke Global Women's Health Technologies Team