News Release

Katherine Freed wins first place at the International ISPE Undergraduate Poster Contest

Stevens student is first competitor from NJ to win this award

Grant and Award Announcement

Stevens Institute of Technology

HOBOKEN, N.J. — Katherine Freed, undergraduate at Stevens Institute of Technology, won first place at the International ISPE Undergraduate Poster Contest in Las Vegas in November 2007. Freed was the first competitor from New Jersey to win this ISPE award. Her winning poster, “Impedance Mammography,” was based on a project she created with her Senior Design team at Stevens.

Freed’s winning poster illustrated an imaging system that was designed to create three-dimensional images of biological tissue according to electrical impedance properties. The system takes advantage of the differences in electrical conductivity between healthy and abnormal cells. In addition, the design is aimed at improving mammographic screening in women under the age of forty, who are not regularly screened.

In April 2007, the New Jersey Regional ISPE Poster Contest was hosted by the Stevens ISPE Student Chapter, and Freed. Freed was one of two first place winners at the contest. Her team members included Megan Caldeira, Rachel Ostroff, and Esther Rodriguez. The team’s faculty advisors were Dr. Vikki Hazelwood, Industry Professor in the Chemical, Biomedical and Materials Engineering Department, and Dr. Rainer Martini, Assistant Professor of Physics and Engineering Physics.

The NJ Regional contest was hosted by Dr. Richard S. Berkof, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stevens, Director of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Engineering Program, and Faculty Advisor for the Stevens Student Chapter of ISPE. The contest was attended by students and faculty from New Jersey Institute of Technology (Dr. Piero Armenante, Faculty Advisor), Rutgers University (Dr. Henrik Pedersen, Faculty Advisor), and Stevens Institute of Technology, as well as pharmaceutical industry executives, some of whom served as judges for the posters and presentations. The ISPE New Jersey Chapter’s Tom Malone, Joe Manfredi, Leonid Shnayder, and Lorraine Gallo helped make the April event a success.

Twenty posters were submitted at that competition of which six were chosen to go on to compete in Las Vegas in November. The other finalists included the “Automatic Pill Bottle Opener” by Jorge DaSilva (Stevens), “Effect of Dry Particle Coating on Packing Density” by Lauren Beach (NJIT), “Physics Based Modeling of Tablet Dissolution” by Dan Braido (Rutgers), “Experimental and Computational Determination of the Hydrodynamics in a Stirred Tank Reactor Provided with a Retreat Blade Impeller” by Giuseppe DiBenedetto (NJIT), and “Examining Feeding Systems for Continuous Mixing” by Warren Schmidt (Rutgers).

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ISPE is the world's largest not-for-profit association dedicated to educating and advancing pharmaceutical manufacturing professionals and their industry. For more information on ISPE, visit http://www.ispe.org/page.ww?name=Home§ion=root.

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value. Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,040 undergraduate and 3,085 graduate students, and a worldwide online enrollment of 2,250, with about 400 full-time faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.

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