Aric Pahnke Email & Phone Number

Salt Lake City, Utah, United States

Launched 2 new products in the Dialysis space. I oversee the design, development, testing, FDA approval, and product launch of medical devices.

Adviser: Milica Radisic, PhDLaboratory for Functional Tissue Engineering. My project centered around developing new technology for making engineered heart tissue useful for pharmaceutical testing. I designed and created a cyclical stretch bioreactor capable of recreating the stretch of a normal heart. Design iteration was crucial for my work in creating a bioreactor. I was heavily involved in tissue and cell culture and mastered cell differentiation procedures. I created protocols of my work and used many different visualization techniques to validate my work. I also managed the Objet260Connex1 3D printer and helped many other labs design and print devices for their work.

Indianapolis, Indiana Area

Adviser: Mark Rekhter, PhD. Work in my graduate lab progressed where technology was patented, and a company created. Our product needed validation which was part of my work at Eli Lilly. We wanted to introduce our new system of testing drugs to a large pharmaceutical company. When I arrived, they did not have the camera nor setup we needed. I worked with an internal research team to buy all necessary equipment within a week of arriving. I met personally with division heads, chemists, statisticians, marketing experts, information technologists and other researchers to advance the project as well as learn the inner workings of a large company.

Adviser: Robert Hitchcock, PhD. Developed engineered heart tissue models by prototyping small molds. Worked with CNC, lathe and machining techniques to create bioreactors and parts for engineered heart tissue production. Also, quantitatively characterized the effects of electrical stimulation on the structural features of engineered heart tissue (EHT) using image analysis in Matlab.

Adviser: Patricia G. Wilson, PhD. Toward 3D Modeling of Engineered Tissue: Coaxing Coexistence of Muscle, Neural and Endothelial Cell Type.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Phd), Bioengineering And Biomedical Engineering

Activities and Societies: Leaders of Tomorrow Graduate, Institute for Leadership and Education in Engineering, Let's Talk Science, Lab.

Bachelor Of Applied Science (Basc), Biomedical/Medical Engineering, 3.76

Activities and Societies: Tau Beta Pi Honor Society, Phi Eta Sigma Honor Society, Bench to Bedside, Campus Relations Committee in Latter.