Dr. Erin Lavik of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering has been appointed as the College’s first associate dean for research and faculty development. Dr. Lavik received a ScD in materials science and engineering in the field of polymers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001 and joined UMBC’s department of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering as professor and graduate program director in 2016. Before UMBC, Dr. Lavik was a professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Yale University, and completed research fellowships at Harvard School of Dental Medicine and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Lavik has produced a highly active research portfolio with over 10 publications, and been awarded nearly $1.3 million in external funding since arriving at UMBC. She is an innovative, pedagogical instructor with a passion for student success.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Erin Lavik on her appointment as associate dean for research and faculty development.

We are pleased to announce the abstract “Disposable cardboard low-cost incubator for thermoregulation of stable preterm infants - a non-inferiority trial”, co-authored by Dr. Govind Rao and team members at Phoenix Medical Systems and Clinical team at Sri Ramachandra Medical College, Chennai, India was selected as the winner of the 2019 Academic Pediatric Association Global Health Research Award. Funding for this research is provided by FDA and Venturewell. The award will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. The meeting begins Saturday, April 27th and ends Tuesday, April 30th.