Illustration by Kevin McFadin
Engineering and Medicine
What can $10 million do for the future of health care? At the University of Virginia, it helped launch a center devoted to collaboration between engineers and physicians. Within the past year, the Center for Engineering in Medicine has funded 14 medical projects. One of them was to develop a patch that dispenses pain medicine.
“[Doctors] administer the pain medication locally, and they don’t have to inject it,” says Wende Hope, the center’s communications manager. “It does so many things at once. It stops people from getting addicted to the drugs because it is very localized.”
The projects, funded by the school, have faculty members serving as the lead investigators in the research, and most are also aided by graduate and undergraduate students. —Aurora Calderone
Photo courtesy Reynolds Community College
New President for Reynolds Community College
Reynolds Community College has a new president, Dr. Paula P. Pando. The fourth president of Reynolds, she succeeds Dr. Gary Rhodes, who led the school for 16 years before retiring on Sept. 1. Originally from Chile, Pando is the first Hispanic and first woman to head the college.
“When I think about our students who are women and perhaps minorities, which I am, that when they see someone either of their gender or ethnicity or a member of a minority group, it means something to them,” Pando says. “I take that role as role model very seriously.”
Pando, who was one of 102 applicants for the job, has worked in higher education for more than 21 years, most recently as the vice president for student and educational services at Hudson County Community College in Jersey City, New Jersey. She says she wants to make Reynolds one of the first places students think of when it comes to furthering their education. She also wants the school to offer opportunities to those who may not think college is in their future, mentioning the Reynolds Community College East End Culinary Institute in Church Hill as an example of the type of program she’d like to foster.
“Education is the key to opportunity,” Pando says, “and it provides people with options in their life they might not have if they didn’t have an education.” —Haley Cummings
Photo courtesy Virginia Union University
VUU Opens Basketball Season at Duke
Reigning CIAA Tournament champions the Virginia Union University Panthers will play an exhibition game against the Duke University Blue Devils on Oct. 23 in Durham, North Carolina. The two teams last met almost 10 years ago, with VUU suffering a 144-50 loss. But this is a Panther team that’s coming off an astonishing post-season run that led to the NCAA tournament.
“This is a chance for Virginia Union to show our brand of basketball,” head coach Jay Butler says in an email about the exhibition game. “We just want to represent the CIAA, Division II and our program well against Duke University.” —Katlynn Sawyer
Designated Driver App
After long nights driving friends and strangers to and from Virginia Tech campus events, Matt Sanford and Greg Smith thought there was an easier way to reach students who had been drinking and didn’t want to drive.
Now, Smith, who graduated in 2015, and Sandford’s company, Applied LLC, has an app that makes it easier to find a ride when you’ve had a few drinks, while also giving designated drivers a simpler way to manage ride requests.
Drop A Pin (D.A.P), is a free ride-share platform that connects students to designated drivers. The app was used on Virginia Tech’s campus by about 10 organizations last spring. When they find a ride via D.A.P., users are told the size of the car that will be picking them up, the driver and where they will meet.
Sanford and Smith want to offer D.A.P. to other schools, which is free at Virginia Tech.
“It is really about saving money so people don’t have to resort to getting an Uber or Lyft,” Sanford says. —HC
Something Ventured
A new office at Virginia Commonwealth University, VCU Ventures, allows staff and faculty to work with the university to found startup companies and get their intellectual property to market.
“It’s this office’s initiative to help bring those technologies to market to a place where they can benefit society,” says Director of VCU Ventures Nicole Monk.
New companies associated with VCU Ventures give up a small piece of ownership to the university in exchange for freedom from all royalties, fees and other payments. These fairly relaxed licensing terms allow startups flexibility to attract investors without being entirely governed by VCU.
The university’s da Vinci Center offers a similar service. —Mac Konrad
