News

Student Achievements

• Our paper, “Evaluating the Influence of Morphological Features on the Vulnerability of Lipid-Rich Plaques During Stenting” (Colmenarez, Dong, Lee, Wilson, and Gu; https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4067398, 2025), was selected as an Editors' Choice Paper by the ASME Journal of Biomechanical Engineering (announcement https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4072062), recognizing the significance and impact of this research (6/2/2026)
• Jose Colmenarez Moreno was awarded the VIAS3D Poster Competition Award at the 2026 SIMULIA Americas Users Conference (SAUC 2026), held May 13–14 in Novi, Michigan, for his poster, “A Finite-Strain Phase-Field Approach for Calcification Fracture in Diseased Arteries.” His work developed a computational framework to simulate crack initiation and propagation in calcified arteries. (6/1/2026)
• Cristobal Cabrera, Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine, in collaboration with graduate student Jose Colmenarez Moreno, won the 2026 Patrick Murray Poster Competition – Ophthalmology at the AOCOO-HNS Annual Clinical Assembly (Phoenix, AZ, May 2026, https://www.aocoohns.org/events/2026-annual-clinical-assembly/competitions).  
• Cristobal Cabrera won the Student Poster Award at the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine’s 2025 Medical Student Research Day (Sep. 6, 2025) for the project, “Unveiling Potential Complications with Subretinal Injections,” in collaboration with graduate student Jose Colmenarez Moreno
• Graduate student Jose Colmenarez Moreno won the Graduate Student Paper Competition Award at the ASME 2023 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) Biomedical and Biotechnology Track, sponsored by the ASME Bioengineering Division. He presented the project titled “Damage-Induced Softening of the Sclera: A Pseudo-Elastic Modeling Approach.”
• Matthew R. Lam received the Retina Research Foundation/Joseph M. and Eula C. Lawrence Travel Grant to attend the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) in New Orleans.
• Matthew R. Lam earned the Best of Show Poster Award at the 48th Annual Meeting of American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS) in New York 2023. He presented the work “Protective Eyewear Reduces Retinal Damage in Sports Trauma”.
• The Outstanding Student of the Year at Florida Tech was awarded to graduate students Yasin Shokrollahi (2022) and Jose Colmenarez Moreno (2026) in recognition of their exceptional academic achievement, research contributions, and overall excellence.
• Graduate student Matthew R. Lam earned the Distinguished Poster Award for Clinical Research at the 2022 Global Health Conference Midwest in Omaha, NE. He presented “Soccer Ball Trauma of the Eye: Simulation Analysis and Comparison with Abusive Head Trauma”.
• Graduate student Junfei Tong earned Second-Place in the Graduate Student Paper Competition Award at the ASME 2018 IMECE Biomedical and Biotechnology Track, sponsored by the ASME Bioengineering Division. He presented the work titled “Influence of primary blast wave on the posterior part of the eyeball”.
• Graduate student Junfei Tong won the Third Place for exceptional science featuring the use of distributed computing resources and application of Big Data in life science at the 2018 Holland Computing Center and Quantitative Life Science Initiative at UNL. He presented “Dynamic response of posterior eyeball subjected to blast loadings”.