Ohio State Grad Heads Univ. of Illinois at Chicago's Department of Bioengineering

All of Royston's Mechanical Engineering degrees were received at Ohio State [BS (1990), MS (1992), and PhD (1995)]. He joined the UIC Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) in 1995 as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2000, and then Full Professor in 2004. While in MIE he served as Director Graduate Studies and Associate Head. Royston became an Adjunct faculty member in the UIC Department of Bioengineering in 1999. He has served as the Interim Head of Bioengineering since August of 2009. The Ohio State graduate is the author or co-author of over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, and more than 100 conference publications. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and recipient of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) R. Bruce Lindsay Award (2002). He received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the NSF in 1998 and has since been continuously funded by federal agencies, including NIH, NSF, DOE and ONR.

 

Royston directs the UIC Acoustics and Vibrations Laboratory (AVL), which specializes in the development of novel medical imaging technology rooted in vibrations and acoustics. He is currently focused on two efforts, the Audible Human Project® (AHP) and microscopic magnetic resonance elastography. The goal of the AHP, sponsored by the NIH through an R01 grant, is to develop a comprehensive understanding and computational simulation model of how sound and vibration are generated and travel throughout the torso and the pulmonary system, and how this is altered by disease and injury. The outcomes of this project could impact both medical education, through improved training technology, and research by catalyzing the development of new acoustic imaging methods. Royston's work in microscopic magnetic resonance elastography, supported by grants from NIH and NSF (PI: Magin, Co-PIs: Royston and others), involves vibrating a person or specimen in an MRI to produce an image of the propagating vibratory waves.  From these images, one tries to quantify stiffness and damping, properties often altered by disease or trauma. This research is aimed at increasing the ability to noninvasively identify, quantify and monitor such conditions as tissue fibrosis, localized anomalies including those that distinguish a tumor, and the development of engineered tissues.  Magnetic resonance elastography has potential applications for identifying anomalies in virtually every organ in the body. Current efforts in Dr. Royston's lab, driven by collaborations with other researchers at UIC, are focused on engineered tissues, and the heart, brain, lung and eye.