Chemical and Biomolecular graduate student Kyle Timmer received the grand prize at the campus-wide Research Live! competition. Research Live! is a “fun, fast-paced competition that celebrates graduate student research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign". Graduate students create a video presentation and are limited to one slide to explain their research in three minutes or less. The finalists are judged by University High School students, with the grand prize being awarded to the finalists “whose presentation excelled in all five criteria of organization, purpose, content, delivery, and visuals”.
Timmer’s video presentation, titled “A Biomimetic Scaffold to Improve Rotator Cuff Shoulder Repair,” detailed a new material treatment for the healing of torn rotator cuffs. One in four people over 60 have some degree of rotator cuff injury, but surgeries typically do not allow the body to regenerate the native tendon-to-bone junction, or enthesis. This enthesis is critical to preventing re-tearing of the rotator cuff and the focus of Timmer’s work.
Timmer is designing a transitionary biomaterial to help the body repair this tendon-to-bone interface. This material would be implanted into an injury, utilizing compositional and structural cues to instruct nearby stem cells. The goal is for these stem cells to differentiate into cells crucial to the formation of new tissue, leading to functional repair of the transition and improved outcomes for patients.
Timmer is a fourth-year graduate student in the Harley Lab. He received his bachelor’s of science degree in Chemical Engineering, with an additional major in Biochemistry, from Calvin University in 2020.