David Frakes has recently won international and statewide awards for engineering research and technology development he has led in recent years.
Frakes is an associate professor in the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering and the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering.
Work he has done in his Image Processing Applications Lab at ASU won one of several Arizona Governor’s Celebration of Innovation Awards. He received the Innovator of the Year Award in the Academia category. Read more.
The Arizona Technology Council in partnership with the Arizona Commerce Authority organizes the Celebration of Innovations Awards program.
His biomedical engineering projects also earned him a World Technology Award in the Health and Medicine category. Read more.
The Arizona award recognizes the achievement of Frakes’ lab team in developing a cloud-based computer simulation platform enabling precise modeling of the conditions of patients with brain aneurysms.
The technology aids physicians in developing patient-specific plans for endovascular treatments. It is expected to have a significant impact on the success of insertions of neurovascular stents to improve patients’ recovery.
The World Technology Award winners are chosen by peers in their fields, who select scientists, engineers and inventors they consider to be making advances that will have “the greatest likely long-term significance.”
Frakes’ selection for one of the awards was also based on the endovascular modeling techniques. A startup company has emerged from the advances in those techniques. Read about the company, Endovantage.
That modeling technology development is related to other biomedical projects that are bringing attention to Frakes’ lab team.
Among them is the 3-D Cardiac Print Lab at Phoenix Children’s Hospital heart., which is being run under Frakes’ guidance by ASU biomedical engineering doctoral student Justin Ryan.
The lab produces 3-D prints of individual patients’ cardiovascular, respiratory and skeletal structures. The lab also provides physicians a novel virtual screening of the conditions of pediatric patients, helping surgeons ensure the fit of artificial hearts implanted into the patients.
