I have been awarded the Innovation in Cancer Engineering Partnership Seed Grant to test a painless BioZ technology for diagnosing and monitoring treatment in patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. More info

Benjamin Sanchez Terrones Receives HCI Engineering Award

🎉 We have been awarded a $14.3M grant from the National Cancer Institute, marking a fantastic multidisciplinary collaboration between MD Anderson Cancer Center and my lab at the University of Utah. This project will improve long-term quality of life and health outcomes for oropharyngeal cancer survivors. A huge congratulations to the entire team for their hard work and dedication in making this possible!

We are thrilled to announce that today our dedicated clinical collaborators at MD Anderson Cancer Center tested our high-density electromyography (EMG) device on our first tongue cancer survivor!

Today, my lab had the pleasure of hosting a group of enthusiastic students visiting from Utah Asia Campus. It was an inspiring experience to share our research with such a bright and inquisitive audience. One particularly exciting aspect of today’s visit was seeing that the majority of the students were women, all passionate about engineering. Their insightful questions reminded me of the global impact of collaboration and the importance of fostering cross-cultural exchanges in the field of education and research. A big thank you to everyone who made this visit possible.

The diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia,  the most common leukemia in adult patients with only about 30% long term survivors, and evaluation of response to therapy are done using bone marrow aspirates and biopsies. These are invasive procedures with potential serious complications. The goal of this project is to test non-invasive, painless bioimpedance technology to serve as an adjunctive and convenient biomarker to standard bone marrow biopsies.

Excited to share that our project, REMOTE SKIN, aimed at enhancing access to advanced skin cancer evaluation in underserved regions, has been chosen for the Remote and Austere Challenge competition!

🎉 Exciting news! I am thrilled to announce that Nate has been granted the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship! Collaborating with MD Anderson Cancer Center, his research will revolutionize the way we provide care to oropharyngeal cancer survivors. It’s a great honor to serve as his mentor, and I couldn’t be prouder of his remarkable achievements!

We found bioimpedance was related to tongue strength and the presence of radiation-associated XII neuropathy. Our work paves the way to non-invasive bioimpedance as an adjunctive biomarker to assess tongue health in oropharyngeal cancer survivors.

In our latest work that made it to be in the front cover of Muscle and Nerve, we made a head-to-head comparison of standard EMG and impedance-EMG. The clinical problem: to diagnose muscular dystrophy from healthy muscle.

Did you know that 🏳️‍🌈 sexual and gender minorities (sometimes denoted LGBTQ+) have disproportionately high rates of depression, suicidal ideation, substance use, and physical health problems? Our new NIH grant will answer whether wearables can improve health disparities in LGBTQ + individuals during real-time social safety experiences in public settings by reducing their chronic threat-vigilance stress!