Engineered adipose tissue that can grow

Melissa Garcia, Samantha Chua, Tyler Ryan, Margaret Ann Bolick

Summary
This page is a template for the Summary page of the Senior Design Project Proposal. It has the correct
margins, spacing, fonts and headings. The font is Arial 11. The spacing is single-spaced. The margins are 0.5
on the top and sides, 1.0 on the bottom of the page. The page numbers are in the bottom center starting on
the second page with number 1. The Summary page (i.e., this page) should be no more than 1 page, and it is
not numbered. So, the total number of pages will be 2 to 3, with additional space for the references.
References do not count towards the 3 page limit. This summary section is written individually.
The Summary page should:

Concisely state the goals of the proposed research or new design. You may cite your functional
requirements, if functional requirements are appropriate for your senior design project.
Summarize the expected outcomes, including impact of the work you propose on fields involved
Succinctly list objectives of proposed work (e.g., to test a hypothesis, create a
novel design, solve a specific problem, make a new type of measurement possible, diagnose a
disease, etc.).

Most projects will have 2-4 Objectives. The objectives should be listed on this page. You will repeat the list
in the Approach section of the Research/Design Strategy, although the Approach section is not included in
Assignment 1. In the Approach section, you will add the experimental details or specific design tasks. The
Summary page (i.e., this page) is meant to be a concise summary of what you are proposing to accomplish in
9 months. Discuss these objectives with your technical advisor. Make sure you have chosen a set of
Objectives that can be accomplished in the time frame of two semesters.
The wording of the Objectives should be the same on this page as in the Approach section. You do not
need to fill an entire page of text in this section. You should expect and allow for your Objectives to change as
you revise and rework this proposal over the course of the semester. However, you should have a clear set of
Objectives by December, so that you can start in earnest working on completing them.
Objective 1: Engineer a three-dimensional adipose tissue that can "grow" in vitro in response to
hormones.It is possible to have a short, 2 to 4 sentence narrative that adds more details about Objective 1
here. This 2 to 4 sentence narrative is written individually.
Objective 2: Develop an algorithm that can computationally characterize the growth of lipid
droplets from time-lapse images of the tissue.
It is possible to have a short, 2 to 4 sentence narrative that adds more details about Objective 2 here. This
2 to 4 sentence narrative is written individually.
.
.
You may add a short section of concluding remarks here. In this section you may summarize the project,
explain how your project will impact your field or other fields if it is successful, or remind the reader of the
potential impact of your project.

Research/Design Strategy
The rest of this document is a template for the Research/Design Strategy section of the Senior Design
Project Proposal. Choose the heading for this section that makes the most sense for your project. It has the
correct margins, spacing, fonts and headings. The font is Arial 11. The spacing is single spaced. The margins
are 0.5 on the top and sides, 1.0 on the bottom of the page. The page numbers are in the bottom center.
A. Significance (about to 2/3 page)

Explain the importance of the problem or critical barrier to progress in the field that
the proposed project addresses. (e.g. What is the clinical significance of your project? How will your
new design impact future patient health or other research? Will you be able to do measurements using
your system that were previously not possible? etc.)

Explain how the proposed project will improve scientific knowledge, technical
capability, and/or clinical practice in one or more broad fields.

Describe how the concepts, methods, devices, diagnostics, instruments, technologies, treatments,
services, or preventative interventions that drive this field will be changed if the proposed objectives
are achieved.
B. Innovation (about to 2/3 page)

Explain how the proposal challenges and seeks to shift current methods, designs, research or
clinical practice paradigms.

Describe any novel theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies,

instrumentation or intervention(s) to be developed or used, and any advantage over
existing methodologies, instrumentation or intervention(s).

Explain any refinements, improvements, or new applications of theoretical

concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, technologies, devices or interventions.

References
Use any referencing program you want. In this template, the Word footnote function (insert an endnote) is used
to create the bibliography. For a proposal this size, 25-40 references are typical. References should be called
out in the text as superscript numbers, like this 1,2. The References section does NOT count in the Research
Strategy page limit.

1 B. Plouffe, M. Mahalanabis, L. Lewis, C. Klapperich and S. Murthy, Clinically Relevant Microfluidic

Magnetophoretic Isolation of Rare-Cell Populations for Diagnostic and Therapeutic Monitoring

Applications Anal Chem. Feb 7;84(3):1336-44, (2012).
2 A.W. Gruentzig, C.M. Klapperich, A. Sharon, J. Braman, A. Chatterjee and A.F. Sauer-Budge, A new

DNA extraction method for automated food analysis, Anal. Methods, 2011, 3 (7), 1507 1513, (2011).