Ivan Rosado-Mendez Receives Award from Wisconsin Partnership Program's New Investigator Program
Assistant Professor of Medical Physics, Ivan Rosado-Mendez is one of four researchers to receive grant support this year from the Wisconsin Partnership Program's New Investigator Program. The grant program provides opportunities for early-career faculty to initiate new, innovative educational or research pilot projects that, if successful can lead to further support from federal or other granting agencies. This year’s awards support projects that seek to advance knowledge and discovery across a wide range of topics including targeting blindness, improving pregnancy outcomes and advancing gene therapy.
Dr. Rosado-Mendez's project will investigate the use of ultrasound microvessel imaging (UM) and ultrasound backscatter spectroscopy (UBS) in the study of cervical microvascular remodeling during pregnancy. Although ultimately the goal is to implement UMI in vivo, this project will first design, fabricate, and characterize a tissue-mimicking model to validate the use of UMI and UBS, as well as test the feasibility of the simultaneous use of UMI/UBS by assessing the accuracy of the images. If successful, this technology will contribute to clinicians’ knowledge with in-depth and objective information about important mechanisms surrounding preterm and at-term birth and inform future approaches and interventions for preventing preterm birth.
Preterm birth affects 15 million babies worldwide every year, including ten percent of babies born in Wisconsin. Spontaneous preterm birth can occur when the cervix softens too early into the pregnancy to prepare for birth, and the risk of spontaneous preterm birth can be potentially characterized by changes in cervical vascularity due to increased inflammation.
Congratulations to Dr. Rosado-Mendez on this award!