RIT - Department of Mechanical Engineering | People | Faculty

Kathleen Lamkin-Kennard

Assistant Professor
Phone: 585-475-6775
E-mail: kaleme@rit.edu
Office: 2185 Gleason

Biography:
Dr. Kathleen Lamkin-Kennard joined the department of Mechanical Engineering in Fall 2006. She received a BS degree in Physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and MS and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University. She also spent four years doing research and development for a commercially available, robotic human patient simulator.

Dr. Lamkin-Kennard's graduate work focused on development of a non-linear, coupled, diffusion-reaction model to simulate nitric oxide release, transport, and mechanisms of action in cylindrical microvessels. The model solved multiple, dynamic, non-linear PDEs describing blood flow and mass transport and reaction kinetics of multiple chemical species using finite element methods. After completion of her Ph.D., Dr. Lamkin-Kennard was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Rochester. She received a National Institutes of Health Kirchstein post-doctoral National Research Scholar Award (NRSA) to develop a 3-D computational microhydrodynamics model of rolling and adhering neutrophils in a cylindrical geometry. Her research there also involved evaluating the effects of hydrodynamics in complex vessel geometries on cellular adhesion and microcirculatory flow profiles.

Dr. Lamkin-Kennard's work to date has focused on the use of computational and physical models to simulate integrated human physiological systems. Most recently her work has focused on microscale systems. Specific areas of expertise include biofluid dynamics and transport phenomena, biomedical computation and numerical methods, and integrated multiphysics systems modeling, particularly related to microcirculatory, cardiovascular, and cellular systems biology. To date at RIT, she has taught Thermal Fluids Lab I, Problem Solving with Computers, Introduction to Biomaterials, System Dynamics, and Mathematics for Engineers I in the Mechanical Engineering Department. She has also supervised several Senior Design and M.S. thesis projects.

Dr. Lamkin-Kennard currently has three areas of focus at RIT. Her primary area of focus involves the use of integrated computational and microscale experimental approaches to evaluate the effects of microhydrodynamics on neutrophil adhesion in branched vessel geometries. Her work is currently supported by the National Institutes of Health. This work will be extended in the future to include transport phenomena to study pathological conditions such as ischemia-reperfusion injury. A second area of focus involves the development of microscale, biomimetic robotic devices for biomedical applications. A third emerging area of focus involves development of mathematical models to study glaucoma.