Noshir A. Langrana

Noshir A. Langrana

Distinguished Professor

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Phone:848-445-6579
Email:langrana@rutgers.edu
Office:BME-302
Office Hours: By appointment

Education

  • Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University,1975
  • M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University,1971
  • B.E., (with honors), University of Bombay, India,1968

Honors and Awards

HONORS, AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

  • Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers
  • Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
  • Mary W. Raisler Distinguished Teaching Chair Professor, (Inaugural Awardee)
  • HR Lissner Medal Award, ASME Bioengineering Division, June 2008
  • Teacher-Scholar Award, Rutgers the state University of New Jersey, 2008

PROFESSIONAL/EDITORIAL ACTIVITIES

  • Associate Editor, TSJ (The Spine Journal) July 2000 - present
  • Associate Editor, SPINE, 1993 – present
  • Associate Editor, JBME January 2006 to 2011

Professional Affiliations

  • American Society of Mechanical Engineers
  • International Society of the Study for the Lumbar Spine
  • Orthopaedic Research Society
  • Biomedical Engineering Society

Professional Engineer: State of New Jersey, No. 24GE02551600

Research Interests

Professor Langrana is a leading Biomedical Engineering researcher with expertise in biomechanics and biomaterials. He continues to successfully build teams to perform clinically relevant research.

  • In past ~40 years, he has successfully conducted research projects on spinal fusion, development of spinal disc prosthesis and testing spinal implants. The results are extensively published and presented at national conferences in Bioengineering and spine. The current team is focused on spinal cord injuries projects.
  • Over the past ten years, his group has focused our attention on the design and development of novel dynamic DNA crosslinked hydrogels. It has proved that gel stiffness can be altered dynamically “on-the-fly”. He has shown that Fibroblasts and neurons respond to alterations in substrate rigidity, and the responses vary depending on hydrogel stiffness, cell type, and cell property. 
  • Recently, his group has developed polyelectrolyte complex (PEC) films with negative surface charge density. Polyelectrolyte complexes primarily consist of at least two oppositely charged polymers. Mixing of these polymers under aqueous conditions leads to the formation of PEC. By varying the proportion of PEC complex, films with varying surface charges has been created. Polymers with negatively charged functional groups such as carboxylate and sulfate have shown inhibitory effect on adhesions of macrophages, lymphocytes, platelets and fibroblasts.  The results on anti-adhesive properties are very encouraging.

Selected Publications

Edited Book (2010 to present)

  1. Ferenc Horkay, Roger Narayan, Vipul Dave, Sungho Jin, Noshir Langrana, J. David Londono, Wilhelm Oppermann, Seeram Ramakrisha, Donglu Shi,  and Richard G. Weiss, (Editors), “Gels and Biomedical Materials”, Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings, Volume 1418, ISBN: 978-1-60511-395-1, 2012
  2. Ferenc Horkay, Langrana, NA, Shibayama, M, and Basu, S, (Editors), “Fundamentals of Gels and Self-Assembled Polymer Systems”, Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings, Volume 1622, ISBN: 978-1-60511-399-3, 2014

Chapters in Books (2010 to present)

  1. Jiang FX, Yurke B, Verma, D, Previtera, M, Schloss R, and Langrana NA., “Development of DNA Based Active Macro–Materials for Biology and Medicine: A Review”, Chapter 2 in Biomaterial Science and Engineering, Edited by Rosario Pignatello, pp. 31-66, INTECH, Open Access Publisher, ISBN 978-953-307-609-6, 2011.

Refereed Articles in Journals

  1. Previtera ML, Chippada U, Schloss RS, Yurke B, and Langrana NA, “Mechanical Properties of DNA-Crosslinked Polyacrylamide Hydrogels with Increasing Crosslinker Density”, BioResearch Open Access, 1(5)256-259, 2012
  2. Previtera ML, Hui M, Verma D, Shahin A, Schloss RS, and Langrana NA, “The Effects of Substrate elastic Modulus on Neural Precursor Cell Behavior”, Annals of Biomedical Engineering, February 2013.
  3. Previtera, M. L., Langrana, N. A. Preparation of DNA-crosslinked Polyacrylamide Hydrogels. J. Vis. Exp. (90), e51323, doi:10.3791/51323 (2014).