Kalpana Katti, University Distinguished Professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been recognized with the Fred Waldron Research Award. She will be honored during the Celebration of Faculty Excellence, scheduled for Thursday, May 10, at 3 p.m. in the Memorial Union’s Plains room.
The Waldron Award was established with the NDSU Development Foundation board of trustees to recognize outstanding faculty research. Recipients have made consistent and excellent contributions to research and scholarship.
Katti was nominated by Ravi Kiran Yellavajjala, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. He said Katti has contributed to science through her work in tissue engineering, cancer scaffolds and biomimetics.
“Her group introduced novel engineered nanoclay nanocomposites for biomedical applications,” Yellavajjala said. “The biomineralization routes in nanoclays pave the way for biomimetic tissue engineering. Due to the propensity of prostate and breast cancers to metastasize to bone, her group has introduced for the first time a ‘cancer test-bed’ through tissue engineering that enables humanoid testing of anticancer drugs and provides a platform for understanding the incurable metastasized cancer.”
Yellavajjala said Katti acquired more than 3,900 citations and given more than 70 talks and invited lectures at national and international conferences.
“Dr. Katti has shown significant impact in the biomaterials area through her research, leadership in national committees and by organizing symposia in various areas of mechanics of biological materials,” Yellavajjala said. “I can think of no one more deserving of the Fred Waldron Research Award than Dr. Kalpana Katti.”
Her other awards include the Faculty Lectureship, NDSU Peltier Award for Innovation in Teaching, NDSU College of Engineering Researcher of the Year and the Federation of Societies of Coating Technology’s Roon Award.
Katti came to NDSU in 1997 as a post-doctoral researcher. She joined the faculty in 1999. Katti earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Delhi, India; master’s degree in solid state physics from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur; and doctorate in materials science and engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle.
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