Black Biomedical Engineering Professor at Virginia Tech Engages New Jersey High School Students in His Research

Joseph Freeman is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Virginia Tech. He recently received a $175,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for research on artificial bone scaffolding. His research involves developing methods for rebuilding fractured bones from the core outward using nanofibrous materials.

Dr. Freeman is using part of his grant money to establish an education program for students in science classrooms in Newark, New Jersey, where his mother is a teacher. Students will be kept abreast of Freeman’s bone scaffolding research and will be able to ask questions through live Web feeds. In addition, some of the high school students will spend some of their summer vacation at Virginia Tech working in Dr. Freeman’s lab.

Dr. Freeman is a chemical engineering graduate of Princeton University and holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.