The National Science Foundation recently awarded University of Wyoming assistant professor John Oakey its prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award. Oakey, a chemical and petroleum engineer, will receive $400,000 to fund a project that will potentially make tissue regeneration experiments much faster, especially when studying diseases such as osteoarthritis.
“Our disease specific focus is something called osteoarthritis,” Oakey says, “which affects, the statistics are something like over twenty, twenty-five-million people in the United States alone. So just by targeting this one disease and moving the field of regenerative medicine closer to fruition we can make a huge impact on the people who suffer from osteoarthritis.”
The funding will also make it possible for Oakey to create educational tools for Wyoming kids that will vividly demonstrate how tissue regeneration works.