Johns Hopkins engineer Vicky Nguyen has spent 15 years studying how glaucoma progresses to figure out how to preserve patients’ vision

Glaucoma, caused by high pressure within the eye, affects some 2.5 million Americans and is the nation’s second leading cause of blindness. Optometrists screen for it during routine eye exams, often with the familiar puff of air against the cornea. But once diagnosed, how does glaucoma progress? That is the question Vicky Nguyen, professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering, has spent 15 years trying to answer.

Supported primarily by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Nguyen’s team has partnered with Harry Quigley, a professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, to investigate the mechanics behind the disease. They are studying how the eye’s tissues respond to pressure changes to identify key factors driving vision loss and enable more effective sight-saving treatments.

“Understanding how the condition progresses is critical to developing better treatments and preserving patients’ vision long-term,” said Nguyen, who is also co-deputy director of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute. “Millions of Americans lose their sight each year to glaucoma, and research funding is essential for helping us find effective ways to change that.”

Even with treatment, about 15% of people with glaucoma continue to experience some vision loss, and about 5% go blind in both eyes. Currently, there are no proven biomarkers that can predict which patients will experience a more rapid progression of the disease, so patients are treated with a one-size-fits-all approach. Nguyen’s team is working to change that by studying how strain in the optic nerve of glaucoma patients affects their sight.

Recent studies involved patients starting new glaucoma medications and patients who had surgery to lower their eye pressure. The researchers then measured how the tissues of their optic nerve heads (the place where the optic nerves exit the eye) responded to these pressure changes.

So far, Nguyen’s team has found that strain within the optic nerves predicts the stages of vision loss in patients with mild, moderate, and severe cases of glaucoma. Their study also demonstrated that these strain measurements can predict how much the structure within the optic nerve head changes a year or more after pressure-lowering treatment.

Lowering eye pressure halts the progression of glaucoma damage for many patients; however, this approach may only provide short-term relief or prove ineffective for others. With support from the NIH, Nguyen’s team is monitoring patients who have received this surgery to see who improves or worsens, aiming to clarify whether invasive treatment is truly necessary or beneficial to some patients.

“We will monitor patients in our study for the next four years and repeat these measurements every six months,” Nguyen said. “Understanding strain as a predictor of vision worsening will allow us to more effectively screen patients with bad strains for additional treatment or more frequent monitoring, and we can develop new therapies that either stiffen or soften the tissues to slow or halt progression.”

Nguyen and her team are not solely focused on identifying which patients using medications face a higher risk of their disease worsening. They are also studying how patients respond to surgical intervention over a long-term period. Their findings related to glaucoma could have implications for other kinds of vision loss caused by intraocular pressure, including the common affliction of myopia—nearsightedness.

“We have learned a lot, but we need more time to find answers,” Nguyen said. “NIH support has been crucial and without it, we would have to scale back or stop our patient testing entirely—jeopardizing both the study and the progress patients have made in patient care.”

This story by Jonathan Deutschman originally appeared in The Hub.

The Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute (HEMI) and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) Research and Exploratory Development (RED) mission area have awarded two, $50,000 seed grants. These seed grants promote pioneering research and collaboration between HEMI and JHUAPL RED.

Paulette Clancy, professor, and head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, teamed with Nam Le, staff scientist at JHUAPL RED, on a project titled, “Towards Proton Radiation-Resistant Perovskite Solar Cell Materials for Space Applications.” The goal of the project is to understand what defects are formed when energetic particles interact with metal halide perovskites (MHPs), as these can lead to performance degradation and thus limit the viability of these promising solar cells. Their low cost, lightweight, and simple manufacturing process make them an ideal candidate for in-space manufacturing goals of future space missions.

The second seed grant is awarded to the team of Jaafar El-Awady, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Christopher Stiles, senior staff scientist in JHUAPL RED. Their project is titled, “Developing a Multiscale/Multiphysics Framework to Support the Ecofriendly Mitigation of Ice Loss from the Arctic and Greenland Glaciers and Icesheets.” The project’s objectives are to create a mechanistic-based multiscale computational framework that can predict the mechanics of ice deformation under creep loading, as well as the effect of ice nucleation proteins on the structure and mechanical properties of the formed ice. This study could result in an environmentally friendly framework for mitigating ice mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica.

Ryan Hurley, assistant professor in the Whiting School of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Kit Bowen, the E. Emmet Reid Professor of Chemistry in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, were awarded Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) grants. DURIP enables university faculty to procure major equipment needed to perform cutting-edge foundational science research relevant to national defense.

Hurley will use his grant to obtain equipment needed to build an extreme-pressure triaxial compression apparatus. This will enable his research group to conduct in-situ studies of geomaterial deformation mechanisms. Bowen’s grant will support his work exploring the role of cluster reactivity in destroying chemical warfare agents.

The Department of Defense awarded a total of $59 million to 147 university researchers under DURIP. More than 500 proposals were submitted, resulting in a highly competitive selection process. DURIP is jointly administered by the Army Research Office, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research through a merit competition.

After a two-year delay due to COVID-19, the International Conference on Multiscale Materials Modeling (MMM) was held in October 2022 in Baltimore, Maryland. Johns Hopkins University’s Jaafar El-Awady, professor of mechanical engineering, and Somnath Ghosh, M.G. Callas chair and professor of civil and systems engineering, served as chair and co-chair respectively. 

A forum for researchers from academia, national laboratories, and industrial research facilities worldwide with interdisciplinary research backgrounds including mechanics, materials, biomechanics, mechanobiology, advanced manufacturing, mathematics, and computational sciences, the MMM conference is held biennially. It was first held in 2002 in London and the location rotates sequentially between North America, Europe, and Asia.  

The MMM conference is highlighted by four distinguished plenary speakers and eight semi-plenary speakers. The technical program includes 27 technical symposia as well as a dedicated poster session. More than 750 individuals participated in the conference. Conference sponsors included: Johns Hopkins University, George Mason University, Georgetown University, the University of Maryland, and the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute.  

KT Ramesh, the Alonzo G. Decker Professor of Science and Engineering and director of HEMI, recently co-chaired the final technical review of Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments and Artificial Intelligence for Materials (MEDE+ AI-M) projects.  

These projects and their principal investigators include:   

• Using artificial intelligence to accelerate the iterative materials design cycle by high-throughput microstructural characterization and rapid processing (Mark Foster, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering;) 
• Acoustic signature and reconstruction of defect avalanches in metals (Jaafar El-Awady, associate professor of mechanical engineering;) 
• Real-time monitoring of laser-material interactions (Steven Storck, Senior Materials Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory;) 
• Toward self-repairing devices: Data-directed design of active, hierarchical colloidal assembly and reconfiguration (Rebecca Schulman, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.) 

Researchers involved with each project used AI or machine learning (ML) techniques to examine a particular material and then compare their results with those obtained using  traditional methods. Initial results show that AI/ML techniques can be used to predict select material behavior and characteristics. These initial discoveries are expected to lead to future opportunities as HEMI researchers advance the science in this field.      

The MEDE+ AI-M projects were funded by a cooperative agreement with the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory which facilitated collaboration. These projects accelerate material development for the Army’s emerging needs and demonstrate HEMI’s continued partnership with DEVCOM ARL.   

Matt Shaeffer, senior staff engineer with the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute, received the 2022 Whiting School of Engineering (WSE) Leadership Award on Monday, July 11, 2022.

The annual Staff Recognition Awards provide WSE with an opportunity to recognize the hardworking and talented staff who advance the school’s mission, demonstrate superior leadership, and motivate and inspire those around them.  This year, 27 staff members were nominated for awards recognizing their outstanding service in support of the Whiting School’s educational and research activities.

Matt obtained his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2006 from Boston University and his M.S in Applied Biomedical Engineering from the JHU EP program in 2016. Matt is currently the senior staff engineer at the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute (HEMI), where he manages technical staff and develops facilities and programs that perform impact testing on protective materials, geologic materials and biological tissues. This includes the HyFIRE facility where materials can be impacted at speeds up to Mach 20 and the events can be characterized with high-speed imaging, spectroscopy, and flash radiography. He also leads the design of the new AIMD facility to implement AI strategies and high throughput techniques for materials development. Some of the biomechanics work he has done in HEMI include designing and building a small shock tube for dynamic inflation of porcine eyes and the design of a pendulum tester and sensors to evaluate the effects of impacts on the optical nerve in cadaver heads. Prior to working at HEMI, Matt tested construction materials for the National Association of Homebuilders.

This is the second consecutive year that a HEMI staff member has received the Leadership Award.

Sung Hoon Kang, HEMI Fellow and assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been selected as a recipient of a Hanwha Non-Tenured Faculty Award.

The awards, given by Hanwha Solutions and Hanwha Total Energy, are designed to construct overseas R&D network and to expand a range of research and development, promotes the sharing and cooperative research and development of technology through mutual exchange from the early stages of research.

Kang received an award from the advanced materials division of Hanwha Solutions for his research in additive manufacturing technology using various new materials. He received his award on June 8th via an online ceremony.

A team of Johns Hopkins University researchers have created energy-absorbing material that is lighter, absorbs more impact than metal, and is reusable.

The research team discovered that liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs), a reusable and highly energy-absorbing material, can be incorporated into military armor and automobile and aerospace parts to increase their impact absorption capability. As part of its analysis, the research team reports its efforts to use LCEs to develop the lightweight energy-absorbing material in a recently published Advanced Materials article.

“Vicky Nguyen, another fellow in HEMI, informed me of liquid crystal elastomers, and we observed this material has a very good energy absorption capability, which increases at higher speeds, said senior author Sung Hoon Kang, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and HEMI Fellow. “We continued examining liquid crystal elastomers, revisited my previous research about how geometric designs correlate with energy absorption, and discovered there is synergy between this material and geometry that enhances energy absorption capability.”

The inspiration for this research stems from Kang’s examination of how car bumpers absorb impact and previous work on meta-material that absorbs energy from impact. To address the current challenges of energy-absorbing materials, the research team investigated energy absorption behavior of a form-like LCE structures over a wide range of impact speeds by measuring their responses. Besides, they also applied computer simulations to help understand how the LCE material behavior and the geometry synergistically contributed to energy absorption.

Currently, Kang is cultivating a collaboration with other researchers and a helmet company to design, fabricate, and test next-generation helmets for the Department of Defense and athletes. Additionally, Kang and the research team are investigating approaches to further increase energy absorption of the material by incorporating an additional energy absorption mechanism.

The research team included: Kang, Thao (Vicky) Nguyen, professor and Marlin U. Zimmerman, Jr. Faculty Scholar at Johns Hopkins University; Christopher M. Yakacki, associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver; and Seung-Yeol Jeon, Beijun Shen, Nicholas Traugutt, Zeyu Zhu, and Lichen Fang, who are affiliated with the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute.

This research is supported in part by the Army Research Office (Grant Number W911NF-17-1-0165) and the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering Start-Up Fund.