This week's hall of fame member is Margot Damaser.
Name: Margot Damaser
Profession: Biomedical Engineer.
Why are you an ICS member: ICS is truly the best meeting to interact with my national and international colleagues both clinical and nonclinical, at all levels of training, and in a variety of fields. The friends, colleagues and collaborators I have met through ICS are both many and dear to me.
Which was your first ICS meeting: Prague, 1st - 5th June 1994.
Special ICS memories: My first meeting was when I was doing a postdoc with Bengt Uvelius and Anders Arner in Lund, Sweden. Bengt took me with him to the ICS meeting in Prague and it was eye opening. I had never met so many people interested in improving the knowledge base and condition of individuals with incontinence before.
Biggest influence: The teamwork I observed in my postdoc between Bob Levin, PhD and Alan Wein, MD influenced me tremendously as wanting to establish such a close collaboration with a clinician and spend my career focusing on research with a clear view toward translation to the clinic.
If you could go back in time what advice would you give to yourself and why: It’s the same advice I give to young scientists and engineers submitting grants and conducting research: Have faith in yourself and your ideas and never, never, NEVER give up! I repeat that phrase to myself at least weekly even after 25 years in the field.
Biography: Margot received her PhD in Bioengineering from the joint University of California Berkeley and San Francisco Bioengineering Program. Her dissertation was titled "Constitutive Mechanics of the Urinary Bladder" and Margot has spent her career studying urinary incontinence and pelvic floor disorders in the 25 years since then. Margot is currently a full staff member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the Lerner Research Institute at Cleveland Clinic with a joint appointment in the Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute. Margot is also a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. In addition, Margot has a simultaneous appointment as Senior Research Career Scientist at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and direct a laboratory there. Margot’slaboratory focuses on development and testing of novel devices and regenerative approaches for improved diagnosis and treatment of urinary incontinence, voiding dysfunction, and pelvic floor disorders.