By Megan Howard

Twelve times a day for 14 years – starting at 3 a.m. – Cameron Crouse checked his blood sugar with finger pricks from a glucometer.

Diagnosed a month shy of his third birthday with type 1 diabetes in 2003, Crouse said administering 12 pricks a day became second nature. But for many people, especially those diagnosed later in life, managing diabetes often presents substantial physical, emotional and financial challenges.

“I consider myself fortunate because I was so young that I don’t have any memories of being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes,” said Crouse, 24, a University of Florida Ph.D. student and biomedical engineering major in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.

Crouse is now rolling his experiences, knowledge and insight as a lifelong patient into his graduate research, hoping to find a diabetes treatment at the cellular level through tissue engineering. His goal is to reverse diabetes through transplanted cells that can produce insulin.

The Alabama native no longer pricks his finger each day, now using a glucose monitor with a continuous subcutaneous drip of insulin to track and correct changes in his blood sugar. These pieces of biomedical technology are able to “talk to each other,” Crouse said – an advancement that has made a huge difference for diabetics.

But Crouse contends that technology for diabetes treatment should not end there.

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