AIMBE
Fellowbook News
AIMBE Fellowbook collects news stories highlighting the members of the AIMBE College of Fellows. Read the latest stories, jump to the College Directory, or search below to find the newest research, awards, announcements and more for the leaders of the medical and biological engineering community.
UVA Creates a Simple Way to Solve the Complex Mysteries of the Microbiome
Jason Papin | Via University of Virginia | October 25, 2018This much is clear: The tiny bacteria that live on and inside us are tremendously important for our health and well-being, affecting everything from our mood to the risk of autism. But understanding how those multitudes of microbes interact – and how they influence human health – is a gargantuan task, akin to counting the […]
Reinhart-King receives the inaugural BMES Mid-Career Award
Cynthia Reinhart-King | Via Vanderbilt University | October 25, 2018Cynthia A. Reinhart-King, a nationally recognized cellular bioengineer, is the inaugural recipient of the Biomedical Engineering Society’s Mid-Career Award. Reinhart-King delivered the award lecture Saturday, Oct. 20, at the BMES 2018 Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Reinhart-King received the 2010 Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award and she is the only person to have received two of […]
ENG’s Xin Zhang Is BU’s 2018 Innovator of the Year, First Woman Chosen
Xin Zhang | Via Boston University | October 24, 2018Cited for translational research on use of metamaterials in MRI, acoustic technologies Xin Zhang is well-known for her pioneering work with metamaterials in areas as diverse as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), downwell sensor technology for the oil industry, and noise-cancellation acoustics. A College of Engineering professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, she […]
Celebrating Earl Bakken
Earl Bakken | Via Medtronic | October 22, 2018Medtronic co-founder Earl E. Bakken, a pioneer in medical technology whose inventions impacted the lives of millions of people around the world, passed away Sunday in Hawaii. He was 94 years old. “All of us at Medtronic are saddened today by the news of Earl’s passing,” said Omar Ishrak, chairman and CEO of Medtronic. “Earl […]
Cryptographic protocol enables greater collaboration in drug discovery
Bonnie Berger | Via MIT | October 18, 2018MIT researchers have developed a cryptographic system that could help neural networks identify promising drug candidates in massive pharmacological datasets, while keeping the data private. Secure computation done at such a massive scale could enable broad pooling of sensitive pharmacological data for predictive drug discovery. Datasets of drug-target interactions (DTI), which show whether candidate compounds […]
Probiotics and antibiotics create a killer combination
Robert Langer | Via MIT | October 17, 2018In the fight against drug-resistant bacteria, MIT researchers have enlisted the help of beneficial bacteria known as probiotics. In a new study, the researchers showed that by delivering a combination of antibiotic drugs and probiotics, they could eradicate two strains of drug-resistant bacteria that often infect wounds. To achieve this, they encapsulated the probiotic bacteria […]
Why do digital health startups keep failing?
Paul Yock | Via Fast Company | October 17, 2018The “move fast and break things” approach that works in tech doesn’t translate well to healthcare. Instead, digital health startups should try need-driven innovation. A decade ago, a wave of companies promised to transform people’s health by allowing them to track data about their eating, sleep, exercise, and other habits. One hot startup of that […]
Roderic I Pettigrew received the Spirit of the Heart Award
Rod Pettigrew | Via Association of Black Cardiologists | October 17, 2018Roderic I Pettigrew received the Spirit of the Heart Award for national leadership in health promotion. The award is given by the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC) which works to “save the hearts and minds of a diverse community”. These awards were created to recognize those with extraordinary contributions in medicine, research, mentoring, public service, […]
National Academy of Medicine Honors Nicholas Peppas for Outstanding Service
Nicholas Peppas | Via National Academy of Medicine | October 15, 2018The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) honored three members today at its annual meeting for their outstanding service. The honorees are Elaine L. Larson, senior associate dean of scholarship and research, Anna C. Maxwell Professor of Nursing Research, and professor of epidemiology at Columbia University; Hedvig Hricak, chair of the department of radiology at Memorial […]
Connecting the dots of Alzheimer’s disease
Ellen Kuhl | Via Stanford University | October 15, 2018Some people may follow a football team, others may follow their favorite television streaming series. For Ellen Kuhl, PhD, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, her passion lies in following proteins. In a recent Stanford news article, Kuhl explains how her team developed a computer simulation to track the spread of defective proteins in […]
How Are Pulsed Electric Fields Being Used in Cancer Therapy?
Richard Nuccitelli | Via Mary Ann Lieberty | October 11, 2018Pulsed electric fields are helping fight cancer, whether by inducing tumor cell death or by stimulating the immune system. A comprehensive overview of this developing field is published in the preview issue of Bioelectricity, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Click here to read the full-text article free on the Bioelectricity website. […]
Bashir named College of Engineering dean
Rashid Bashir | Via University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | October 10, 2018Rashid Bashir will become the next dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign effective Nov. 1, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. Bashir is the executive associate dean and chief diversity officer of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Bashir joined the Illinois faculty as […]
Brain circuits for successful emotional development established during infancy
Weili Lin | Via UNC Health Care | October 10, 2018Researchers in the UNC Early Brain Development Study tracking the development of the brain’s emotion circuitry in infancy found that adult-like functional brain connections for emotional regulation emerge during the first year of life. And the growth of these brain circuits during the second year of life predicted the IQ and emotional control of the […]
Eyeing NASH, Glympse Raises $22M to Test Disease Detection Nanotech
Sangeeta Bhatia | Via Xconomy | October 9, 2018Glympse Bio has developed sensor technology that it says can give clinicians an early look at a developing disease. As Glympse prepares to test its disease detection approach in a serious liver disorder, the startup has raised $22 million in Series A financing. LS Polaris Innovation Fund and Arch Venture Partners co-led the investment in […]
New CMU Degree Prepares Researchers for AI-Directed Experimentation
Robert Murphy | Via Carnegie Mellon University | October 9, 2018Computers increasingly are helping scientists identify and select experiments necessary for scientific discoveries, so Carnegie Mellon University has created a two-year master’s degree program to train specialists needed to design, configure, operate and maintain these systems. CMU’s Computational Biology Department will offer the Master of Science in Automated Science: Biological Experimentation beginning in fall 2019 […]
Researchers Demonstrate First Example of a Bioresorbable Electronic Medicine
John Rogers | Via Northwestern Engineering | October 8, 2018Researchers at Northwestern University and Washington University School of Medicine have developed the first example of a bioresorbable electronic medicine: an implantable, biodegradable wireless device that speeds nerve regeneration and improves the healing of a damaged nerve. The collaborators — materials scientists and engineers at Northwestern and neurosurgeons at Washington University — developed a device […]
Researchers discover how fatal biofilms form
Andre Levchenko | Via Yale University | October 5, 2018By severely curtailing the effects of antibiotics, the formation of organized communities of bacterial cells known as biofilms can be deadly during surgeries and in urinary tract infections. Yale researchers have just come a lot closer to understanding how these biofilms develop, and potentially how to stop them. Biofilms form when bacterial cells gather and […]
To improve anesthesia, focus on neuroscience and nociception, experts urge
Emery N. Brown | Via MIT | October 4, 2018People sometimes mistakenly think of general anesthesia as just a really deep sleep, but in fact, anesthesia is really four brain states — unconsciousness, amnesia, immobility, and suppression of the body’s damage sensing response, or “nociception.” In a new paper in Anesthesia and Analgesia, MIT neuroscientist and statistician Emery N. Brown and his colleagues argue […]
Nobel Prize in Chemistry Goes to a Woman for the Fifth Time in History
Frances Arnold | Via New York Times | October 3, 2018Since 1901, when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was first awarded, 177 people have captured the honor. On Wednesday, Frances H. Arnold became only the fifth woman to be awarded the prize. Dr. Arnold, 62, an American professor of chemical engineering, bioengineering and biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, earned the award […]
The Engineer – Inventing a toolkit for newborns in need
Rebecca Richards-Kortum | Via Texas Medical Center | October 1, 2018Two years ago on Halloween, Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Ph.D., a professor of bioengineering at Rice University, walked into her lab and stopped abruptly. Staring back at her was a crowd of familiar characters. Her students, who wear costumes for the holiday every year, had conspired to go as different versions of their mentor. There was the […]