Engineering has always been an integral part of medicine. Walk into a hospital or a clinic, and every aspect of care — from the devices physicians use to diagnose and treat disease to the vaccines and pharmaceuticals they prescribe — bears the imprint of engineers. The University of Virginia’s new Engineering in Medicine initiative is designed to jumpstart medical innovation by explicitly fostering partnerships between engineers and clinicians.

“Many of our best weapons in the fight against common diseases, such as pacemakers and stents to treat heart disease or mammography to detect breast cancer, developed at the interface between engineering and medicine,” said Biomedical Engineering Professor Jeffrey Holmes. “This same interface holds enormous promise to deliver the next generation of advances.”

Holmes heads UVA’s Center for Engineering in Medicine, which was funded in mid-2017 with a $5 million Strategic Investment Fund grant from the University and another $5 million in matching funds from UVA Engineering and the School of Medicine. The center has already begun to leverage these funds to launch a series of ambitious interdisciplinary projects that bring engineers together with their counterparts from the Schools of Medicine and Nursing and the College of Arts & Sciences. The center plans to fund two groups of projects annually. The second round of proposals is due February 15, 2018… Continue reading.