2024 Earl Bakken Speaker

Bin He, Ph.D.

Trustee Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Neuroscience Institute

Carnegie Mellon University

Bin He is the Trustee Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of the Neuroscience Institute, and Professor by courtesy of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. He has made significant research and education contributions to the field of neuroengineering and biomedical imaging, including functional biomedical imaging, noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI), and noninvasive neuromodulation. His pioneering research has helped transforming electroencephalography from a 1-dimensional detection technique to 3-dimensional neuroimaging modality. His lab demonstrated for the first time for humans to fly a drone and control a robotic arm just by thinking about it using a noninvasive BCI. He has contributed significantly to neuroengineering education including editing the first textbook in Neural Engineering (1st Edition, 2005; 2nd Edition, 2013; 3rd Edition, 2020), and led multiple NIH and NSF training grants in neuroengineering.

Dr. He has received a number of awards including the IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award, the IEEE BMBS William J Morlock Award, the Academic Career Achievement Award and Distinguished Service Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, NSF CAREER Award, among others. He is an elected Fellow of International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), and IEEE. Dr. He served as a Past President of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the International Society for Functional Source Imaging, the International Society on Bioelectromagnetism, and as Chair of Publications Committee of AIMBE. Dr. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering from 2013-2018, and during his tenure, the journal’s impact factor has nearly doubled. Dr. He has served as the Chair of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering from 2018-2021. Dr. He has been a Member of NIH BRAIN Initiative Multi-Council Working Group from 2014-2019.

From February 2018 to February 2020, Bin He served as the Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Over the three years, the department has made substantial progress – research expenditure increased by 60%, PhD student population increased by 50%, graduate underrepresented minority student population nearly doubled, and graduate program ranking increased from the top 26th to the 22nd to the 17th according to US News and World Report. In 2018, Dr. He founded the Carnegie Mellon Forum on Biomedical Engineering series and chaired the first 3 Forums in 2018, 2019, and 2020, respectively.

Research

Professor Bin He’s research is centered around neuroengineering with focus to functional neuroimaging, neural interfacing and neuromodulation. His lab is developing noninvasive dynamic brain imaging technology for studying mechanisms of motor and visual systems, and aiding detection, diagnosis, and management of various brain disorders. An active research project is on developing novel techniques for localizing and imaging epileptic seizures from noninvasive EEG, MEG, and intracranial EEG to aid surgical resection. Functional brain networks are imaged from EEG, MEG and functional MRI to understand brain functions and aid clinical management of brain disorders. A major thrust area of Dr. He’s research is to develop noninvasive mind-controlled brain-computer interface for aiding disabled patients, including developing novel engineering solutions using motor imagery, spatial attention, etc. and develop enabling techniques to make BCI a broadly used assistive technology by the general population.

Research Interests: electrophysiological source imaging; brain-computer interface; neuromodulation; functional neuroimaging; tissue electrical property imaging

Awards and Recognition

• IEEE EMBS William J Morlock Award, 2019
• Chair, International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, 2018 – 2021
• Editor-in-Chief: IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 2013 – 2018
• IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award, 2017
• Academic Career Achievement Award, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2015
• Distinguished Service Award, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2014
• President, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2009 – 2010
• Fellow, AIMBE, BMES, IAMBE, IEEE, NAI

2024 President’s Circle Guest Speaker

Bruce Tromberg, Ph.D.

Director

National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Dr. Tromberg is the Director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he oversees a portfolio of research programs focused on developing, translating, and commercializing engineering, physical science, and computational technologies in biology and medicine. In addition, he leads NIBIB’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx Tech) program, a $1.7 billion initiative to increase SARS-COV-2 testing capacity and performance. His laboratory, the Section on Biomedical Optics (SBO) in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), develops portable, bedside, non-contact, and wearable technologies for quantitative sensing and imaging of tissue composition and metabolism.

Prior to joining NIH in January 2019, he was a professor of biomedical engineering and surgery at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). During this time he served as director of the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic (BLIMC) (2003-2018) and the Laser Microbeam and Medical Program (LAMMP), an NIH National Biomedical Technology Center at the BLIMC (1997-2018)… Read more.

2024 Keynote Policy Speaker

Jennifer Roberts, Ph.D.

Director of the Resilient Systems Office

Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)

Dr. Jennifer Roberts is the director of the Resilient Systems Office at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Roberts joined ARPA-H in February 2023 from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she was the assistant director of Health Technologies. She has a broad background in both engineering and computer science and has overseen research programs and strategy development on topics such as cyber security, healthcare data interoperability, artificial intelligence for synthetic biology, and information integrity.

Before joining the White House, Roberts worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as deputy director of the Information Innovation Office. During this time, she received the prestigious Superior Public Service Medal for her contributions to the fields of artificial intelligence and cyber security. Roberts has a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT, which she attended as both a National Science Foundation and Hertz Foundation Fellow.

Rachele Hendricks-Sturrup, DHSc, MSc, MA

Research Director of Real-World Evidence (RWE)

Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy

Dr. Rachele Hendricks-Sturrup is the Research Director of Real-World Evidence (RWE) at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy in Washington, DC, strategically leading and managing the Center’s RWE Collaborative. As an engagement expert, researcher, bioethicist, and policy practitioner, her work centers on addressing implementation and ethical, legal, and social implications issues at the intersection of health policy and innovation. She also partners with Duke University faculty, scholars, students, and external health experts to advance the Center’s biomedical innovation work.

She is presently adjunct faculty at rural Ohio University, teaching graduate courses in the Department of Interdisciplinary Health Science’s Health Policy Certificate program, and has taught graduate courses within the Masters of Health Care Innovation program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. As of January 2023, she serves on the Board of Directors for Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) and is part of executive leadership for the National Alliance Against Disparities in Patient Health (NADPH).

Prior to joining Duke-Margolis, Dr. Hendricks-Sturrup was Health Policy Counsel and Lead at the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF), leading the organization’s health and genetic data initiatives and workgroup. Prior to FPF, she served in several administrative and scientific roles at various industry, health care, and academic institutions. To date, she has published several commentaries and original research papers in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Hendricks-Sturrup is also an accomplished health and science journalist, having completed a comparative effectiveness research fellowship with the Association of Health Care Journalists in 2017.

Dr. Hendricks-Sturrup received her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Chicago State University, her Master’s in Pharmacology and Toxicology from Michigan State University, her Master’s in Legal Studies from the University of Illinois, and her Doctor of Health Science from Nova Southeastern University. She completed a predoctoral internship with the National Health Service in London, UK, and postdoctoral research training within the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and Harvard Medical School.

Focus Areas

• Real-World Evidence
• Biomedical Innovation

Degrees

• Doctor of Health Science, Nova Southeastern University
• Master’s in Pharmacology and Toxicology, Michigan State University
• Master’s in Legal Studies, University of Illinois
• Bachelor of Science in Biology, Chicago State University

Dean Ho, Ph.D.

Provost’s Chair Professor
Head, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Director, The N.1 Institute for Health (N.1)
Director, The Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM)

Department of Pharmacology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
National University of Singapore

Professor Dean Ho is currently Provost’s Chair Professor, Director of The Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine; Director of The N.1 Institute for Health (N.1), and Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Prof. Ho and collaborators manage a portfolio of over 10 prospective, interventional human clinical trials. His team successfully developed and validated CURATE.AI, a powerful artificial intelligence platform that personalizes human treatment for a broad spectrum of indications ranging from oncology, to digital therapeutics and infectious diseases, among others. His team also developed IDentif.AI to optimise combination therapy design against SARS-CoV-2 and to address antimicrobial resistance.

Prof. Ho is an elected Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors (NAI), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was also named to the HIMSS Future50 Class of 2021 for his internationally-recognised leadership in digital health. Prof. Ho is also a Subgroup Lead in the World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group for the regulation of AI for Health, which was recently released globally.

Prof. Ho is an author of the best-selling book, Medicine Without Meds, which has released internationally. The book serves as a blueprint for a broad community – from business leaders and venture capitalists to healthcare systems – on how to accelerate practice-changing innovation to patients and caregivers. All author proceeds from the book will be benefiting the WisDM Patient Impact Fund at NUS.

In popular and international media, Prof. Ho has appeared on the National Geographic Channel Program “Known Universe,” and Channel News Asia’s “The Hidden Layer: Healthcare Trailblazers”. His discoveries have been featured on CNN, The Economist, Straits Times, National Geographic, Forbes, Washington Post, NPR and other international news outlets.

Prof. Ho is a recipient of the Tech Heroes from Crisis Pathfinder Award from the Singapore Computer Society, NSF CAREER Award, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Translational Research Award, and V Foundation for Cancer Research Scholar Award, among others. He has also served as the President of the Board of Directors of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS), a leading global drug development organization.

Aaron D. Levine, Ph.D.

Associate Dean for Research and Outreach, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
Professor, School of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology

Aaron D. Levine is Associate Dean for Research and Outreach in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and Professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. He also holds an appointment as a Guest Researcher in the Division of Reproductive Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He leads ethics and policy research for the NSF Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT). His research focuses on the intersection between public policy and bioethics. Much of his work has examined the development of stem cell science, particularly research using human pluripotent stem cells, and the translation of novel cell therapies. He also writes extensively on the oversight of contentious areas of medicine, such as assisted reproductive technology. Earlier in his career, he received a NSF CAREER award to examine the impact of ethical controversy on graduate science education and the development of scientific careers. He currently serves as Vice-Chair for Bioethics on the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy’s Committee on the Ethics of Cell and Gene Therapy and recently completed a three-year term as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He is also a long-time member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Aaron has a long-standing interest in science communication and is the author of Cloning: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld Publications, 2007), an accessible introduction to the science of cloning and embryonic stem cells and the ethical and policy controversies this science inspires. He was an AAAS Leshner Leadership Institute Public Engagement Fellow for 2019-2020.

He completed his Ph.D. in Public Affairs at Princeton University, where his dissertation research examined the impact of public policy on the development of human embryonic stem cell science. He also holds an M. Phil. from the University of Cambridge, where, as a Churchill Scholar, he studied computational biology at the Sanger Centre and developed algorithms to help analyze the human genome sequence, and a B.S. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar.

Anant Madabhushi, Ph.D.

Robert W Woodruff Professor of Biomedical Engineering; and on faculty in the Departments of Pathology, Biomedical Informatics, Urology and Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Emory University

Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Picture Health

Research Career Scientist at the Atlanta Veterans Administration Medical Center

Advisory Committee of the National Cancer Institute Frederick National Laboratory

Dr. Anant Madabhushi is the Robert W Woodruff Professor of Biomedical Engineering; and on faculty in the Departments of Pathology, Biomedical Informatics, Urology and Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Emory University. He is also a Research Career Scientist at the Atlanta Veterans Administration Medical Center. Dr. Madabhushi has authored over 500 peer-reviewed publications and more than 200 patents either issued or pending in the areas of artificial intelligence, radiomics, medical image analysis, computer-aided diagnosis, and computer vision.

He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). In 2015, he was named by Crain’s Cleveland Business as one of “Forty under 40” making positive impact to business in Northeast Ohio. In 2017, he received the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) award for technical achievements in computational imaging and digital pathology. His work on “Smart Imaging Computers for Identifying lung cancer patients who need chemotherapy” was called out by Prevention Magazine as one of the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2018. In 2019, Nature Magazine hailed him as one of 5 scientists developing “offbeat and innovative approaches for cancer research”. In 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 Dr. Madabhushi was named to The Pathologist’s Power List of 100 inspirational and influential professionals in pathology.

As an internationally acclaimed researcher and inventor, Dr. Madabhushi has authored nearly 500 peer-reviewed publications with over 200 patents issued or pending. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). In 2019, Nature Magazine hailed him as one of 5 scientists developing “offbeat and innovative approaches for cancer research”. Dr. Madabhushi was named to The Pathologist’s Power List in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Gabriella Waters, Ph.D.

Director of Operations, Director, Cognitive & Neurodiversity AI Lab
Morgan State University

Gabriella Waters is an artificial intelligence and machine learning researcher and the Director of Operations at the Center for Equitable AI & Machine Learning Systems at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. She is the director of the Cognitive & Neurodiversity AI (CoNA) Lab, a professor at the Propel Center, where she facilitates the Culturally Relevant AI/ML Systems course, and a research associate at NIST where she leads AI testing and evaluation across three teams.

She is passionate about increasing the diversity of thought around technology and focuses on interdisciplinary collaborations to drive innovation, equity, explainability, transparency, and ethics in the development and application of AI tools. In her research, Gabriella is interested in studying the intersections between human neurobiology & learning, quantifying ethics & equity in AI/ML systems, neuro-symbolic architectures, and intelligent systems that make use of those foundations for improved human-computer synergy. She develops technology innovations, with an emphasis on support for neurodiverse populations.

Michael R. King, Ph.D.

Chair, AIMBE College of Fellows

Michael R. King is the J. Lawrence Wilson Professor and Department Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Previously he was the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria Professor at Cornell University. He completed a PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Notre Dame and postdoctoral training in bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written textbooks on the subjects of statistical methods and microchannel flows, and has received several awards including the NSF CAREER Award, Outstanding Research Awards from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Society of Clinical Chemistry, and was a James D. Watson Investigator of New York State. King is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, and serves as Vice President of the International Society of Bionic Engineering. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, an official journal of the Biomedical Engineering Society, and serves as the Chair-Elect of the Biomedical Engineering Council of Chairs.

The King Lab works at the interface between Cellular Engineering, Drug Delivery, and Nanotechnology. They employ tools and concepts from engineering to understand biomedically important processes that occur in the bloodstream, including cancer metastasis, inflammation, and thrombosis. They have found that tumor cells in the circulation can mimic the physical mechanisms used by white blood cells to traffic through the body and adhere to the blood vessel wall, and have explored strategies to interrupt this metastasis process by targeting specific adhesion receptors. The selectin adhesion receptors important in leukocyte, stem cell, and CTC trafficking have unique biophysics that make them ideal for targeted drug delivery. The King Lab has pioneered the use of selectin proteins to deliver apoptosis death signals to tumor cells in flowing blood, and to deliver therapeutic cargo (e.g., siRNA, chemotherapeutics) encapsulated in nanoscale liposomes. The King lab is currently testing these novel cancer therapies in mouse models of metastatic breast and prostate cancer through the use of whole body luminescence imaging, and in blood samples collected from human volunteers diagnosed with cancer at various stages.

Michael King has been married to Cynthia Reinhart-King, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Engineering, since 2002, and together they have two sons: Simon (age 13) and Julian (age 6), and a 15 year old cockapoo named Lady Mix-a-Lot King. They live in Brentwood, in a home last owned by CJ2K.

Outside of work and family interests, Mike is the founder of VIBE: the Vanderbilt Initiative of Biofunky Engineers, a musical group of biomedical engineering faculty and graduate students who have performed since 2017 on and off the Vanderbilt campus, and live over the air on Radio Free Nashville. Other interests include: being a fanatical lacrosse dad, keeping fit, and wheeling around town in a Jeep Wrangler with no doors.

Selected Honors, Awards, and Activities

• Editor-in-Chief, Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering
• Fellow, Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES)
• Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)
• Outstanding Speaker Award, American Association of Clinical Chemistry
• Fiona Ip Li ‘78 and Donald Li ’75 Award for Teaching Excellence, Cornell University
• Professor of the Year in Engineering, University of Rochester
• National Science Foundation CAREER Award
• James D. Watson Investigator Award, New York State Office for Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR)
• Whitaker Investigator, The Whitaker Foundation
• National Academy of Inventors Fellow

Joyce Y. Wong, Ph.D.

President, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)

Dr. Wong is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and an Inaugural Term Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Boston University. She is also the Inaugural Director of ARROWS, Office of the Provost, focused on promoting women in STEM at BU. She is an elected Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

RESEARCH FOCUS: Development of novel biomaterials to detect and treat disease. Elucidation of fundamental molecular, cellular, and colloidal/interfacial processes for specific biomedical applications.

CURRENT PROJECTS: Pediatric vascular tissue engineering; Vascularized tissue engineering; Theranostics for cardiovascular disease and cancer; In vitro models of cancer metastasis.

Honors and Awards

• Fellow, National Academy of Inventors, 2020
• Fellow, American Academy for the Advancement of Science, 2017
• BU Inaugural Term Distinguished Professor of Engineering, 2014
• Fellow, Biomedical Engineering Society, 2013
• Collaborator of the Year Award, BU Department of Medicine, 2012
• Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award, 2009
• Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, 2009
• NSF CAREER Award, 2000

Dawn Beraud, Ph.D.

Executive Director, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)

Dawn Beraud, Ph.D., serves as the Executive Director of AIMBE. As a science policy leader with senior government experience and a keen understanding of Capitol Hill processes, Dr. Beraud brings to AIMBE her passion for helping scientists join the conversation and influence policy decisions. She directs AIMBE’s strategic planning and partners with Fellows to provide advocacy leadership in medical and biological engineering. Dr. Beraud joins AIMBE from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at NIH, where she led congressional relations and external outreach for almost a decade. Prior to joining the NIA, Dr. Beraud worked on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research policy at the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Beraud received a B.S. in psychology from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Georgetown University.