Professional Impact Award

Nominations for the Professional Impact Awards are solicited by AIMBE in the following categories:

Mentoring: including supporting the growth and development of students, post-docs, and early career faculty; motivating and empowering mentees to pursue and achieve their goals, and helping mentees build a network of professional relationships to strengthen their careers.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: including contributing to the advancement of underrepresented minorities in medical and biological engineering, diversifying the biomedical sciences and biomedical engineering workforce, providing underrepresented students with early exposure to the profession recruiting, retaining and promoting diverse talent; and improving the culture of inclusion.

Leadership: including serving on committees, boards of directors, or other governance positions; participating on peer review panels, advisory commissions, or study groups.

Education: including advancing new teaching methods, curriculum, or training techniques; contributing to changes and improvements on campus, academic life, and/or relationships of students and faculty; promoting and/or advancing STEM.

2021 Professional Impact Award – Education

Rashid Bashir, Ph.D.

Executive Associate Dean and Chief Diversity Officer, Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering
College of Engineering Dean, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

For leadership in bioengineering education, diagnostic technology development, and a new engineering-based medical school curriculum.

2021 Professional Impact Award – Leadership

Cato T. Laurencin, MD, Ph.D.

University Professor, and Albert & Wilda Van Dusen Distinguished Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Connecticut Health Center

For his leadership in regenerative engineering and medicine through the dissemination of science, advocacy for diversity and inclusion, and contributions to numerous professional organizations worldwide.

2021 Professional Impact Award – Mentoring

Naomi C. Chesler, Ph.D.

Director, Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology, and Professor, University of California, Irvine

For her national leadership in mentoring of women faculty in engineering.

2021 Professional Impact Award – Diversity

Manu O. Platt, Ph.D.

Diversity Director, STC on Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems (EBICS)
GRA Distinguished Scholar
Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University

For visionary leadership and an established track record of improving diversity and inclusion in BME and changing the culture for historically under-represented students and faculty across the nation.

2020 Professional Impact Award – Leadership

Walt Baxter, Ph.D.

Senior Principal Scientist and Bakken Fellow
Medtronic Neuromodulation

For his outstanding track record of leadership initiatives that advance corporate scientific interests and simultaneously strengthen the biomedical ecosystem, writ large, on behalf of patients.

2020 Professional Impact Award – Advocacy

Sam Sanjiv Gambhir, M.D., Ph.D.

Chair of Radiology, Stanford University

For his advocacy for science and engineering, radiology, and leadership in promoting innovation in health care technology and infrastructure for the benefit of all patients.

2020 Professional Impact Award – Education

Ajit P. Yoganathan, Ph.D.

Associate Chair of Health Sciences and Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology

For education in development of biomedical engineering graduate and translational educational programs, clinical education techniques and standards development.