Morton Friedman, F.AIMBE

Morton H. Friedman, Ph.D., is a Consulting Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at George Washington University. Most recently, he served the GW School of Engineering and Applied Science as Special Assistant to the Dean for Biomedical Engineering Program Development, leading to the formation of a BME Department at GW in 2015. He came to GW from Duke University, having been recruited to Duke to chair their BME Department; he stayed on at Duke to teach and carry out research, receiving Emeritus status in 2009. He had previous academic appointments at Johns Hopkins and Ohio State Universities.

Trained in chemical engineering at Cornell and the University of Michigan, Dr. Friedman’s research has focused on biomechanics, specifically corneal mechanics and the role of mechanical forces and arterial geometry in the localization and evolution of vascular disease. His latter work was funded for several decades by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Dr. Friedman has been active in the development of biomedical engineering as a discipline and profession. As President of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), he initiated the process that led to the first Annual Meeting of the Society. He was the General Chair of the first Summer Bioengineering Conference (now SB3C, the Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering, and Biotransport Conference), and a member of the Organizing Committee of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), where he led the formation of its Academic Council.

Dr. Friedman is a recipient of the Lissner Medal and Richard Skalak Award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Heart Association, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, an elected Member of the World Council of Biomechanics, a Founding Fellow of AIMBE, and an Inaugural Fellow of BMES.