Michael Miller, Ph.D.

Abstract

If the 20th century was the age of mapping and controlling the external world, the 21st century is the biomedical age of mapping and controlling the biological internal world. The biomedical age is bringing new technological breakthroughs for sensing and controlling human biomolecules, cells, tissues, and organs, which underpin new frontiers in the biomedical discovery, data, biomanufacturing, and translational sciences. This article reviews what we believe will be the next wave of biomedical engineering (BME) education in support of the biomedical age, what we have termed BME 2.0. BME 2.0 was announced on October 12 2017 at BMES 49 (https://www.bme.jhu.edu/news-events/news/miller-opens-2017-bmes-annual-meeting-with-vision-for-new-bme-era/). We present several principles upon which we believe the BME 2.0 curriculum should be constructed, and from these principles, we describe what view as the foundations that form the next generations of curricula in support of the BME enterprise. The core principles of BME 2.0 education are (a) educate students bilingually, from day 1, in the languages of modern molecular biology and the analytical modeling of complex biological systems; (b) prepare every student to be a biomedical data scientist; (c) build a unique BME community for discovery and innovation via a vertically integrated and convergent learning environment spanning the university and hospital systems; (d) champion an educational culture of inclusive excellence; and (e) codify in the curriculum ongoing discoveries at the frontiers of the discipline, thus ensuring BME 2.0 as a launchpad for training the future leaders of the biotechnology marketplaces. We envision that the BME 2.0 education is the path for providing every student with the training to lead in this new era of engineering the future of medicine in the 21st century… Continue reading.

Michael Miller, Ph.D., is turning medical images into numeric data that can be computed and measured to predict and diagnose neurodegenerative diseases. Discover more videos at hopkinsmedicine.org/research/about-faculty/discoveries-for-a-better-tomorrow.

Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease and typically diagnosed only after symptoms appear, when there’s little that can be done.

But, what if doctors could identify those most at risk — decades before they start losing memories?

Scientists at Johns Hopkins say they’ve identified brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s that can occur decades before the disease’s first symptoms show.

The researchers reviewed medical records of 290 people 40 years and older with a family history of the disease from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Maryland in an effort to discover predictors of cognitive decline… Continue reading.

Michael I. Miller, director of the Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering, has a plan for a new era of biomedical science discovery to respond to the challenges of the 21st century. He unveiled this plan Wednesday during the 2017 Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.

“The past century has been the Age of Physics, followed by the Information Age, where we saw vast engineering contributions to the mapping and control of our external world, from the rise of operational amplifiers and computer disks to GPS and the prospect of self-driving cars,” Miller told the gathering of the world’s top biomedical engineers at the Phoenix Convention Center. “This century will be about engineering our internal world: mapping, controlling, and engineering genes, tissues, organ systems, and ultimately the human brain… Continue reading.

Biomedical engineering is at the center of medicine. Our students and faculty are creating technologies that will change the way the world moves forward.

Michael Miller, PhD, has been selected as the next director of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, effective July 1.

Miller received his master’s and doctorate degrees in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins. He joined the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where he rose to be a chaired professor while developing an international reputation in computational science and imaging… Continue reading.

Michael Miller, the Herschel and Ruth Sedar Professor of Biomedical Engineering and University Gilman Scholar, is analyzing MRI brain images of the elderly to unveil lurking signs of Alzheimer’s that cognitive tests cannot detect.

The causes and cures of this neurodegenerative disease are still unclear, but researchers know that the brain begins to change even before memory loss and other symptoms appear.

“We need to be looking at the brain before someone starts to complain of significant clinical symptoms,” he says… Continue reading.

The human brain is the most complex machine in existence. Every brain is loaded with some 100 billion nerve cells, each connecting to thousands of others, giving around 100 trillion connections. Mapping those connections, or synapses, could enable scientists to decipher what causes neurological disease and mental illness. It’s an immense, daunting task.

The best way to tackle it? Use large amounts of data, says Michael I. Miller, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and University Gilman Scholar. Miller and an interdisciplinary team of Johns Hopkins researchers are merging their neuroscience, computing, and data science expertise to unravel the brain’s mysteries and give other scientists tools to do the same… Continue reading.

By building a “cloud database” of MR images collected from children with normal and abnormal brains, researchers aim to give physicians access to a Google-like search system that will improve the way pediatric brain disorders are diagnosed and treated.

The project is being developed by a team of engineers and radiologists at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and is supported by a three-year, $600,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, which is investing in Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K), an initiative to enable biomedical scientists to capitalize more fully on the Big Data being generated by those research communities… Continue reading.

Herschel and Ruth Seder Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Michael Miller, Susumu Mori (co-principal investigator of the grant) and Thierry Huisman (pediatric radiologist, building the pediatric brain cloud) have received a lot of media coverage about their recent project — a Google-like search system of normal and abnormal children’s brain scans. The pediatric brain data bank that will let doctors look at MRI brain scans of children who have already been diagnosed with illnesses like epilepsy or psychiatric disorders. It will also provide a way to share important new discoveries about how changes in brain structures are linked to brain disorders… Continue reading.

When an MRI scan uncovers an unusual architecture or shape in a child’s brain, it’s cause for concern: The malformation may be a sign of disease. But deciding whether that odd-looking anatomy is worrisome or harmless can be difficult.

To help doctors reach the right conclusions—and make the right decisions—Johns Hopkins researchers are building a detailed digital library of MRI scans collected from children with normal and abnormal brains. The goal, the researchers say, is to give physicians a Google-like search system that will enhance the way they diagnose and treat young patients with brain disorders.

This cloud-computing project, being developed by a team of engineers and radiologists, should allow physicians to access thousands of pediatric scans to look for any that resemble their own patient’s image. The project is supported by a three-year, $600,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health… Continue reading.