AIMBE
Fellowbook News
AIMBE Fellowbook collects news stories highlighting the members of the AIMBE College of Fellows. Read the latest stories, jump to the College Directory, or search below to find the newest research, awards, announcements and more for the leaders of the medical and biological engineering community.
North American Membrane Society Honors Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Georges Belfort
Georges Belfort | Via RPI | March 20, 2014World-leading bioseparations expert Georges Belfort, Institute Professor and a member of the Howard P. Isermann Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been awarded the Alan S. Michaels Award for Innovation in Membrane Science and Technology from the North American Membrane Society (NAMS). The award, given every three years by NAMS […]
Stanford Researchers Survey Protein Family that Helps the Brain form Synapses
Stephen Quake | Via Stanford Engineering | March 18, 2014Neuroscientists and bioengineers at Stanford are working together to solve a mystery: How does nature construct the different types of synapses that connect neurons – the brain cells that monitor nerve impulses, control muscles and form thoughts. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Thomas C. Südhof, M.D., a […]
Stanford Engineers Brave the ‘Vomit Comet’ to Improve Astronauts’ Heart Health
Gregory T. A. Kovacs | Via Stanford Engineering | March 7, 2014The human heart was not meant to pump in space. Early astronauts in the Apollo program performed every conceivable physical test to ensure that they were each at the pinnacle of human fitness. And yet, when they returned to Earth after just a few days in space, they felt dizzy when standing and tests showed […]
A Breakthrough in Endometriosis Research
Douglas Lauffenburger | Via MIT Libraries News | February 26, 2014Over the years Linda Griffith has undergone many surgeries for endometriosis, a condition in which tissue that normally grows in the uterus is found elsewhere in the body and can cause lesions, inflammation, and infertility. The disease is poorly understood, and so it made sense to Griffith, a professor of biological and mechanical engineering, to […]
Johns Hopkins Researchers Establish a Digital Search System for Pediatric Brain MRI Data
Michael Miller | Via Johns Hopkins, Department of Biomedical Engineering | February 24, 2014Herschel 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 […]
Bioengineering at Tech: Past, Present, Future
Robert M. Nerem | Via Georgia Tech News Center | February 24, 2014Georgia Tech faculty member Bob Nerem’s work has helped significantly to advance medical science and improve the quality of life. To many at Georgia Tech, he has been one of the pioneers in the field and instrumental in leading the effort in the areas of bioengineering and biosciences on campus and beyond. Nerem is looking […]
Shedding a Light on Pain: A Technique Developed by Stanford Bioengineers Could Lead to New Treatments
Scott Delp | Via Stanford Engineering | February 19, 2014The mice in Scott Delp’s lab, unlike their human counterparts, can get pain relief from the glow of a yellow light. Right now these mice are helping scientists to study pain – how and why it occurs and why some people feel it so intensely without any obvious injury. But Delp, a professor of bioengineering […]
Peppas Elected to the Academy of Athens
Nicholas Peppas | Via University of Texas as Austin BME News | February 19, 2014Yannis Kevrekidis, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University said, “Election to the Order of Sciences in the Academy whose roots go back to Plato’s Academy in this “city that taught the world” is a signal honor. It is also a recognition for the entire field that Nicholas has helped found and […]
Gene Therapy Might Grow Replacement Tissue Inside the Body
Farshid Guilak | Via Duke Engineering | February 18, 2014Duke researchers use gene therapy to direct stem cells into becoming new cartilage on a synthetic scaffold even after implantation into a living body. By combining a synthetic scaffolding material with gene delivery techniques, researchers at Duke University are getting closer to being able to generate replacement cartilage where it’s needed in the body. Performing […]
A New Tool in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life: A Tricked-Out Point-and-Shoot
Wolfgang Fink | Via U. Arizona News | February 7, 2014The next time a NASA rover blasts off to explore Mars or some other planet, it might be equipped with a new type of “do-it-all” camera developed by an engineering team at the University of Arizona. The prototype of the “Astrobiological Imager” – described in a research paper featured on the cover of a recent […]
Illuminating a Complex Disease: New analysis of endometriosis patients could help scientists develop better treatments and more revealing diagnoses
Linda Griffith | Via Massachusetts Institute of Technology | February 5, 2014Endometriosis, the invasive displacement of uterine tissue into surrounding organs, affects at least 10 percent of women. The disease, which is often misdiagnosed, can cause severe pain and infertility, but very little is known about how it arises. In 2009, biological engineer Linda Griffith launched the Center for Gynepathology Research at MIT to study endometriosis […]
A Microchip for Metastasis: MIT researchers design a microfluidic platform to see how cancer cells invade specific organs
Roger D. Kamm | Via Massachusetts Institute of Technology | February 2, 2014Nearly 70 percent of patients with advanced breast cancer experience skeletal metastasis, in which cancer cells migrate from a primary tumor into bone — a painful development that can cause fractures and spinal compression. While scientists are attempting to better understand metastasis in general, not much is known about how and why certain cancers spread […]
Njit Distinguished Professor Atam P. Dhawan, of Randolph, Named Aimbe Fellow
Atam Dhawan | Via New Jersey Institute of Technology | January 28, 2014Atam P. Dhawan, of Randolph, a distinguished professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NJIT, has been elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBA) for contributions in medical imaging. Dhawan, who also serves as the Executive Director of Undergraduate Research and Innovation at NJIT, will be […]
Termis: the Congruent Point of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine
Todd McDevitt | Via Georgia Tech Pioneer | January 28, 2014Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine International Society – hosts an annual conference which is often found to be eye-opening by many people in the field of tissue engineering as it showcases the field’s latest technologies and groundbreaking research. This year, TERMIS-Americas is hosted by The Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia […]
Understanding Concussions: Testing Head-Impact Sensors
James Ashton-Miller | Via University of Michigan Engineering | January 28, 2014The head of a crash-test dummy wore a football helmet as it hung upside-down on a laboratory drop tower. James Eckner, M.D., stood on a ladder next to it holding its tether. He counted to five and let go. The bust smacked into another just like it three feet below – with about the force […]
Harvard Scientists Say Research Subjects Should See Data
George M. Church | Via Bloomberg | January 23, 2014People who give blood or other tissues for research should be able to track their use through the scientific process to see the data their activities or samples generate, Harvard University scientists said. The standard one-way flow of information creates an unequal relationship that blocks participants’ ability to hold scientists accountable for how the data […]
Experiments Show Hypothesis of Microtubule Steering Accurate
William Hancock | Via Penn State News | January 23, 2014Tiny protein motors in cells can steer microtubules in the right direction through branching nerve cell structures, according to Penn State researchers who used laboratory experiments to test a model of how these cellular information highways stay organized in living cells. “We proposed a model of how it works in vivo, in the living cell,” […]
Computer Simulation of Blood Vessel Growth: Early Step Toward Treatment for Diseases that Affect Blood Flow
Jeffrey Weiss | Via University of Utah News | January 22, 2014University of Utah bioengineers showed that tiny blood vessels grow better in the laboratory if the tissue surrounding them is less dense. Then the researchers created a computer simulation to predict such growth accurately – an early step toward treatments to provide blood supply to tissues damaged by diabetes and heart attacks and to skin […]
Going Native: Biomedical Engineers Take Biochemistry from the Test Tube into Living Cells
David T. Yue | Via Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering | January 20, 2014Classic biochemistry has long analyzed isolated biological molecules, or their fragments, within artificial solutions in test tubes. However, the results obtained may belie the actual behavior of these molecules as they function within live cells. Ph.D. graduate students Philemon S. Yang and Manu Ben Johny, along with Johns Hopkins BME professor David T. Yue, have devised methods to translate traditional […]
Laura Marcu Named a Fellow of the Optical Society
Laura Marcu | Via UC Davis Bioengineering | January 17, 2014Laura Marcu, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been named a Fellow of the Optical Society (OSA). The nomination and selection process is highly competitive: OSA Fellows are chosen based on their overall impact on optics, as gauged via factors such as specific scientific, engineering and technological contributions; a record […]