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.
Illuminated Bacterial Cells Form “Neon Signs”, Used to Detect Arsenic
Jeff Hasty | Via Daily Tech | December 19, 2011The biological sensor shows the presence and levels of arsenic through the frequency of the oscillations of the cells’ pattern of blinking Just in time for the Christmas season are cells that resemble Christmas twinkle lights. University of California – San Diego scientists have created neon signs made of blinking bacterial cells, which could eventually […]
UCSD Turns Bacteria into “Blinking Light Bulbs”
Jeff Hasty | Via UT San Diego | December 19, 2011University of California San Diego scientists who are exploring how to program cells to perform machine-like tasks such as monitoring the environment found a way to make lowly bacteria glow, blink in unison and spell out the school’s initials. The bacteria were turned into “blinking light bulbs,” as the university describes it, using a technique […]
Researchers Create Living ‘Neon Signs’ Composed of Millions of Glowing Bacteria
Jeff Hasty | Via UC San Diego News Center | December 18, 2011In an example of life imitating art, biologists and bioengineers at UC San Diego have created a living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs. Their achievement, detailed in this week’s advance online issue of the journal Nature, involved attaching a fluorescent protein to the […]
Team Designs a Bandage that Spurs, Guides Blood Vessel Growth
Rashid Bashir | Via University of Illinois News | December 15, 2011Researchers have developed a bandage that stimulates and directs blood vessel growth on the surface of a wound. The bandage, called a “microvascular stamp,” contains living cells that deliver growth factors to damaged tissues in a defined pattern. After a week, the pattern of the stamp “is written in blood vessels,” the researchers report. After […]
It’s All in the Wrapping
Melissa Knothe Tate | Via Case Western Reserve University | December 13, 2011A man-made package filled with nature’s bone-building ingredients delivers the goods over time and space to heal serious bone injuries faster than products currently available, Cleveland researchers have found. Tested on sheep in Switzerland, the surgical elastic “implant device,” essentially a wrapping that mimics bone’s own sock-like sheath called periosteum, delivered stem cells, growth factors […]
Microneedle Sensors May Allow Real-Time Monitoring Of Body Chemistry
Roger Narayan | Via NC State Newsroom | December 13, 2011Researchers from North Carolina State University, Sandia National Laboratories, and the University of California, San Diego have developed new technology that uses microneedles to allow doctors to detect real-time chemical changes in the body – and to continuously do so for an extended period of time. “We’ve loaded the hollow channels within microneedles with electrochemical […]
Renowned Georgia Tech BME Professor Robert M. Nerem Presents at WPI
Robert Nerem | Via Worcester Polytechnic Institute | December 12, 2011This Fall, Worcester Polytechnic Institute had the pleasure of hosting Robert M. Nerem, Ph.D, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and Distinguished Chair Emeritus at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. Professor Nerem’s visit to campus included meetings with faculty and graduate students as well […]
Six Rice University Professors Alected AAAS Fellows
George N. Bennett | Via Rice University | December 9, 2011Rice University professors Behnaam Aazhang, Pedro Alvarez, George Bennett, Antonios Mikos, Krishna Palem and Richard Tapia have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science. AAAS fellows are elected by their peers, and fewer than 1 percent […]
New Shu Chien Lab in New Research Building to Investigate Best Environment to Grow Stem Cells
Shu Chien | Via UC San Diego | December 7, 2011Bioengineering Professor Shu Chien, who recently received a National Medal of Science at the White House, will have a laboratory in the new Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine building. Chien’s lab will be dedicated to further developing a technology that allows scientists to identify the best environments to grow stem cells. Creating these environments requires […]
Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber Receives 2011 Holst Medal
Donald Ingber | Via Wyss Institute | December 6, 2011The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University announced today that its Founding Director, Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., has received the 2011 Holst Medal in recognition of his pioneering work exploring the cellular mechanisms that contribute to mechanical control of tissue and organ development and his groundbreaking development of bioinspired technologies, ranging from […]
‘Label-free’ Imaging Tool Tracks Nanotubes in Cells, Blood for Biomedical Research
Ji-Xin Cheng | Via Purdue University | December 5, 2011Researchers have demonstrated a new imaging tool for tracking structures called carbon nanotubes in living cells and the bloodstream, which could aid efforts to perfect their use in biomedical research and clinical medicine. The structures have potential applications in drug delivery to treat diseases and imaging for cancer research. Two types of nanotubes are created […]
College of Engineering Dean Kenneth Lutchen Featured on AAAS Podcast
Kenneth Lutchen | Via Boston University | November 30, 2011The College of Engineering’s Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen was featured on an American Association for the Advancement of Science podcast last week for Science Translational Medicine magazine. During the interview, Dean Lutchen discussed biomedical engineering innovations and technology transfer, the process by which inventions made via university research transition into the private sector as new […]
E. Coli Bacteria Engineered to Eat Switchgrass and Make Transportation Fuels
Jay Keasling | Via Berkeley Lab News Center | November 29, 2011A milestone has been reached on the road to developing advanced biofuels that can replace gasoline, diesel and jet fuels with a domestically-produced clean, green, renewable alternative. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have engineered the first strains of Escherichia coli bacteria that can digest switchgrass biomass and synthesize […]
Researchers Awarded $3.2M from NIH to Pioneer Advanced Biomolecule Discovery Technology
Hyongsok Soh | Via UC Santa Barbara Engineering | November 28, 2011The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have awarded $3.2 million to a team of preeminent engineering, chemistry, and biology researchers to develop a highly efficient system of generating nucleic acid molecules, called aptamers. The technology provides an entirely new method of discovering and mass producing new high-performance aptamers for a broad range of applications, including […]
Tissue Engineering Moves from Sci Fi to Reality, Mikos Shows
Antonios Mikos | Via NIH Record | November 25, 2011If you ever want to gain a fresh appreciation of how well made the human body is, try building replacement parts for missing or damaged elements of the original equipment. It will require all the biology, chemistry, physics and engineering you can marshal, and then some. In a recent Wednesday Afternoon Lecture he titled “Biomaterials […]
A First: UCF Lab Creates Cells Used by Brain to Control Muscle Cells
James Hickman | Via UCF Office of Research & Commercialization | November 22, 2011University of Central Florida researchers, for the first time, have used stem cells to grow neuromuscular junctions between human muscle cells and human spinal cord cells, the key connectors used by the brain to communicate and control muscles in the body. The success at UCF is a critical step in developing “human-on-a-chip” systems. The systems […]
How Cancer Cells get by on a Starvation Diet
Gregory Stephanopoulos | Via MIT | November 21, 2011Cancer cells usually live in an environment with limited supplies of the nutrients they need to proliferate — most notably, oxygen and glucose. However, they are still able to divide uncontrollably, producing new cancer cells. A new study from researchers at MIT and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center helps to explain how this […]
Onaral Receives Israel America Chamber of Commerce Recognition
Banu Onaral | Via Drexel University | November 16, 2011Drexel University’s Dr. Banu Onaral has been bringing together leaders in technology and industry for years as an H.H. Sun professor and the director of the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems. Her visionary work to further international collaborations for translational research and technology transfer were recognized by the America-Israel Chamber of Commerce […]
Duerk Named Dean of Case Western Reserve University’s Case School of Engineering
Jeffrey Lewis Duerk | Via Case Western Reserve University | November 16, 2011Biomedical Engineering Department Chair Jeffrey L. Duerk, PhD, will become the next dean of the Case School of Engineering, effective Jan. 1, Case Western Reserve University President Barbara R. Snyder announced. An alumnus of the school, Duerk has been a member of the university faculty since 1988 and has held leadership positions of increasing responsibility […]
Boppart Presents at Congressional Briefing
Stephen A. Boppart | Via University of Illinois Engineering | November 15, 2011On November 17, 2011, Professor Stephen Boppart will take part in a congressional briefing convened by the Optical Society of America (OSA). The briefing is being held under the auspices of the Advisory Committee for the Congressional Research and Development Caucus. Boppart, a professor of electrical and computer engineeirng and of bioengineering at Illinois, will […]